Today, the New Orleans City Council will host a citywide meeting to hear from residents about reducing blight in New Orleans.  The special meeting of the City Council’s Housing and Human Needs Committee will take place at 4:00 p.m. in the City Council chamber located at 1300 Perdido Street.

The Fair Housing Center, in concert with residents from every council district as well as other housing organizations, will call on the Council to combat blight by addressing occupied rental housing that fails to meet code. The Center is committed to insuring that all renters have safe, decent affordable housing and recommends the following:

• The City should require all occupied rentals to be subject to a habitability inspection and permitted.
• The City should use funds derived from the permitting and inspection process to assist renters who are displaced due to code violations by their landlords.
• The City should create a low-interest rental housing loan fund to assist landlords whose properties do not meet code, but are willing to keep their rental rates low.

GNOFHAC Executive Director James Perry comments “A community’s health, vitality, and prosperity can be measured by the condition of the structures people call home, and we hope that city officials will jump at the opportunity to transform a legacy of substandard housing by taking an affirmative, rather than complaint driven approach to rental code enforcement.”

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