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STATUS OF THE ‘‘BIG FOUR’’ FOUR YEARS 

AFTER HURRICANE KATRINA 

FIELD HEARING 

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON 

HOUSING AND COMMUNITY OPPORTUNITY 

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON FINANCIAL SERVICES 

U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

AUGUST 21, 2009 

Printed for the use of the Committee on Financial Services 

Serial No. 111–71 

( 

(II) 

HOUSE COMMITTEE ON FINANCIAL SERVICES 

BARNEY FRANK, Massachusetts, Chairman 

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania 

MAXINE WATERS, California 

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York 

LUIS V. GUTIERREZ, Illinois 

NYDIA M. VELA ́ ZQUEZ, New York 

MELVIN L. WATT, North Carolina 

GARY L. ACKERMAN, New York 

BRAD SHERMAN, California 

GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York 

DENNIS MOORE, Kansas 

MICHAEL E. CAPUANO, Massachusetts 

RUBE ́ N HINOJOSA, Texas 

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri 

CAROLYN MCCARTHY, New York 

JOE BACA, California 

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts 

BRAD MILLER, North Carolina 

DAVID SCOTT, Georgia 

AL GREEN, Texas 

EMANUEL CLEAVER, Missouri 

MELISSA L. BEAN, Illinois 

GWEN MOORE, Wisconsin 

PAUL W. HODES, New Hampshire 

KEITH ELLISON, Minnesota 

RON KLEIN, Florida 

CHARLES A. WILSON, Ohio 

ED PERLMUTTER, Colorado 

JOE DONNELLY, Indiana 

BILL FOSTER, Illinois 

ANDRE ́ CARSON, Indiana 

JACKIE SPEIER, California 

TRAVIS CHILDERS, Mississippi 

WALT MINNICK, Idaho 

JOHN ADLER, New Jersey 

MARY JO KILROY, Ohio 

STEVE DRIEHAUS, Ohio 

SUZANNE KOSMAS, Florida 

ALAN GRAYSON, Florida 

JIM HIMES, Connecticut 

GARY PETERS, Michigan 

DAN MAFFEI, New York 

SPENCER BACHUS, Alabama 

MICHAEL N. CASTLE, Delaware 

PETER T. KING, New York 

EDWARD R. ROYCE, California 

FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma 

RON PAUL, Texas 

DONALD A. MANZULLO, Illinois 

WALTER B. JONES, JR., North Carolina 

JUDY BIGGERT, Illinois 

GARY G. MILLER, California 

SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, West Virginia 

JEB HENSARLING, Texas 

SCOTT GARRETT, New Jersey 

J. GRESHAM BARRETT, South Carolina 

JIM GERLACH, Pennsylvania 

RANDY NEUGEBAUER, Texas 

TOM PRICE, Georgia 

PATRICK T. MCHENRY, North Carolina 

JOHN CAMPBELL, California 

ADAM PUTNAM, Florida 

MICHELE BACHMANN, Minnesota 

KENNY MARCHANT, Texas 

THADDEUS G. McCOTTER, Michigan 

KEVIN McCARTHY, California 

BILL POSEY, Florida 

LYNN JENKINS, Kansas 

CHRISTOPHER LEE, New York 

ERIK PAULSEN, Minnesota 

LEONARD LANCE, New Jersey 

JEANNE M. ROSLANOWICK, Staff Director and Chief Counsel 

(III) 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON HOUSING AND COMMUNITY OPPORTUNITY

MAXINE WATERS, California, Chairwoman 

NYDIA M. VELA ́ ZQUEZ, New York 

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts 

EMANUEL CLEAVER, Missouri 

AL GREEN, Texas 

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri 

KEITH ELLISON, Minnesota 

JOE DONNELLY, Indiana 

MICHAEL E. CAPUANO, Massachusetts 

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania 

LUIS V. GUTIERREZ, Illinois 

STEVE DRIEHAUS, Ohio 

MARY JO KILROY, Ohio 

JIM HIMES, Connecticut 

DAN MAFFEI, New York 

SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, West Virginia 

THADDEUS G. McCOTTER, Michigan 

JUDY BIGGERT, Illinois 

GARY G. MILLER, California 

RANDY NEUGEBAUER, Texas 

WALTER B. JONES, JR., North Carolina 

ADAM PUTNAM, Florida 

KENNY MARCHANT, Texas 

LYNN JENKINS, Kansas 

CHRISTOPHER LEE, New York 

(V) 

C O N T E N T S 

Page 

Hearing held on: 

August 21, 2009 ................................................................................................ 1 

Appendix: 

August 21, 2009 ................................................................................................ 73 

WITNESSES 

FRIDAY, AUGUST 21, 2009 

Freeman, Yusef, Project Manager, McCormack Baron Salazar ........................... 55 

Grauley, Jim, President and Chief Operating Officer, Columbia Residential .... 46 

Henriquez, Hon. Sandra Brooks, Assistant Secretary for Public and Indian 

Housing, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development .................... 9 

Johnigan, Donna, Vice President, B.W. Cooper Resident Council ...................... 53 

Johnson, Valerie S., former resident, Lafitte Public Housing Development ...... 51 

Key, Keith B., Chief Executive Officer and President, KBK Enterprises ........... 52 

Marshall, Jocquelyn, President, C.J. Peete Resident Council ............................. 57 

Mingo, Stephanie, former resident, St. Bernard Public Housing Development . 48 

Nagin, Hon. C. Ray, Mayor, City of New Orleans ................................................ 6 

Patterson, Angela, Director, UNITY Welcome Home ........................................... 38 

Perry, James, Executive Director, Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action 

Center .................................................................................................................... 32 

Sinha, Anita, Senior Attorney, The Advancement Project ................................... 30 

Tuggle, Laura, Southeast Louisiana Legal Services ............................................. 34 

Whetten, Michelle, Vice President and Gulf Coast Director, Enterprise Community Partners ................................................................................................... 49 

Wiggins, Cynthia, HANO Resident Advisory Board ............................................. 36 

Woods, Wayne, General Counsel, Housing Authority of the City of New Orleans ......................................................................................................................... 11

APPENDIX 

Prepared statements: 

Freeman, Yusef ................................................................................................. 74 

Henriquez, Hon. Sandra Brooks ...................................................................... 78 

Marshall, Jocquelyn ......................................................................................... 86 

Mingo, Stephanie .............................................................................................. 91 

Nagin, Hon. C. Ray .......................................................................................... 94 

Patterson, Angela ............................................................................................. 99 

Sinha, Anita ...................................................................................................... 105 

Tuggle, Laura .................................................................................................... 122 

Whetten, Michelle ............................................................................................. 147 

Wiggins, Cynthia .............................................................................................. 154 

ADDITIONAL MATERIAL SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD

Waters, Hon. Maxine: 

Written statement of Samuel L. Jackson, Mayday New Orleans ................. 162 

(1) 

STATUS OF THE ‘‘BIG FOUR’’ 

FOUR YEARS AFTER 

HURRICANE KATRINA 

Friday, August 21, 2009 

U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON HOUSING AND

COMMUNITY OPPORTUNITY, 

COMMITTEE ON FINANCIAL SERVICES, 

Washington, D.C. 

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:25 a.m., in the 

Lawless Memorial Chapel, Dillard University, 2601 Gentilly, New 

Orleans, Louisiana, Hon. Maxine Waters [chairwoman of the subcommittee] presiding. 

Present: Representatives Waters, Cleaver, and Cao. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. 

Today is our second day at Dillard University’s beautiful Lawless 

Chapel. Again, I would like to extend my thanks and appreciation 

to President Hughes for allowing us to use this space for a second 

day. 

And with that, I would like to ask President Hughes if she would 

come forward and share with us her thoughts about our visit here 

and the University, or anything else she would like to talk about. 

Ms. HUGHES. Good morning. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Good morning. 

Ms. HUGHES. I am so pleased for this second day and I base that 

on the fact that yesterday was so substantive. I listened to so many 

people who were pleased with the information and who learned as 

much as I did, because I did not understand all of the complexities 

involved in the topic. So we have the privilege of having a second 

day so that we can listen to another topic. 

