We need to start asking how

All of the candidates agree. We need more affordable housing.  They don't seem to agree on how much. 

At forums, campaign events, and in their platforms, the candidates have repeatedly touted the need for more affordable homes. 

Duplessis has said housing is "the defining challenge facing this city." He has made the grandest promise: producing 40,000 additional units — just under the 55,000 housing advocates say is needed — over 10 years.

In an August interview, Duplessis said he would aim to renovate blighted homes and roll out new incentives to encourage private sector development. 

In an email, Thomas committed to build and preserve 10,000 housing units over eight years. That goal is "based on what it would take over the next eight years to stabilize our housing market, close that affordability gap, and give families a real shot at staying in the neighborhoods they love," he wrote.

Moreno has said that the city needs 55,000 additional affordable units, citing affordable housing nonprofit HousingNOLA.

I don't know why they don't all just say 55,000 if that's the number that will make Andreancia Morris happy to hear.  It's just a campaign slogan anyway. There's no way any of them have a real plan to get there.  Certainly not by the usual means of handing out tax credits to developers. Which, let's face it, is the only tool any of these politicians knows how to use. 

But, as we all should have learned by now, that doesn't work. 

In 2023, ERG listed the building for sale. It sat for nearly a year before local developer Bryan Gibbs came up with a plan that called for preserving the nearly two-dozen rent-reduced units in the building.

But Gibbs was unable to secure a key piece of financing for his plan — a $13.4 million loan from the Louisiana Housing Corporation that seeks to create “middle market” or workforce housing, a category for those who earn 80% of the area median income.

In the New Orleans area, that amounts to about $46,000 a year for an individual or $52,500 for a couple.

Though Gibbs’ proposal met the agency’s criteria, there weren’t enough funds from the competitive program to go around.

The building in question there is the Pythian Market, by the way.  Once upon a time it was supposed to be a symbol of how we were private-public partnering our way to "recovery" after Katrina. When really it was, though, was just a tower of tax credit scams. 

Like everything else that happened here during that time. While we should have been helping people recover their lives and building a city that sustains them in the future, we were shoving piles of money into the hands of grifters.  That is the only thing our generation of civic leaders knows how to do. It's inevitable that it will keep happening when they assume their new offices as well.