May 5th, 2022 NEW ORLEANS—Today, housing advocates and renting families celebrated a major milestone when the New Orleans City Council unanimously passed a Right to Counsel ordinance. The ordinance states that anyone at risk of losing their home in eviction court has a right to an attorney and creates a permanent framework for the program […]

March 21st, 2022 New Orleans— Today, the Louisiana Fair Housing Action Center (LaFHAC), represented by LaFHAC attorneys and the Tulane Law School Civil Rights & Federal Practice Clinic, announced a U.S. District Court order enforcing a settlement agreement that prohibits New Orleans landlord Jerry Kelly Jr. from having any contact with tenants for ten years […]

February 21st, 2022 New Orleans, LA—Today, the Louisiana Fair Housing Action Center (LaFHAC) announced the resolution of a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) complaint against Sailboat Bay Apartments, its management company, and property manager, alleging that the property used a racially discriminatory blanket ban on renting to anyone with a criminal record. […]

January 14th, 2022 New Orleans, LA—Today, the Louisiana Fair Housing Action Center announced the settlement of a federal family status and racial discrimination lawsuit against Tall Pines, LLC and their manager and rental agent, Carey Rizzuto, in Slidell, Louisiana. The lawsuit alleges that Mr. Rizzuto engaged in a pattern of discrimination against African Americans by […]

NEW ORLEANS—Today, the Louisiana Fair Housing Action Center released its new report, Delayed Until Downsized or Denied: Neighborhood Associations Lead the Charge Against Affordable Housing and Perpetuate Segregation in New Orleans. The report chronicles how New Orleans elected officials regularly grant unrepresentative, mostly-white neighborhood associations significant power over land use decisions. Since Hurricane Katrina, those […]

BATON ROUGE—This week, housing advocates and people with conviction records secured a long sought after new fair housing and tenant screening policy from the Louisiana Housing Corporation (LHC). The new policy will bring the agency and its grantees into compliance with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) fair housing guidance and ensure […]

NEW ORLEANS—Today, 79 housing developers, neighborhood associations, public health groups, education advocates, criminal justice reform organizations, good government groups, and others came together to call on the New Orleans City Council to support the extension of the Neighborhood Housing Improvement Fund (NHIF) and to place it on the November ballot alongside the fully-funded library millage. […]

New Orleans, LA—Today, the Louisiana Fair Housing Action Center (LaFHAC) announced the settlement of a federal racial discrimination lawsuit filed against Grundmann Enterprises, LLC and their property management staff. The lawsuit alleges that on multiple occasions the onsite manager, Thomas Pettingill, refused to follow-up with Black prospective renters, quoted them higher rents, or lied about whether […]

NEW ORLEANS—Today, the Louisiana Fair Housing Action Center (LaFHAC), responded to the White House and U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) termination of the landmark2015 Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) Rule and the implementation of a new unvetted rule without public comment. “This is another authoritarian attempt to circumvent Congress and the typical […]

NEW ORLEANS—Today, 54 social service agencies and advocates from across the state called on Governor John Bel Edwards to pursue all options to increase rental assistance funding, as the recently announced Louisiana Emergency Rental Assistance program ran out of money in just three days. The $24 million allocated for the program is only a fraction of […]