Let me just say thank you, the Honorable Chairwoman Waters, 

for coming to Dillard University now for 4 days, and presenting 

issues that are so critical and so important to the entire community. I also want to thank the Honorable Emanuel Cleaver, who remained here and who yesterday was very insightful as well. Now 

I know why your son, the alumni from Dillard, was so successful. 

You did a good job. 

Mr. CLEAVER. Thank you. 

Ms. HUGHES. To the Honorable Joseph Cao, you have become an 

ally to Dillard University and that is very, very important to us as 

well. 

I want to thank the entire community for coming to Dillard University, because Dillard enjoys opening its doors for the community 

2 

as well. We are now in a position to do that because we are almost 

finished with the total restoration of this university. Every single 

building has almost been restored and certainly you can tell that 

this one is now up to par. And so I invite the community to use 

this space as they need to for these kinds of activities and other 

appropriate activities. 

I want to welcome other politicians who are here as well and I 

would like to have them stand so they can be recognized. Would 

all of our elected officials stand to be recognized, please? 

[members of the audience rise] 

Chairwoman WATERS. I do not know if everyone heard the President welcoming all of the elected officials. She asked that you all 

stand, please stand. 

Thank you very much. 

Ms. HUGHES. Thank you. Have a good session. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you very much, President Hughes. 

We are so appreciative for your generosity and we are delighted to 

be back at Dillard and let me just say you have done a wonderful 

job. This building is beautiful and we feel very, very fortunate to 

be able to be here. And even though we do not solicit applause in 

these hearings, I would like to ask the audience to please applaud 

President Hughes for the wonderful job that she is doing here at 

Dillard. 

Thank you so very much. 

[applause] 

Chairwoman WATERS. Ladies and gentlemen, today is our second 

hearing in Dillard University’s beautiful Lawless Chapel. We are 

here today to talk about the status of the ‘‘Big Four’’ 4 years after 

Hurricane Katrina. 

Now, I would like to give a special thanks to my colleague Representative Emanuel Cleaver for joining me again today. And I 

must share with you that we are on break from the House of Representatives for the month of August. Many of our members are 

traveling all over the world. They are in Afghanistan, they are in 

Africa, they are just all over the world. But some of our members 

decided that even if they took a few days to do international work, 

that they were going to spend time on the domestic agenda. So in 

addition to the work that Congressman Cleaver is doing in his own 

home district, he thought it was important enough to take time out 

to be here in New Orleans to follow up on the work that we have 

been doing on the subcommittee that I chair, the Subcommittee on 

Housing and Community Opportunity, on which he serves. And so 

I would like to thank him again for his commitment, and thank 

him for closing out yesterday’s hearing, and of course for the attention that he has paid to this issue, Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans and the rest of the Gulf Coast. I know when we return to 

Washington, he is going to want to tell Congressman Green and all 

of the other members of the subcommittee about what took place 

here. 

Now remember, Congressman Green was with us yesterday, but 

he had to get back to Houston, Texas. He could not be here today, 

but he is very much involved in this oversight and follow-through 

that we are doing. 

3 

I am also pleased that we are joined by Representative Cao, who 

represents this district. And without objection, Mr. Cao will be considered a member of the subcommittee for the duration of this 

hearing. I would like to thank him for his quick response to our 

request to be a part of this hearing and I would like to thank him 

for saying to us that not only would he be present, but he too is 

interested in the subject of the two day hearing; first of all, that 

which we talked about yesterday, the Road Home Program, and of 

course, that which we will be talking about today, the ‘‘Big Four.’’ 

So thank you, Representative Cao. 

Further, I believe that there are several members of the Louisiana State Legislature, some who stood a moment ago when 

President Hughes asked elected officials to stand. And I thank you 

for being in attendance today. 

Again, today’s hearing will focus on the status of the ‘‘Big Four’’ 

4 years after Hurricane Katrina. Yesterday, we focused on the 

Road Home Program and I believe that yesterday’s hearing generated the possibility of some real solutions that Mr. Cleaver, Mr. 

Green, and I can work on when we return to Washington. And I 

am hoping for a similar result for today’s hearing. 

Commonly referred to as the ‘‘Big Four’’—B.W. Cooper, C.J. 

Peete, Lafitte and St. Bernard—were the largest public housing developments in New Orleans with over 4,500 units. While some of 

these units sustained severe damage as a result of Hurricane 

Katrina, most emerged from the storm with minimal damage, that 

we think could have been repaired. Unfortunately, the decision was 

made to demolish all of these units. Let me be clear, I have always 

opposed the demolition of public housing and the ‘‘Big Four’’ was 

no exception. Nationally, we have lost over 200,000 units to demolition. This is why Chairman Barney Frank and I are asking for a 

one-year moratorium on all demolition of public housing nationwide. 

I believe that the demolitions here in New Orleans were especially problematic for several reasons. 

First, many former residents of those developments were dispersed around the country and were flat out excluded from the decision-making process. HUD did not know where most of these people were and claimed they did not want to return. I knew that this 

was not true, because I traveled to cities such as Houston and met 

with displaced public housing residents. They all told me the same 

thing: They wanted to come back to their homes. 

Second, following Katrina, the number of homeless people in the 

City doubled from 6,000 to 12,000. At the same time, rents rose 

sharply. In fact, today, rents are over 50 percent higher than they 

were before the storm. In light of this crisis in affordable housing, 

tearing down a major source of housing for low-income families just 

did not make good sense to me. 

Third, the redevelopment plan that had been submitted by 

HANO and HUD are troubling. Essentially, HUD was going to demolish 4,500 units of public housing and build back 600, about an 

85 percent reduction in the number of units. Yes, these units would 

be part of mixed-income developments, but tax credit units and 

market rate units are unaffordable to extremely-low-income families who predominantly live in public housing. It seemed that the 

4 

strategy was to only allow a limited number of families to return 

and then to send the others to the suburbs with vouchers in a city 

which had lost a significant amount of its rental housing. 

That is why I opposed the demolitions. Now as we all know, the 

demolitions have taken place. Construction is currently underway 

and I am concerned about what is being built back. These developments simply do not have enough public housing units. I am also 

concerned about some of the occupancy policies that the private developers of these properties are implementing. These policies, such 

as work requirements for all adult household members, serve to 

further limit the ability of residents to move to the new developments. 

Lastly, I am concerned that some developments might not get 

built at all. Problems in the tax credit market are affecting the redevelopment of affordable housing nationwide. It seems that B.W. 

Cooper and Lafitte in particular are challenged as a result of tax 

credit issues. I am very much interested to hear the impact of these 

challenges on the development of these properties. 

I look forward to hearing the witnesses’ views on this very important program. And now I would like to recognize Mr. Cleaver for 

his opening statement. 

Mr. CLEAVER. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. 

Let me again thank you for the vision that you have to try to 

make right one of the tragedies of our lifetime. This of course was 

devastating to the people of New Orleans, but in addition to that, 

this may represent one of our most embarrassing moments for the 

Federal Government in its modern history, the fact that we have 

been unable to rebuild one of our own communities. 

I took great pride in being a part of the vote to send $14 billion 

to this community. I was troubled to learn that one company 

walked away with almost $1 billion of the $14 billion, and that 

should trouble every taxpayer in this country. 

The truth of the matter is we have the opportunity to still get 

this thing right and hopefully we will secure from the panelists 

today additional information that can be used when we go to Washington to try to restructure the way in which the Federal Government is doing business here in New Orleans. 

Yesterday, and I do not know if she is still here, a woman spoke 

with me for about 5 minutes and it haunted me all night last night. 

She told me, while we were standing out in the hallway, that her 

mother had to leave during Katrina and when she heard about the 

Road Home, the mother became excited, wanting to finally make 

it home. But because the road home was filled with obstacles, she 

made it home, but she was in a casket. She began to weep out in 

the hallway yesterday over the fact that the only thing her 80- 

something-year-old mother wanted while she remained on this 

planet was to come home, to come to New Orleans. That is all she 

wanted, nothing extravagant. She just wanted to come home and 

she came home in a casket. 

