Housing Shortage Is Slowing Down Louisiana Recovery

"It is essentially a landlord-immunity bill," said Stacy Seicshnaydre, an associate professor at Tulane Law School in New Orleans. A measure that would block rent-price gouging has been sitting in a legislative committee of the House since Nov. 6.

Loren Scott, president of Loren C. Scott & Associates, a Baton Rouge-based economic-consulting firm, predicted in late September the permanent relocation of 125,000 of the 1.3 million people who were living in the New Orleans area before Katrina. "That number was way too low," Scott said now. He will offer a new estimate this week.

"Setting the limit on the quality and quantity of the recovery in New Orleans is the availability of housing," said Scott, former director of Louisiana State University's economic- forecasting division. The state Department of Labor estimates the area at least temporarily lost 237,200 jobs out of 615,600 as of mid-September.

FEMA, which took so much criticism over its handling of Katrina that Director Michael Brown resigned in September, is the focus of much of the local ire again. FEMA and other agencies have deployed about 5,500 federal employees in Louisiana and have contracted with thousands more to do everything from hauling debris to putting temporary roofs on homes.

"A company with a FEMA contract offered $2,000 a month to house 12 guys in my assistant's condo," broker Andra Capaci said. The 1,100-square-foot unit owned by Capaci's colleague in Kenner would have commanded $700 before the storm.

Much of the housing rush is in Jefferson Parish, which encompasses the towns of Kenner and Metairie, both within 20 miles west of New Orleans.

Glenn Gardner's Metairie-based Prudential Gardner Realtors listed a 1,600-square-foot, three-bedroom house in Ormond at $1,100 a month. After a bidding war, it rented for $1,500, up from $800 previously. In Metairie, a duplex apartment fetched $1,800 a month, double the pre-Katrina amount, Gardner said.

"There are so many people in town who need places to live while doing temporary work -- insurance adjusters, contractors," he said. "It definitely has put a squeeze on."

Marr, the Bradley gunner, is losing both a place to live and his biggest asset, a mobile home in the Sharon Park trailer park in Kenner, which he said he just spent thousands of dollars to renovate. Park tenants received eviction notices Nov. 12.

"She wants that FEMA money," he said of landlady Jacqueline Whitsell. "I thought FEMA was supposed to be helping people."

Marr said Whitsell told Sharon Park residents she was going to clear the 50 mostly decrepit trailers off her land and rent the cleaned-up park to FEMA, which is leasing lots throughout the area to bring in trailers for displaced residents.

The Marrs doubt their trailer can withstand a move, even if they could find a place to take it. "We're lowest on the totem pole," said Marr, an air-conditioning technician in civilian life who is still on active duty with the Louisiana National Guard.