Zoned-Gone

Way back when Stacy Head was blowing kisses at housing activists concerned about the net loss to New Orleans in affordable housing due to the demolition and replacement of the "Big Four" complexes, the consensus was that the "volvo-driving outsiders" were being alarmist. Surely public housing in New Orleans was getting an upgrade, right?

Maybe

Plans to build 410 new units at the old B.W. Cooper complex stand to be drastically curtailed if Congress doesn't act before Sept. 30 to extend the GO Zone tax-credit deadline by another year, officials from the Housing Authority of New Orleans said at their monthly meeting Tuesday.

If the deadline remains in place, the maximum number of new apartments that will be built at Cooper will drop to 250, officials said -- a decrease of nearly 40 percent.

And that's if they can be built by the end of the year -- no sure bet, given that the Cooper redevelopment hasn't had much momentum to date. Due to a series of lost investors, builders have yet to complete a single apartment there.

The same year-end deadline also looms over Lafitte -- the other of the "Big Four" sites where rebuilding has lagged. Lafitte has finished its first phase of 134 apartments, and officials hope to finish 142 more by the end of the year. Another 100 apartments will be included in a larger building for the elderly that doesn't rely upon tax credits.