There are probably people all around the country who tried to 

come home. Many of them have been hijacked on the road home 

and I think that it is the responsibility of all of us to do whatever 

we can do to change things. We are hoping to make some adjustments, Mr. Mayor, in the legislation so that HUD will have an 

5 

easier time doing what they need to do. And hopefully we can say 

we are moving into a new day and that one day Chairwoman 

Waters will bring us back to say that the road home indeed 

worked, that people did come home. 

But let me just finally say this, and this is a little problematic 

for me to even say, but some of the testimony we have heard and 

some of the things that were told us in our listening session yesterday morning, there have been some bad people doing some bad 

stuff. And I think we have a responsibility to try to correct it, because right now, the road home is a road not taken. 

Thank you very much, Madam Chairwoman. I yield back the balance of my time. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you. I now recognize Representative Cao for his opening statement. 

Mr. CAO. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. I would like to thank 

my distinguished colleagues— 

Chairwoman WATERS. Would you speak up so they can hear you 

way in the back? 

Mr. CAO. Thank you very much. 

First of all, I would like to thank you, Madam Chairwoman, for 

taking a leadership role in the Congress in regards to the housing 

issue here in New Orleans. I would like to thank Congressman 

Cleaver for spending his recess here in our great City. And I would 

like to thank Dr. Hughes for her generosity and for the friendship 

that we have been able to establish in the last several months in 

working together in order to bring this City back and to push the 

whole recovery process forward. 

For the last 8 months, we have worked very hard with the State 

leadership as well as City leadership to address the housing issues 

of our people here in the great City of New Orleans. I understand 

some of the positions that they took, obviously in facing an issue 

that was unprecedented. Many of the leadership of the City wanted 

to rebuild in a way that can provide the people with the best possible environment in order for the people of this great City to live 

and to raise their children. Obviously, there are issues in any recovery process and in any decisions that members of leadership 

have to make. 

And I applaud your leadership in trying to look at some of these 

problems and trying to look at some of these issues and I hope that 

we, as members of Congress, can work together in order to address 

the housing needs of this City and hopefully through our concerted 

effort, we can push forward this whole recovery process in this region. 

Thank you very much. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you very much, Congressman. 

I am now going to call on our first panel: The Honorable C. Ray 

Nagin, Mayor of the City of Los Angeles; the Honorable Sandra 

Brooks Henriquez— 

Mayor NAGIN. You just gave me a new job. 

Chairwoman WATERS. What did I say? 

[laughter] 

Mayor NAGIN. Please do not do that. 

Chairwoman WATERS. It means that I am thinking about home. 

6 

The Honorable C. Ray Nagin, Mayor, City of New Orleans; the 

Honorable Sandra Brooks Henriquez, Assistant Secretary for Public and Indian Housing, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban 

Development; and Mr. Wayne Woods, General Counsel, Housing 

Authority of the City of New Orleans. 

With that, let us start with the Honorable C. Ray Nagin, the 

Mayor, who has been through every step, every inch, every problem, every success, all that has to do with Katrina and everything 

that has happened since. Thank you for being here today, Mayor 

Nagin. We welcome your testimony. 

STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE C. RAY NAGIN, MAYOR, CITY 

OF NEW ORLEANS 

Mayor NAGIN. Well, thank you to the Honorable Chairwoman 

Maxine Waters, to the members of the subcommittee, to Congressman Cleaver, and Congressman Cao. I want to thank you for this 

opportunity to address you today, and for your persistence in making sure that the struggles and the challenges that New Orleans 

faces stay on the national stage, if you will, and it does not go 

away. 

Congresswoman Waters, you have been here from the beginning, 

you have seen all of our challenges and struggles and you have 

been working tirelessly, and we in New Orleans, all of our citizens 

thank you so much for everything that you have done. 

I want to go really quick and touch on a couple of key areas, as 

you asked me to. First, let me tell you a little bit about where New 

Orleans is in its progress in the recovery and then I will talk to 

you a little bit about the ‘‘Big Four.’’ 

Madam Chairwoman and members of the subcommittee, the City 

of New Orleans has gone through a lot. We are facing our—coming 

up on the fourth year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina this August 29th. Our recovery strategy is working, but I must be very 

blunt with you and let you know that the dollars that you approved 

many years ago are just starting to flow to the City of New Orleans. 

When you talk about the $14 billion that was allocated, a lot of 

that went to the Road Home Program, most of it went to hurricane 

protection, but out of that $14 billion, only about $411 million was 

allocated to the City of New Orleans for disaster recovery—that is 

it. And we had a $14 billion need. 

But in spite of all that, we have been able to move, press ahead, 

and make progress. Our population sits at about 80 percent of our 

pre-Katrina numbers and our citizens continue to come home. As 

a matter of fact, it was recently announced that New Orleans was 

the fastest growing city in America for cities above 100,000 people. 

So we continue to be amazed at the resiliency and the dedication 

and the determination of our citizens. 

We are directly managing about $1.2 billion in recovery projects 

and most of that is FEMA related repairs that the City is managing directly. About $640 million of that is street repairs. 

My staff informed me that there was some talk yesterday about 

us sitting on $200 million. Let me see if I can clear that up. I do 

not know which $200 million they are talking about, but I will let 

you know what we are dealing with. The State, in its wisdom, our 

7 

State legislators, we knew we had shortfalls, significant shortfalls 

in FEMA funding, so they set up for us a $200 million revolving 

fund that was designed to be gap financing until FEMA caught up 

with what it really cost for us to do repairs. We have that fund, 

we have been using it, and right now it is at about 70 to 75 percent 

of those dollars are appropriated, and as a matter of fact, if FEMA 

continues to stay where they are today, we will run out of that pot 

of money by November. 

I do not know if they were talking about the $411 million that 

we got from the disaster CDBG money. But 93 percent of the 

projects that we have sent up to the State have been approved or 

are either in the final approval stages and most of those projects 

are moving forward. 

So I am not sure. If there is some money sitting around, it is not 

sitting around at the City level. 

We have made progress with bringing back our performing arts, 

the Mahalia Jackson Theatre for Performing Arts has been brought 

back on line. We recently announced a big deal with Nickelodeon. 

They are coming to New Orleans with a company called Southern 

Star to revitalize the Six Flags site that has been shuttered since 

Hurricane Katrina. We have had successful Sugar Bowls, Super 

Bowls, Essence, Mardi Gras—you name it, our economy continues 

to improve. 

Our unemployment rate is among the lowest in the country, if 

you can believe that. New Orleans has been also named as the fifth 

best city in America to get a job. Business Week has voted us as 

one of the best cities to ride out the national recession. 

But we still have our challenges, so I am not going to totally say 

that everything is peachy keen. We have many, many challenges 

in our City as it relates to crime fighting, as it relates to postKatrina stress that is still in our community that is manifesting 

itself in suicides, attempted suicides in a number of cases that our 

police officers deal with. 

Let me turn my attention to the ‘‘Big Four.’’ You know, we had 

many tough decisions to make after Hurricane Katrina. Most of 

those public housing developments were in a state of disrepair before Katrina and then we had some flooding that occurred, and we 

had some delays in repairs. So the decision was made to move forward to try and create a better model. But we put some conditions 

before we would allow HUD to move forward with the demolitions 

and the major redevelopment of those units. 

First, we said we would like to see a mixed-income model that 

basically would not concentrate any demographic or any income 

level in any one particular area of the City, but we wanted to make 

sure that all public housing residents were properly taken care of. 

Before we would allow them to move forward, we wanted 

verification of full funding of the tenant protection program, which 

we got. 

We wanted evidence that the 4,500 units would either be rebuilt 

or there would be Section 8 vouchers or vouchers associated with 

those tenants so that every tenant would be taken care of. 

We wanted documentation of their redevelopment financing plan, 

which we were able to get. 

8 

And we wanted executed development contracts to make sure 

that they were ready to move forward and we got those. 

And then finally, we also made it a requirement that we wanted 

to see a memorandum of understanding with the resident councils 

to make sure that the residents had some input in these developments and we were able to obtain that. 

