HANO's waiting list is the new normal

This article does a good job of demonstrating that the policy is deliberately creating the problem it has set out to create. More people desperate for less housing is what "the market" wants. The "public-private partnership model" is all about getting that done.

The Housing Authority of New Orleans's first experience with the public-private partnership model came when HRI converted the St. Thomas housing development into the River Garden neighborhood in 2004, anchored by the city’s first Wal-Mart.

HANO then began regularly leasing its complexes to private developers under a plan that was speeded up following Katrina, when many hundreds of units were flooded and otherwise damaged.

After Katrina, HANO demolished its Big Four projects — C.J. Peete, St. Bernard, Lafitte and B.W. Cooper, which accounted for about 60 percent of public housing in the city — in order to make way for new housing models. In some cases, by 2015, fewer than half the new units had rents comparable to those in public housing. Some were market-rate, and others were in-between.

As subsidized units declined, the number of housing vouchers for privately owned apartments rose — as did the waiting list for people waiting to get them.

There are 24,207 families on the local waiting list to receive vouchers, according to Andreanecia Morris, executive director of HousingNOLA. She said the problem could get worse under the budget proposed by President Donald Trump.

HANO, she said, would be severely impacted by a proposed 68 percent cut in public housing repair funds, a $300 million cut to the Housing Choice Voucher program and elimination of Community Development Block Grant funding.

And, of course, Ben Carson is here to tell us this is pretty much "Mission Accomplished."

Carson said that "lessons have been learned" about some of the developments built after Katrina, in that "early on, some of the contracts did not involve setting aside enough units as affordable units."

He also said that while "there's a lot of anxieties about budgets," he is working to make HUD "extremely efficient" with the funds now in place and to run things on "business principles" rather than "bureaucratic principles."

One way to do that, he said, is to continue to develop smart public-private partnerships when designing new housing models meant to incorporate low-income tenants.

Just so we're clear on what this means. When we hear municipal candidates talk this fall about affordable housing strategies based on pub-private-partnerships and set-aside requirements from luxury developments, it's worth remembering this is already the official Trump Administration policy.