Why not say what they actually do?

I don't mean to pick too much of nit with this article about Cantrell's City Council endorsements. I will say that I appreciate the headline doesn't blast the phrase "MAYOR LATOYA CANTRELL..." at us for SEO purposes the way almost every bit of news that even tangentially mentions her tends to do. And there's nothing really wrong with the story.  It's just that, I think sometimes when we describe these candidates in one or two sentences it would be helpful if we mentioned the very relevant fact that some of them are realtors and landlords. 

So here we have Freddie King described as " a lawyer, youth mentor and former constituent services director in the district." 

In District C, Cantrell said King -- a lawyer, youth mentor and former constituent services director in the district -- “works in the trenches and understands the issues that matter.”

"Freddie knows constituent services and knows that you have to be responsive to the people you serve," Cantrell said. 

That's three whole things! You can shove a lot of information in between those dashes when you know what you're doing.  So maybe let's find a way to also say that he is a realtor. The notoriously verbose DSA voter guide got it in there. It only took a couple of sentences. 

It’s unclear how King vows to “Fight the Red Tape of City Hall and Review the Permitting Process,” or what that even means. However it is clear in his duties of City Council that he will be one of the arbiters of land use and zoning, and pass regulation on matters around short term rentals. He formerly worked for then-Councilmember Nadine Ramsey as a coordinator of constituent services. Ramsey was notoriously awful when it came to affordable housing, and worked to remove minimum affordability requirements for big developers. That’s a big red flag for renters and housing advocates hoping to advance a rental registry.

King is a lawyer who lives in Algiers with his wife, Casandra. Together they own and operate LeBeouf Street Properties, a Gretna-based real estate company with a handful of properties in Algiers.

Anyway, we just mentioned Monday that King, who says, "I believe in a capatalistic society" is all in on shoving more Airbnbs into the French Quarter.  So this little bit about how he makes his money seems relevant.

There's another one of those in here whose real estate money might be even more relevant.  But it's hard to know that. The article only says he's a "veteran" of the politics wars. 

The first of Cantrell’s endorsements came Monday, when she threw her support behind the 31-year-old Glover, who also claims support from several former primary rivals and other community leaders. Glover, a former St. Roch neighborhood association leader and current nonprofit director, is taking on Eugene Green, a veteran of local politics and government who is twice Glover’s age.

Again, I don't really want to pick on this article, the T-P or any reporters in particular. They actually often do mention that Eugene Green is a real estate broker. They just did it yesterday, in fact.  

The other candidate in that race, real estate broker Eugene Green, said he would allocate city funds to support programs that turn blighted properties into affordable housing.

Green's assertion about wanting to create "affordable housing" demands interrogation, though.  Especially given the nature of his business interests.  Green isn't just a realtor. He's a landlord. Again, one sentence from the DSA guide. 

He is the president and owner of the generic-branded Nationwide Real Estate Corporation, making him a massive property manager throughout the city.

Have the properties Green owns and operates been a safe and healthy answer to the affordable housing crisis in New Orleans?  Might want to ask his tenants about that.

Nobody actually lives here

 Happy Holidays

Erath took over the business from the previous owners after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 with a pledge to keep the shop open. And he kept that promise, keeping the store open for the last 16 years. However, as time progressed, Erath says that less people are walking the French Quarter.

"We're totally dependent on tourists. Over the years, fewer and fewer locals because fewer and fewer residents in the French Quarter," Erath said.

Erath's fondest memories are seeing people reminiscence when they enter the shop for a visit.

"Most gratifying thing is year after year, people coming in with their kids. We have adults in here saying they come with their grandparents," Erath said.

Erath is encouraging people if they would like a Santa's Quarters ornament to do so before Christmas before inventory runs out.   

The other night there was a forum featuring the two candidates competing in the city council runoff for  District C. This district includes Algiers, Bywater, and the French Quarter so naturally the short term rental plague is an issue.

Speaking to a crowded room at the Omni Royal Orleans Hotel on St. Louis Street, the two District C candidates agreed that Mayor LaToya Cantrell's administration has not adequately enforced city laws aimed at curbing the rentals and keeping noise at bearable levels in the district. 

Bridges said she would use the council's power over the city's budget to compel Cantrell to do so. Neighbors also need to bring their complaints to City Hall, she added.

"I can hold public hearings from here to Timbuktu, but unless I have the community behind me, nothing will be changed," she said.

King said he would require the city's code enforcement department to regularly update the council on its operations. He would also allocate money for more code enforcement officers. "Every month, they need to give us an update on what they are doing," he said. 

But the pair disagreed on what changes to existing laws were needed.

"I believe in a capitalistic society, and I think you should have short-term rentals in commercial areas," said King. Specifically, the retail and entertainment strip that faces the Mississippi River in the quarter would be ideal for AirBnB listings, he said. 

Even at this late stage in the process, where the damage done and the need for action are plainly evident, our politicians are capable only of maintaining the status quo or backsliding.  Neither of those answers is acceptable.

The problem now is not, as Bridges asserts, that the law is being poorly enforced. The problem is with the law itself.  We went into greater detail about this at the time the regulations were passed, but to summarize, the types of STR licenses it creates and the way those licenses are tied to zoning, actually allows..  a lot of high density short term rentals in a lot of  places a layperson might assume are "residential neighborhoods."  Also, the real heads will recall that because the City Council decided not to freeze permits for the few months time between the passage of the law and the date it went into effect, the gold rush on irrevocable permits during that time have left us with a large number of STRs that are now grandfathered in.  So any current councilmember or candidate who won't commit now to a new and stricter STR ordinance, is not serious about limiting STRs. 