Now what is our long-term vision for the ‘‘Big Four’’ and for all 

public housing? We want to make sure that every resident who was 

here before Katrina has affordable housing that is better than what 

they had pre-Katrina. We want to make sure that HANO would 

have, as it moves forward, low vacancy rates, that they would 

maintain up-to-date waiting lists, that they would have timely response for maintenance. We want to make sure that all of the renovations and reconstruction were completed on a timely basis and 

we wanted a reasonable budget sufficient in the future for appropriate maintenance. And finally, we wanted to make sure that this 

development or this housing authority was returned to local control 

so that the citizens could have more input on what goes on in the 

future. 

Let me close by talking to you a little bit about the affordable 

housing situation in New Orleans as it exists today. Hurricane 

Katrina damaged or destroyed more than 57,000 rental units in the 

City of New Orleans, 75 percent of those were affordable to citizens 

earning 80 percent of the area median income. Shortly after the 

storm, the Federal Government increased the amount it would pay 

for vouchers. This had the effect of pushing rents up in the community when supply was down. We saw a 46 percent increase in rents 

from the year 2005 to the year 2008. In addition to that, we also 

see in the City of New Orleans a percentage of renters who spend 

more than 30 percent of their income on housing costs, increased 

more than 30 percent, from 48 percent to 54 percent. 

We have focused on making sure that more affordable units come 

into the marketplace, we have invested over $26 million to leverage 

1,700 affordable units that are either on line or coming on line. 

And if everything continues with the current trend, by 2011, 2012, 

we should have 36,000 affordable units back in the City of New Orleans. That will take us, you know, pretty close to what we had 

pre-Katrina, which is a little ahead of the population trends that 

we are seeing today. 

Another big need that we see in the community—and you talked 

about this yesterday—is there are many citizens in our community 

who did not receive enough from the Road Home Program or the 

insurance companies, so there are gaps that they need filled. We 

put together a program where we have put out in the community 

forgivable gap loans of $35,000 to help primarily senior citizens 

and disabled people, to see if they could fill those gaps. 

Our goal in this renewal of New Orleans is to hopefully get to 

an environment where New Orleans can have a homeownership 

rate that is closer to the national average. So we are putting as 

many resources as we can, Madam Chairwoman, into helping those 

homeowners to complete their repairs. Also to have a very aggressive soft second program that allows young people to become homeowners or anyone in the community to become homeowners. It is 

9 

a $65,000 program where you can have a soft second to help you 

become a homeowner. 

Madam Chairwoman, I want to thank you for coming to New Orleans once again. The ‘‘Big Four’’ are a big part of our history and 

the fabric of our community and from what we gather from HUD 

and HANO is that those projects are moving forward. We have one 

development that has some financing issues, but the others seem 

to be moving forward and we want to keep this momentum going 

and hopefully we will have better housing for all of our citizens. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mayor Nagin can be found on page 

94 of the appendix.] 

Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor. 

Now, we will hear from the Honorable Sandra Brooks Henriquez, 

Assistant Secretary for Public and Indian Housing, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. 

STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE SANDRA BROOKS 

HENRIQUEZ, ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOR PUBLIC AND INDIAN HOUSING, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HOUSING AND URBAN 

DEVELOPMENT 

Ms. HENRIQUEZ. Thank you and good morning. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Could you speak directly into the microphone so that they can hear you in the back? 

Ms. HENRIQUEZ. I hope this is better. 

Chairwoman WATERS. That is better. 

Ms. HENRIQUEZ. Thank you. Thank you and good morning, 

Chairwoman Waters, Mr. Cleaver, Mr. Cao. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Straight into it. 

Ms. HENRIQUEZ. I am honored to be with you today and to be 

here on behalf of the Department of Housing and Urban Development. 

I want to discuss the progress we have made over the last 6 

months and share HUD’s vision for creating sustainable, inclusive, 

and prosperous communities to provide affordable housing choices 

for New Orleans’ low-income residents and offer greater economic 

and educational opportunities and to help New Orleans move from 

recovery to revitalization. 

Prior to Katrina, the Housing Authority of New Orleans, which 

has been under HUD receivership administrative control since 

2002, was already transforming conventional public housing to 

mixed-income developments. At the time Katrina struck, there 

were 7,379 public housing units, of which 5,146 were occupied. 

Since the hurricane, HUD and HANO have committed to provide 

housing for all public housing residents and Housing Choice Voucher holders wanting to return to New Orleans, and we have prepared a redevelopment plan for the ‘‘Big Four’’ to facilitate that return. 

The redeveloped ‘‘Big Four’’ will encompass over 4,000 mixed-income units and the initial phases will result in 2,170 new units, 

including public housing, affordable rental, affordable homeownership, and market rate rental units. 

These initial phases use tax credit equity, CDBG funds, bonds, 

HOPE VI, HANO capital, and other funds. And HUD also obtained 

10 

additional funding from FEMA and HANO contributed more money 

through the Section 901 extension and worked diligently to leverage resources through the Louisiana Housing Tax Credit Program 

and the Louisiana Recovery Plan’s Piggyback Program, to maximize the number of affordable housing units developed. 

Phase I construction is now underway at both St. Bernard and 

C.J. Peete and by December 2010, Phase I construction will be 

complete, along with the homeownership units, for a total of 948 

new units. 1,326 units at St. Bernard will be complete in 2012 and 

510 units at C.J. Peete will be complete by the end of 2011. 

Both Lafitte and B.W. Cooper have experienced delays, primarily 

because of the equity market downturn last fall. Construction on 

the first sub-phase of Lafitte, or 134 units, will begin immediately 

following next week’s closing. Phase I infrastructure work began at 

B.W. Cooper in January 2009 and is projected to close later this 

year, producing 410 units. At all ‘‘Big Four’’ sites, former public 

housing residents of both complexes will receive first preference for 

the public housing units there. 

Due to the delays that have affected Lafitte and Cooper, the 

placed in service date of December 31, 2010, poses a significant 

challenge. The Administration supports a legislative change to extend the placed in service deadline to December 31, 2012, and find 

an appropriate budget offset. We will work with Congress to ensure 

that these projects can be completed as planned. 

Beyond the ‘‘Big Four,’’ HANO, in partnership with HUD and the 

State of Louisiana, will produce more than 7,600 hard housing 

units with 6,320 of those units serving 1,174 more low-income families at the end of the redevelopment process than were served 

prior to Katrina. 

Chairman Waters, I want to make clear HUD’s commitment to 

creating affordable housing opportunities for low-income families. 

HUD is equally committed to ensuring that these initiatives, and 

all Federal housing programs, are administered in a way that affirmatively furthers fair housing and equal housing opportunity in 

New Orleans and across this Nation. 

Within days of the President’s inauguration, the Administration, 

along with HUD, acted quickly to ensure that families receiving assistance under the Disaster Housing Assistance Program, or 

DHAP, would be given additional time to transition to permanent 

housing solutions before DHAP came to an end. 

So with our Administration partners, we announced the Transitional Closeout Plan for DHAP families. This program provided 

rental assistance and additional time to transition families off temporary housing and into permanent housing. Altogether, nearly 350 

public housing agencies across the country assisted in serving more 

than 31,000 displaced families. 

As part of this effort, public housing agencies have issued more 

than 11,000 vouchers under an $80 million special appropriation 

from Congress, of which 4,200 have been issued by HANO to 

DHAP families here in New Orleans. HUD and FEMA have also 

agreed to provide 2 months of additional transitional rental assistance to families in the HCV pipeline. This assistance ends October 

31, 2009. 

11 

By the end of December 2009, we expect that this number of 

vouchers should go from just under 9,000 pre-Katrina to about 

15,000, including 4,400 vouchers to replace units demolished as 

part of the ‘‘Big Four’’ redevelopment. In summary, there are now 

significantly more assisted housing opportunities for low-income 

families in New Orleans than existed pre-Katrina. 

I want to be clear, public housing transformation is still a top 

priority for HUD. But housing surrounded by disinvestment and 

failing schools has virtually no chance of success. 

