News

Victory in New Orleans: Housing Authority Commits to Hire 40% Residents in Redevelopment

In this time of unprecedented hardship, Mayday New Orleans, a member of the Campaign to Restore National Housing Rights, has helped secure a significant victory this week for the low-income residents of New Orleans, Louisiana! 

With the construction beginning of "mixed-income" developments on the site of two former public housing complexes – B.W. Cooper and Lafitte, each demolished in the wake of Hurricane Katrina – a deal has been struck by which 40 percent of workers employed in the redevelopment must be residents. 

As an article in the Times Picayune notes, "the 'Section 3' program of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. . . requires recipients of HUD money to hire a certain proportion of low-income people.  30 percent of workers hired by [the Housing Authority of New Orleans] contractors must be low-income workers."  However, as the article also notes, there are a number of loopholes that have historically allowed contractors to satisfy the regulatory obligations without truly meeting the intended spirit of the requirements.   Check out the full story here: http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2011/02/hano_commits_to_hiring_locally.html