This Friday, May 17^th, Cripple Creek Theatre Company will premiere Bruce Norris’ play Clybourne Park for the first time in the region at the Shadow Box Theater here in New Orleans. Currently one of the hottest plays on Broadway, Clybourne Park takes place in a house in south Chicago over the span of 50 years. A response to Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in The Sun, the play dissects race relations and exclusionary housing practices from 1959 until 2009. Read More…

Louisiana Home Protection Act headed for Senate floor!

The Louisiana Home Protection Act sailed out of the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday and is now headed for the Senate floor! Please take a moment right now to help prevent needless foreclosures.

If passed, the bill would improve homeownership protection by making information available about free housing counseling or legal services for homeowners facing sheriff’s sale.

Medicaid Expansion Clears House Committee

Safe, decent and affordable housing is important to health outcomes, just as access to better medicine and preventative care are.  Yesterday, Rep. Smith cleared her Medicaid Expansion bill out of the Committee on Health and Welfare.  Click here to read why Medicaid expansion is crucial to promoting housing opportunity.  Then take action to expand coverage for 422,000 Louisianians.

Image: Spring Johnson

In late April, we were shocked and saddened to hear that a GNOFHAC client, Ms. Jones,*  had lost her home and all of her family’s possessions when the apartment that she and her five children had been living in was destroyed in a fire.

GNOFHAC first began working with Ms. Jones when she came to us after being evicted from her home shortly after filing a police report against her landlord for severe sexual harassment.   Ms. Jones’ account of the property owner’s brazen behavior was shocking, and a thorough investigation conducted by our Enforcement Team revealed that she was not the only tenant who had been abused by this landlord.

GNOFHAC staff soon discovered that this property owner had a lengthy history of sexually harassing his tenants:  several women reported that he had attempted to exchange rent for sexual favors, engaged in lewd behaviors in front of them and their young children, and often let himself into their apartments uninvited.  Although this landlord owned over 20 properties, he limited his abuse to his most vulnerable renters:  single women (some with young children to care for) who had fallen behind on rent and would have difficulty securing other housing.  Thanks to Ms. Jones’ bravery, we’ve filed a complaint in federal court on behalf of her and other renters and are working to prevent this property owner from illegally harassing future tenants.

After leaving the home where she was being harassed, Ms. Jones and her five children relocated to a small town in northern Louisiana for a new start.  Unfortunately, last month, a house fire broke out in the apartment that she and her children were living in, rendering the property unlivable.  Thankfully, no one was home at the time of the fire, but the family lost their home and all of their belongings.  The Red Cross generously paid for the family’s brief emergency stay in a local motel, and our office was able to assist Ms. Jones in quickly securing a Section 8 voucher.  The Jones family is currently searching for a new home and is working hard to return to normal.

In the meantime, the family is staying in temporary housing and needs some help getting back on their feet.  If you are able, please join us in supporting Ms. Jones as she and her children work to recover from this disaster. Through your generosity, you can help ensure that Ms. Jones and her family are able to rebuild their lives, replace their belongings, and get back to normal as quickly as possible.  Click here to contribute.

UPDATE – 5/24/13:  Ms. Jones and her children have secured a new home with the Section 8 voucher we helped her to obtain.  The Jones family has been so touched by the outpouring of generous donations and support from our friends from around the state, and would like to say thank you to all those who’ve reached out.

*Name changed for privacy.

On April 17, the Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center opened its office for an afternoon crawfish boil.  We’d like to send a big thank you to all of the neighbors, community leaders, and civil rights advocates who helped make the event a great success!

GNOFHAC hosts a number of free events throughout the year.  To get the latest information on upcoming events, sign up for our e-list and like us on Facebook!

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Access to health insurance is well known to reduce health care costs, but how would Medicaid expansion promote housing choice?  Safe, decent and affordable housing is important to health outcomes, just as access to better medicine and preventative care are.  Medical journals and studies have long documented the connection between housing choice and physical health, perhaps none better than a study entitled “Moving to Opportunity”, published in the New England Journal of Medicine.  The study quantified the correlation between housing choice and health at the neighborhood level by collecting data on over 4,000 families with follow up over a 10 and 15 year time period.  The study found that housing can serve as a platform to improve health outcomes. Read More…

The HUD Inspector General just issued a report saying that 85% of homeowners who received elevation incentive grants through the Road Home Program have failed to elevate their homes. I can’t say I’m surprised by this- the Road Home Program’s failings have been well-documented over the years, and this is just another case of incompetence on the part of the State of Louisiana and its contractors.

The Road Home decided in 2008 that rather than have homeowners elevate their homes and then be reimbursed for elevation work, every applicant who chose to rebuild could get a flat $30,000 for elevation. It did not matter if:

1. The house even needed to be raised

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2. If the cost would far exceed the paltry sum of $30,000, which in most cases it did. Read More…

On April 1, 2013, the Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center (GNOFHAC) announced a series of educational events to occur throughout the month in commemoration of National Fair Housing Month.  Each event is free and open to the public, though registration may be required.  For more details about GNOFHAC’s celebration of Fair Housing Month 2013, please visit www.gnofairhousing.org or call (504)596-2100.

April 2013 events include: Read More…

Last week, the Honorable Judge James Brady, U.S. District Court, Middle District of Louisiana, granted a motion for summary judgment in the caseOxford House, Inc., et al vs. City of Baton Rouge.  In his ruling, Judge Brady found that the City of Baton Rouge violated the Fair Housing Act and American with Disabilities Act by:

• Refusing to grant Oxford House a reasonable accommodation to its Unified Development Code (UDC);
• Engaging in intentional discrimination against Oxford House because of their association with disabled persons;
• Enforcing a facially discriminatory zoning provision in the form of its “Special Homes” ordinance;
• Retaliating against the plaintiffs after they filed a fair housing complaint with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and a fair housing lawsuit in federal court. Read More…

GNOFHAC has been working closely with Cripple Creek Theater Company and local playwrights Geryll Robinson and LaKeesha J. Harris to produce Spirit House, an original multimedia theater project that explores issues of housing opportunity and discrimination through a gendered lens.  Through this project, GNOFHAC seeks to examine the impact of exclusionary housing policy and practices on women and families.  The project also investigates the intersections among gender, race, class, and sexual orientation in the experience of finding housing and defining “home.”

Spirit House debuts on Friday, April 19, and will run from 6-9pm at the Dryades Theater, 1232 Oretha C. Haley Blvd. 

The performance is free and open to the public, but registration is required. Click here to reserve your tickets!  Contact Sophie Rosen at srosen@gnofairhousing.org for more information.

Yesterday the Housing Authority of New Orleans (HANO) adopted a new criminal background policy, which goes a long way to expand housing choice and provide safe, decent and affordable housing to the community it serves.  The criminal background policy is what HANO uses in order to decide how an individual’s criminal background affects their ability to access housing or jobs with HANO.  The “old” policy, deemed as both discriminatory and unfair by advocates, considered arrests and convictions equally, and barred many New Orleanians from employment and housing opportunities with HANO.

Member based organizations like STAND with Dignity have been instrumental in pushing HANO to overhaul the current policy.  For example, STAND members with arrest records from more than a decade ago were repeatedly excluded from housing or employment.
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