Choice Neighborhoods, which more than doubled this year’s fund- ing under HOPE VI to $250 million, will expand upon the legacy 

HOPE VI built by leaders like you, Congresswoman Waters, by 

broadening the range of activities eligible for funding and fostering 

better coordination between housing, schools, and other supportive 

services. 

In addition, we are investing $150 million in our Sustainable 

Communities Initiative that will bring together transportation and 

housing planning at the local level to reduce costs and increase opportunities for working families who spend nearly 60 percent of 

their budget on housing and transportation. 

We are incredibly excited to start this work and New Orleans 

would certainly benefit from such a program. 

I hope it is clear to every single person in this room today that 

HUD is committed to working with you to make this community 

whole again—to changing the game on the ground by cutting 

through bureaucratic red tape and by making a strong, inclusive 

community the foundation of our revitalization efforts. 

Thank you for this opportunity to speak with you today. I look 

forward to your questions. 

[The prepared statement of Assistant Secretary Henriquez can be 

found on page 78 of the appendix.] 

Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you very much. 

Mr. Wayne Woods, General Counsel, Housing Authority of the 

City of New Orleans. 

STATEMENT OF WAYNE WOODS, GENERAL COUNSEL, 

HOUSING AUTHORITY OF THE CITY OF NEW ORLEANS 

Mr. WOODS. Good morning. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Good morning. 

Mr. WOODS. Honorable Chairwoman Maxine Waters, Congressman Cleaver, and Congressman Cao, again, my name is Wayne 

Woods and I am general counsel and chief operating officer for 

communication and intergovernmental affairs for the Housing Authority of New Orleans. Thank you for allowing HANO to appear 

before you today. 

As you no doubt know, HANO’s work is critical to the recovery 

of the City of New Orleans. Because we help the less fortunate 

residents of our City with affordable housing, we probably have 

more direct contact with people on a daily basis than any other 

public agency in the City of New Orleans. What we have learned 

is simple. We have made progress since Katrina, but we recognize 

much work remains to be done. 

Before Katrina, HANO had 5,146 occupied public housing units. 

We currently have 2,254 affordable housing units occupied. A large 

12 

part of our strategy, however, in serving the residents of our City 

is by the redevelopment of B.W. Cooper, C.J. Peete, Lafitte, and St. 

Bernard, the ‘‘Big Four.’’ Allow me to give you a brief synopsis of 

those developments to date. 

At B.W. Cooper, there were 1,550 units, of which 963 were occupied before the storm. KBK Enterprises and its development partner, the B.W. Cooper Resident Management Corporation, are redeveloping the site. Phase I demolition work has been completed, 

public infrastructure work is about 40 percent finished, and construction will begin as soon as the financial closing takes place. 

Cooper will cost about $225 million with Phase I at $138 million. 

Phase I will include 410 units. The first units are expected to be 

available in spring 2010 with Phase I completed by April 2011. 

Once the entire Cooper site is completed, there will be 740 units. 

At C.J. Peete, we originally had 1,403 units. When Katrina 

struck, only 144 units were occupied at the time. Central City Partners LLC, comprised of McCormack Baron Salazar, KAI Design 

and Build and the New Orleans Neighborhood Development Collaborative, is developing this site. Peete, which is now called Harmony Oaks, will cost about $183 million to develop. Peete will have 

460 units when completed in December 2010 and the first units are 

slated for occupancy before the end of this year. 

At Lafitte, we had 896 units, with 865 occupied just before 

Katrina. The developer, Providence Enterprises Orleans LLC, will 

offer affordable and market rate housing at a cost of $400 million. 

The community is being developed in phases. The first sub-phase 

will see 134 on-site affordable rental units by December 2010 and 

47 on-site affordable homeownership units by March of 2011. Work 

has already been completed on 10 off-site homeownership units. 

The cost of the entire Phase I of the development, which will include 812 units, is $246 million. 

At St. Bernard, we had 1,464 units before the storm with 963 occupied. Columbia Residential is developing that site. It is expected 

to cost $190 million for on-site development. Phase I alone will cost 

$138 million and will see 466 units. Of these units, 83 are expected 

to be completed by the end of this year with the rest of Phase I 

by December 2010. 

HANO’s role in the redevelopment of the ‘‘Big Four’’ is very important. The success of each of the developments hinges upon our 

effectively exercising our role. HANO has the responsibility for 

planning, coordinating, and implementing the redevelopment of the 

site. In fact, HANO is a developer partner on each of the development scenes. HANO has worked with HUD and the State to identify capital funding that could be leveraged to provide total funds 

necessary for each project and HANO itself has committed more 

than $100 million of its own funding to the development. 

Because of the unprecedented amount of dollars that are being 

expended by HANO, we have an excellent opportunity to financially impact the lives of our citizens and our residents who were 

part of our communities before the storm. As such, HANO is committed to providing employment opportunities for its residents and 

resident-owned businesses. Each developer is required to provide a 

Section 3 plan for each project and submit monthly reports detailing the status of Section 3 employment and outreach efforts. HANO 

13 

has also assigned project managers to each site to monitor compliance. 

In order to re-occupy the units, HANO has adhered to HUD’s 

PIH Notice 2007–3. Among other things, the requirements give 

families living at the site at the time of Katrina the first preference 

to return. Additional site-specific re-occupancy criteria were developed with residents, HANO, investors, and the lenders. Selection 

and occupancy criterias were discussed with residents in open 

meetings and with investors and lenders during the financing negotiations. 

Now on the selection of the ‘‘Big Four’’ developments, our developments can only be a success if we have strong development partners. To select the developers for Cooper, Peete, and St. Bernard, 

HANO issued a request for qualifications in October of 2006. Proposals were received in January of 2007 and then HANO conducted 

a ranking. The HANO Board voted in March of 2007 to begin negotiations with the highest ranked respondents. 

HANO received an unsolicited proposal from Providence Enterprises to redevelop Lafitte in conjunction with Providence’s other 

planned projects in the surrounding neighborhood. HANO requested HUD approval of a non-competitive procurement and on 

August 2006, HUD granted such approval. 

In closing, Congresswoman and the other Members on the dais, 

these are challenging times for our City and for our residents. 

HANO’s leaders realize and understand that. As affordable housing 

advocates, we understand the intricacies in providing effective 

housing options to our low-income residents. Particularly for the 

last 4 years, we have been on the front line in providing service for 

the most vulnerable of our citizens. We are proud of our work and 

are passionate about what we do. But we recognize again that 

more still needs to be done. We are committed to the members of 

our community and look forward to continuing our advocacy with 

them in the future. 

On behalf of the leadership of HANO, I thank you for your time. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you very much. I will recognize myself for 5 minutes to begin the questioning of this panel. Let me 

thank the panel for coming. 

Mr. Mayor, I was particularly drawn to the program that you identified, the $35,000 gap program for forgivable loans. 

Mayor NAGIN. Yes. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Could you tell us a little bit more about 

that? How does it work? 

Mayor NAGIN. Congresswoman, what we did is we started to get 

some feedback from citizens and from people in the community 

that the Road Home Program was just insufficient. We were hearing there were gaps of anywhere from $30,000 to $50,000 per 

household. We were getting this from people who were working in 

the community with a lot of volunteer help trying to get a lot more 

of our citizens in their houses. 

To make a long story short, we took $10 million of CDBG money 

and we set up this program. We put together a lottery process, we 

advertised it to our citizens and we were, to be quite frank, blown 

away by the response. With the $10 million, we could only help 

about 300 families. The response—on the day of the lottery, there 

14 

were 6,000 people who had signed up and this was just for senior 

citizens and people who had disabilities. That told us that we needed to expand this program. So we now have another $10 million 

that we are getting ready to put out on the street for that same 

group and we have another allotment of disaster CDBG dollars 

that we will open it up to working families, not necessarily senior 

citizens or people with disabilities, the same program. And we 

should go out pretty soon with that. 

Chairwoman WATERS. That is very good to know because that 

was the center of the discussion yesterday about the gap, that the 

assessments that had been done for repairs, the amount of repairs 

exceeded sometimes the value of the house, the way the houses 

were valued, etc. 

Mayor NAGIN. Yes. 