That, of course, means none of them is serious about it.  Instead we have self-described believers in "a capitalistic society" like King who not only doesn't seem to know the current law already allows STRs in commercial zones but also doesn't seem to know how capitalism works.  Real estate speculators haven't been turning the Seventh Ward and Treme into blocks and blocks of de-facto hotels because they've been barred from the French Quarter. They're doing it because that's where they can get the highest return on their initial investment. That isn't going to stop unless we stop it.  But from the looks of things the next District C councilperson won't be in much of a hurry to do that. 

Update: I typed up this little blurb about District C candidates before I saw that this week's Gambit has a long feature story on the state of STR enforcement.  There are comments from current and future councilmembers as well as some people in the mayor's administration. The article looks at how other cities in the US and around the world are dealing with the problem and hints at the reasons some of those solutions might or might not apply here. Also, there is this. 

Only a few months after the new regulations went into effect, the pandemic struck New Orleans. With travel restricted amid stay-at-home orders, the bottom fell out of the STR industry around the world, making it difficult to fully understand the impact the city’s new regulations have had. Housing groups, like JPNSI, have been focused more on fighting evictions during the pandemic, but they certainly are keeping an eye on the STR issue, particularly as tourism builds back up in New Orleans.

“Through 2020, we saw a decrease in license registrations for new short-term rentals, and that’s been creeping back up through 2021,” says Russell Moran, JPNSI’s program and operations manager. “But I think one of the things that we did see is as cities were in lockdown, folks who operate short-term rentals were actually then renting those apartments to tenants and converting them to long-term tenants.”

But that trend is already reversing as Covid restrictions have eased, Moran says. 

"Sadly, now we’ve started to see in eviction court, landlords evicting tenants so they can return to short-term rentals,” Moran says. “[Landlords] aren’t outright coming to say that — we have tenants who have called us and said specifically that my landlord is putting me through the eviction process for whatever reasons but has made it clear that they’re going back to short-term rentals.”

The first of the month is coming again next week...

Be sure and vote real hard

Supposedly, it matters

Made this a few months ago and never posted but feel like it deserves to see the light of day

Anyways tomorrow is #ElectionDay NOLA. Vote accordingly. pic.twitter.com/q47Aol5lrF

— Monet from Algiers (@jazzcatmama) November 13, 2021

Election malaise

It's been a long hard slog here in post-Ida (and pre-post-COVID.. maybe?... but not really) New Orleans.  October was basically our second "Lost Month" in two years. But worse because I've barely been posting anything. It's not been a great time, okay?  We're just trying to hang on but maybe we are getting somewhere. Halloween was kind of encouraging.. almost normal, even.  You can see here where I tried to render the Superdome on fire (remember that? it was a thing that happened this year!) in the traditional lighted gourd medium. 

 

 

Only moderate success with that, I am afraid. We'll try and do better, though. 

Anyway, if you're anything like me, you're probably still too immersed in the "malaise" to get super psyched up for this weekend's elections.  In which case, it is a good idea to check in with our friends at Antigravity to see if they can pep us up. Let's see... who is running for, oh I dunno.. Assessor? 

Beyond the two name changes, (Anthony "(Low Tax)") Gressett has fairly frequently used the court system to address grievances, including at least two slip-and-fall injuries, multiple altercations with police, an argument with a Southwest flight attendant he alleges threw bagged peanuts at him, and at least three disputes arising from work by contractors or movers at his own home.

According to court records, Gressett hired a Metairie-based painting and renovation company to do work on his home last year. He alleged the company’s workers violated the contract by showing up early, smoking on his property, playing music, using spray paint where the contract called for hand painting, and not properly cleaning up. That included using his “family’s personal residential garbage cans” for disposing of job waste and going into a storage area they weren’t supposed to access, where they took the family’s “private residential broom and dust pan” to clean up. After multiple disagreements with the workers, he alleged they “sprayed graffiti” on his house, applying “unauthorized writings,” and deliberately delayed the job. The situation made it “almost impossible” to have the house ready for Christmas card photos and even caused Gressett concern he wouldn’t be able to raise his tenants’ rent, according to his court filings. The case appears to still be pending in Jefferson Parish court.

In another incident, Gressett and his wife Bam sued a moving company they hired in 2016. When the movers arrived, Gressett alleged in court, they repeatedly claimed services he thought were covered by the contract weren’t, “and these episodes went on from almost beginning to end of the contracted work shift until the defendants finally wrecked the moving truck into the plaintiffs’ home…” The case was ultimately settled, according to court records.

It goes on from there so enjoy that little pick-me-up.  Makes you feel a little bit better about the world for a minute.

Now let's see what our friendly neighborhood comrades at the DSA can do to keep us on that high. 

Take a look around New Orleans in late 2021 and you will find it much worse for all the wear. The pandemic has left our service workers more precarious even as the ownership class of the tourism industry is better funded through public dollars. Housing costs are higher than ever while the real estate interests who fund our politics have even more wealth. There are surveillance cameras everywhere but the traffic signals don’t work. The streets still flood. The intelligentsia speculates about an indefinable sense of “malaise.” If one were to travel the gauntlet of malfunctioning lights along Loyola Avenue from the collapsed Hard Rock site to the collapsing Plaza Tower, one would inevitably pass City Hall along the way. The mayor who goes to work there every day recently said to anyone who might find a reason amid all of this to complain that “maybe New Orleans is not for you.”

But is LaToya Cantrell for New Orleans? There is the question that this election should have addressed. But given the field of challengers, it very likely will not.

Oh man.  Well okay back to bed for now, I guess.