Chairwoman WATERS. So there needs to be some discussion 

about what you are doing and what we are advocating perhaps 

could be done further to assist these homeowners who find themselves in a situation where they got much less than they expected 

from the Road Home Program and many of them are left with incomplete repairs and still needing to find ways by which to complete their homes. So we will talk about that a little bit later. 

Mayor NAGIN. Yes. 

Chairwoman WATERS. About the ‘‘Big Four,’’ I recognize, as was 

said yesterday by our representative here from HUD that public 

housing residents deserve good secure living situations and housing. We all agree with that. And of course, some of the reasons for 

demolition had to do with updating housing, making sure that the 

living conditions were quality living conditions with expanded 

kitchen and bathroom opportunities—we recognize all of that, and 

I think we all agree to that. 

But what we are still concerned about is the fact that public 

housing residents were evacuated from this City and placed in or 

led to other cities, whether it was Houston or Austin, Texas; Atlanta; other places. And many of them who wanted to return, of 

course, could not return by virtue of the fact that they had lived 

in public housing and the public housing decisions were not made 

very early on. They did not know what was going to happen to 

them and they were not told that they were going to be demolished. 

Lafitte, for example, I think everybody agreed only had damage 

up to the first floor or first two floors at the most. 

Mayor NAGIN. Right. 

Chairwoman WATERS. And many of the residents felt that it certainly could have been rehabbed and since Lafitte was talking 

about phased redevelopment, they could have brought the people 

back and then in phased redevelopment, the people would have 

been in their homes, the new development could have started, then 

they could have taken over or been moved into new developments 

and we had hoped to have one-for-one replacement, and that did 

not take place. 

Mayor NAGIN. Right. 

Chairwoman WATERS. So many of them are still wanting to come 

back. Some have gotten settled and they just do not think there are 

going to be any real possibilities because the number of units that 

will be replaced on the footprint will be decidedly smaller than 

15 

what they were prior to their leaving. And there is all this talk 

about scattered housing and other opportunities. 

Mr. Mayor, what do you think is going to happen for those people 

who still want to come back and who may have lived in one of 

these developments and have not been contacted, have not been 

told what is going to happen to them? What can they expect and 

what do you think should happen? 

Mayor NAGIN. Well, you know, Madam Chairwoman, you know, 

I think about this whole odyssey, I do not know what to describe 

it as, you know, now. Right after Katrina, if you had been President of the United States, we probably could have gotten a better 

result and we probably would not have demolished Lafitte. But unfortunately, you were not President, and I had a President at the 

time who was pretty determined to do demolition. And we were 

faced with the difficult task of allowing those developments to just 

sit or to try and come up with a compromise position that at least 

moved things forward and made sure that every tenant had a tenant protection voucher that protected them until the units were redeveloped in New Orleans. And that is pretty much what happened. 

Now what will happen to those residents? Our residents are very 

smart. You know, most people when we were dispersed over 44 different States, our folks started moving closer and closer back to 

New Orleans and they are now concentrated in Texas and Baton 

Rouge and throughout the State. And they are coming back to this 

City. And one of the things that kind of gives me some comfort is 

the number of affordable housing units that are being built in the 

City as we speak. If we continue the current trend, there will be 

a place for those residents to come back and monitor up close and 

personal the development of these public housing developments 

that we refer to as the ‘‘Big Four.’’ 

It is not a perfect solution, but at the time when you had the biggest bank in the world, being the U.S. government, headed up by 

the former President, that was the best deal that we could get. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you very much. 

Ms. Henriquez, I know that this is a new Administration and we 

have great hopes for philosophical changes and actual implementation of different kind of policies that would certainly better benefit 

those people who are in need of some assistance from their government. And I know that HUD and Secretary Donovan stepped into 

this with all that had happened and you have to make some decisions about what you do and how you do it. So we recognize all of 

that. 

But what I am wondering is this, in your role of providing public 

housing to residents who need it, have you taken a look at whether 

or not there is a real database that is being maintained of all of 

those residents who lived in this public housing and we know 

where they are right now? 

Ms. HENRIQUEZ. Someone in the audience just answered the 

question. 

Chairwoman WATERS. But I want you to answer it. 

Ms. HENRIQUEZ. I know. As I—I am new to this process and I 

am learning more and more and I met with a group of resident 

leaders last evening as well as with members of the HANO staff 

16 

yesterday afternoon and I do believe that we do know where a 

number of people are. But I think that there may be indeed folks 

that we do not know and we are waiting to hear from. There have 

been a number of letters sent out, sometimes as many as seven letters to household members who we think are eligible, for example, 

for a tenant protection voucher, who we have not heard from. We 

have done phone calls, we have done a number of things. And I had 

asked which staff is doing it along with consultants, to identify 

what we have done to outreach to every single household that we 

have not yet heard from. And that information is being compiled 

family by family. I think we are getting there, but there is an opportunity as these hearings go on, as other articles become more 

and more prevalent in the newspapers and in the media that if 

there are families anywhere in the Nation who were displaced because of Katrina and who want to come back to New Orleans, that 

they should reach out and contact the HANO staff. And we will try 

and figure out if we have lost people or not and how to get them 

reintegrated into the system that is available here. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Ms. Henriquez, I have always been concerned about the database of residents who were evacuated. I have 

always been concerned that we have systems and operations that 

could keep up with those people and who would communicate with 

them and at some point in time offer them the ability to return either on the footprint or in some subsidized housing. And we will 

have to keep talking about that. I believe that Secretary Donovan 

is committed to that. 

But I need to know whether or not you have personnel who are 

dedicated to doing that kind of work and whether or not in future 

hearings that we probably will have in Washington, you will be 

able to describe to us exactly how it is working. 

Ms. HENRIQUEZ. I will reiterate the Secretary’s commitment, the 

commitment of all of us at HUD, that we should not lose families, 

we should know where they all are, and indeed extend the invitation that if they want to come back home, they should be able to 

do that. 

Mr. WOODS. Madam Chairwoman, if I may, I may be able to answer and illuminate some of the efforts that have been made to 

contact folks and I also have some— 

Chairwoman WATERS. Excuse me one second. I am going to get 

to you because I know that is part of what you have been doing. 

But HUD now has some oversight responsibility and management 

responsibility. 

Ms. HENRIQUEZ. That is right. 

Chairwoman WATERS. And I just want to make sure that stepping into this and trying to get a handle on all of this, that this 

is something that is being dealt with. And then I will talk a little 

bit with you about how you are doing this. But they need to supervise it, they need to manage it, oversee it in some way. Because 

still, as I understand it, this housing authority is under the jurisdiction and supervision of HUD; is that right? 

Ms. HENRIQUEZ. Yes. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Okay, so that is why I am dealing with 

this first. 

17 

Ms. HENRIQUEZ. Madam Chairwoman, you are absolutely correct, 

HUD is the administrative receiver and so it is incumbent upon 

HUD for us to provide the leadership and the oversight that you 

have just spoken about. 

I have been handed a note and I need to go and actually sort of 

touch and see it, but as I understand it, 73 percent of the preKatrina families, who had a relationship with the Housing Authority of New Orleans, have been located and accounted for. And of 

those, about 2,800 are here in New Orleans. But I will commit to 

you that we will find out where people are and figure out a good 

successful monitoring system. And again, try to identify as many 

families as possible whom we have not yet been able to either identify or we have not yet heard from, and be able to tell you in which 

category they fall. 

Chairwoman WATERS. In addition to that responsibility, HUD 

has the responsibility for overseeing the redevelopment of these 

‘‘Big Four’’ housing units. By now, I am sure you have looked at 

whatever the contractual arrangements are with the developers, 

you understand the financing problems that are being experienced 

at least by one or some, you know that there were timeframes developed and I want you, if you will, to give me an assessment of 

whether or not these developments are moving in a way that they 

will meet the deadline or the timeframes that have been developed 

for them, whether or not the financing is real, are there more problems than we know about and whether or not we are going to realize the fulfillment of the development of the ‘‘Big Four,’’ even 

though it is not as extensive as I would have wanted it in terms 

of my one-for-one replacement and what you do on the footprint as 

well as off the footprint. 

Where are we with all of this? Is this real? Is it happening? And 

is it going to get done? What have you discovered in the short time 

that you have been there? 

Ms. HENRIQUEZ. From what I have seen thus far, I am confident 

that what is going on at the two developments that are under construction will meet the timeframes and the deliverables as designed and as planned. 

As I said in my testimony, there is a concern about the placed 

in service dates. We are working through those issues with all of 

the relevant parties and will need to work with Congress about 

some extensions on the placed in service dates, because right now, 

even if you were to close today, the construction window on that 

placed in service by December 2010 is too narrow to do a competent, quality construction job and deliver the product as designed 

and as promised. So we will need to move that and work through 

those issues on the tax credit side. 

As I have looked at the plans, as I understand them at this 

point, they make sense to me, having done similar development 

work in my professional life at the Boston Housing Authority. I 

think the plans are solid, I think the financing is solid. I hope that 

the market rebounds so the equity amounts will be higher, so that 

we can make sure that we can get to a final product at least by 

the time we are saying, if not faster, more quickly. And that would 

be my goal, to make sure that we keep this moving and I will be 

looking to see with staff here and with the City and with the develVerDate Nov 24 2008 12:01 Mar 02, 2010 Jkt 053251 PO 00000 Frm 00023 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 K:\DOCS\53251.TXT TERRIE
18 

opers, looking at reports, following up, coming to see more often actually what is going on on the ground, and to touch it and to look 

at it myself. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Finally, I believe that all of the contractual arrangements include a commitment to what I suppose would 

be guidelines or law in HUD that talk about the employment of 

residents in the developments. Now let us just start with demolition. How many residents were employed to do demolition? 

Ms. HENRIQUEZ. I do not know that and I am being handed a 

piece of paper, because I do not know that. 

Chairwoman WATERS. I am sorry, I cannot—you would have that 

information? 

Ms. HENRIQUEZ. Yes. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Okay, for your oversight, you are not focused on that yet, you do not have it. 

Ms. HENRIQUEZ. I do not have that information. However, you do 

know that there is Section 3 which requires resident employment? 

Chairwoman WATERS. Yes. 

Ms. HENRIQUEZ. And a number of the Assistant Secretaries, 

starting with and including John Trasvina, the Assistant Secretary 

for Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity, he and I and the Assistant Secretary for Community Planning & Development, Mercedes 

Marquez, have formed an internal task force to make sure that the 

focus on Section 3 across all of HUD’s programs is not just on the 

books, but that it is real and that there are deliverables and that 

there are goals. And we will make sure from top to bottom that we 

reinforce that with housing authorities, with cities, whoever spends 

and receives Federal funds. 

But in the moment here, at HANO, I do not have that specific 

information. 

Chairwoman WATERS. I appreciate that, and I know, again, that 

Secretary Donovan is supportive of the residents having these opportunities as kind of required by law. And we have one member 

of my committee, Ms. Velazquez from New York, who is working 

on additional legislation to make sure that happens. 

But for now, what I am going to ask Mr. Woods to do is to help 

fill in the gaps about the implementation of the contracts. While 

HUD is committed to making sure for the future that this is done, 

these commitments were part of the contracts, as I understand it, 

and so some work has already started, been done. Demolition has 

taken place. How many residents received jobs in the work that 

has already been completed? 

Mr. WOODS. Thank you very much. And let me apologize first if 

I breached protocol, but I— 

Chairwoman WATERS. Oh, no, no, no, no problem. 

Mr. WOODS. I just wanted to make sure that we had the correct 

information that was part of the record. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Sure. 

Mr. WOODS. Again, HANO is very committed to making sure that 

all of our residents have as many job opportunities as they can at 

the site. As a native of the City, I would prefer that there would 

be 100 percent of those jobs at the site to be— 

Chairwoman WATERS. I just want to know how many got jobs. 

Mr. WOODS. Absolutely. 

19 

With regard to the C.J. Peete development, we had a—there is 

a construction training program at the development. There has 

been a total of 20 graduates of the program who have been hired 

by the developer—a total of 43 residents. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Okay, let us hear Mr. Wood, let us hear 

what he has to say. He is going to give us some real numbers. How 

many people got jobs at C.J. Peete? 

Mr. WOODS. We had 20 who were part of the—who were hired 

by the developer, they were graduates of the— 

Chairwoman WATERS. They are still in the training program? 

Mr. WOODS. No, they are graduates of the training program. 

Chairwoman WATERS. They graduated and they all got jobs? 

Mr. WOODS. That is correct. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Twenty three. 

Mr. WOODS. Twenty. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Twenty, okay. 

Mr. WOODS. There has been a total of 43 residents who have 

been hired in connection with redevelopment at that site, at C.J. 

Peete. 

Chairwoman WATERS. At C.J. Peete, you had 20 who went 

through the training program, or 23, and 20 got hired and you 

have some more who received jobs also? 

Mr. WOODS. That is correct. 

Chairwoman WATERS. How many more, 20 more? 

Mr. WOODS. It was 20 who graduated from the program and 

were hired by the developer and there are a total of 43 residents 

who have been hired, so that would be an additional 23. 

Chairwoman WATERS. And could you give me some examples of 

what kind of jobs they got? 

Mr. WOODS. Well, they would have gotten, through the construction training program— 

[audience disruption] 

Chairwoman WATERS. Excuse me, let us hear what Mr. Woods 

has to say just for a minute. Let us hear what he has to say. 

Mr. WOODS. Through the construction training program, again, 

that was developed by the developers, they were trained in journeyman type activities. So what would happen is they would get, you 

know, basic jobs, not necessarily licensed electricians or plumbing 

jobs, but they would get basic jobs and the hope would be that on 

the job site, they would get additional training and additional experience so that they can move on and do additional— 

Chairwoman WATERS. So the 23—the first 20 who were in training programs, they were assistants to electricians and plumbers 

and those kinds of jobs? 

Mr. WOODS. Right, those folks had no experience in construction 

at all. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Okay. And the other 20? 

Mr. WOODS. The other 23 would have been folks who would have 

already had some construction training, would have put in job applications and would have been hired at the site. 

Chairwoman WATERS. And at C.J. Peete, are these 43 still working now? 

Mr. WOODS. I believe so. I do not know for sure, but I do believe 

so. 

20 

Chairwoman WATERS. All right, and let us go on to the other developments. 

Mr. WOODS. And if I can, the jobs were in the areas of masonry, 

painting, and sheetrocking work. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you. 

Mr. WOODS. With regard to B.W. Cooper, there have been 15 

residents who have been hired by the demolition and infrastructure 

contracts and additional Section 3 residents will be hired when construction begins. 

Chairwoman WATERS. This is at Cooper? 

Mr. WOODS. This is at Cooper; yes, ma’am. 

Chairwoman WATERS. How many employees are on the job totally with the construction company? 

Mr. WOODS. I am sorry? 

Chairwoman WATERS. The construction company has employed 

totally, non-residents and residents, how many, so I can find out 

what percentage that 15 represents— 

Mr. WOODS. I do not— 

Chairwoman WATERS. —of all the jobs. 

Mr. WOODS. I do not have that information, that probably can be 

garnered from the developer at the site, I know that they are prepared and have presentations to do so. 

With regard to St. Bernard, I understand that there are 600 residents who had been identified as potential job hires. 

Chairwoman WATERS. What does that mean, identified? 

Mr. WOODS. They have been identified, they have gone through 

either the application process or—been part of the application process to begin working for the site. Again, the developer— 

Chairwoman WATERS. Has all of the demolition been done at St. 

Bernard? 

Mr. WOODS. Demolition has been completed at St. Bernard and 

we are actually in construction now. 

Chairwoman WATERS. So how many residents worked during the 

demolition period? 

Mr. WOODS. I do not have that for St. Bernard or for—again, 

that would be information that the developers would have and I do 

not have the current Section 3 employment. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Okay, I understand. Go right ahead. Of 

course, Lafitte has not been demolished, is that right? 

Mr. WOODS. Well, Lafitte has been partially demolished. As you 

recall, there are 94 units that are still standing at the site. 

Chairwoman WATERS. That is right. And how many residents 

worked on that portion of the work, the demolition, for example, of 

Lafitte? 

Mr. WOODS. Again, for Lafitte, I do not have that. Again, that 

can come from the developer himself. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Okay. All right, now you wanted very 

much to add to the information from Ms. Henriquez about the 

database and how you maintain that database and how you are 

able to keep up with the residents. 

Mr. WOODS. Right. The database is actually maintained by HUD 

and the PIC system and so— 

Chairwoman WATERS. Oh, that is maintained by HUD? 

21 

Mr. WOODS. It is maintained by HUD. I have the data of the actual percentages of folks that we have been able to contact. 

In addition to that, what we have done is every time that we 

have had any type of major initiative, we have advertised, not only 

here in New Orleans and in papers across the State, but we also 

advertised obviously in Houston, Atlanta, Dallas, Memphis, Jackson, and other places where we know that our residents are living. 

So for instance, we are now about to open up the Section 8 waiting 

list. We will have advertisements that I think began appearing 

today in the paper, or begin appearing, excuse me, August 23rd. So 

that folks who are interested in being part of the Section 8 waiting 

list, there is a period from September 6th to the 12th when they 

will be able to apply to our waiting list. And so we hope that will 

open up very soon. 

And we did the same process for our public housing waiting list, 

which we just completed that process. 

So our goal has been to try to contact as many of the residents 

as we possibly can, wherever they are. We can only go by the addresses that we have, and as Secretary Henriquez said, there are 

several times that we have sent out several letters and continue to 

mail out letters to those folks. 

I think that the important part, particularly for those who have 

not maybe come back yet or for those who have not transitioned 

from DHAP to the traditional Section 8 voucher program, we are 

now starting to deal with our hardest to house, folks who may miss 

appointments or folks who may not respond to mail, so what we 

have to do and be focused on, I believe at this point, is to do even 

more intrusive case management for those folks that we are dealing with now because we have to take an extra step. For instance, 

one of the things that we are doing in the Section 8 program is we 

have an actual mobile outreach unit. So if we are not getting responses from folks, if we are mailing out and they are missing appointments or not coming in or not submitting information, we are 

dispatching folks to their residences. And we have to do this, particularly I think, for our elderly and our disabled population. 

So I think that we are trying to figure out a way to make sure 

that we are actually touching everyone as much as we possibly can. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you very much. 

And I would like to thank my colleagues for indulging me with 

this length of time that I have taken on this questioning. And Mr. 

Cleaver, I am going to turn it over to you. 

Mr. CLEAVER. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. 

Mr. Mayor, thank you again for being here. 

Yesterday, we learned that the Secretary is at least trying to figure out how to make some adjustments in the Neighborhood Stabilization Program so that the City residents can benefit, because 

many of the residents here did not suffer from foreclosure, which 

is what the program is aimed at correcting. 

Mayor NAGIN. Right. 

Mr. CLEAVER. Or ministering to, but because of the flood. So I 

think that is going to happen, that was testimony we received yesterday from HUD. And so that would grant you I think some additional ability to make an impact in the neighborhood. 

22 

Is there anything that we can do legislatively that would help 

you as you continue to try to rebuild the City? 

Mayor NAGIN. Congressman, the biggest thing—you know, now 

the State of Louisiana has asked me to join them in lobbying Congress and the Administration to have more flexibility with the 

unspent dollars that they still have at the State level. 

All of the recovery dollars flowed from the Federal Government 

to the State and then to the City, and as I stated earlier, we got 

$411 million out of $14 billion. It is my understanding that there 

may be as much as $3 billion that is still unspent and they are 

going to come to the Congress and ask for some flexibility and 

waivers. And on top of that, there is another $1.2 billion in hazard 

mitigation dollars that I have not seen a report on how that has 

been spent. 

Before you grant those waivers, I would ask you to make sure 

that the dollars that Congress originally intended to come to New 

Orleans come to New Orleans expeditiously. And the formula that 

everybody agreed to way back when, when we were lobbying for 

this money, is that New Orleans received 57 percent of the State’s 

damage, damaged buildings and damaged residences during Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, and therefore, that should be the percentage that should come to this City. I just have not seen that, Congressman. 

So before you issue any waivers, make sure that there is a hard 

core rule that those dollars have to be spent in the most devastated 

areas. 

Mr. CLEAVER. Would you give us an estimate of what percentage 

you may have gotten? 

Mayor NAGIN. You know, it is hard to really say because a lot 

of the money that came down was spent in State-controlled assets 

that reside in New Orleans and I do not have those numbers. So 

maybe you can get them because I have been asking for them for 

a long time. 

Mr. CLEAVER. I will get those numbers. 

As a former mayor, I said then and I will continue to say now, 

one of the biggest mistakes that was made was sending the money 

to the governor. That was a mistake. 

Mayor NAGIN. Amen. 

Mr. CLEAVER. And I think we need to reverse that. 

Mayor NAGIN. I think what most people do not understand is 

that when you send money from the Federal to the State, a city can 

only go as fast as the State’s approval process. And last year, midyear, was the first time we got approval on any of that disaster 

CDBG money. And then after you get approval, you have to go 

through the environmental studies, which take anywhere from 4 to 

6 months. So we can only move as fast as the State will allow us 

to move. And that has just been a real challenge with this recovery. 

Mr. CLEAVER. Yes, I am troubled by it. I learned yesterday that 

a sizeable portion of the money went to some chicken factory here 

in the State. I am not asking you to respond to that, I will try to 

find out more about it when we get back to Washington. 

Mr. Woods, thank you for being here. We approved just under a 

billion dollars in a stimulus package and a large portion of those 

23 

stimulus dollars, a sizeable portion, was allocated for PHAs. What 

is—do you know what amount your PHA has received? 

Mr. WOODS. Just a little over $34 million. 

Mr. CLEAVER. Now will the $34 million be used to augment the work that has gone on, or will the $34 million be used to do—we 

have a little different world here in New Orleans than in Kansas 

City, Missouri, where we are using the PHA allocation to do weatherization, we are hiring people from the PHAs, they get trained, 

they are trained in auditing and then weatherization. But with 

money having already been spent and being spent to rehab the 

PHAs as a result of Katrina, does the $34 million you received 

have flexibility so that you can perform some additional rehab 

work on properties, or do you have to use it for weatherization? 

Mr. WOODS. No, we are actually doing a whole bunch of things 

at different sites. What we did was we had a meeting in consultation with our resident advisory board to determine where that total 

$34 million was going to be spent. So we are spending a significant 

portion at the Guste development, we are spending a significant 

portion at our scattered sites, and we are spending a significant 

portion also at the Iberville development. So all of the $34 million 

is being allocated to developments that are not part of the ‘‘Big 

Four,’’ but are being allocated at the other sites that we either 

manage or own or are managed by someone else. 

Now what we have done, for instance, at Iberville, we spent 

about $3.4 million, allocated $3.4 million at Iberville to do some upgrades and cosmetic work to the exterior and interior of the units. 

What we have done at Iberville, in collaboration with the Urban 

League, is we have been able to hire 35 residents at Iberville to actually perform the work. 

And we are hoping from that program that we have instituted 

there, that those residents would be able to again obtain some job 

skills and take those jobs skills hopefully on the market. So that 

work is continuing right now, going on right now as we speak. 

Mr. CLEAVER. So, Ms. Henriquez, was a waiver required? Because the legislation, as I remember it, does not—has not been allocated to do some of the things that Mr. Woods just discussed. I am 

not mad about it, I am just—I just want to know was a waiver required? 

Ms. HENRIQUEZ. No, the round of the $34 million that he is talking about comes out of the first traunch of the $3 billion or the $4 

billion that was set aside for public housing authorities. It was delivered by formula, so housing authorities could use it as capital 

money and, therefore, they could use it for gap financing or they 

could use it as well, as described by Mr. Woods, to do repairs consistent with an ongoing program that was laid out by a particular 

housing authority, as he has described it here. 

Mr. CLEAVER. Did you develop a training component? One of the 

things that we are trying to do, as you know, is—I think we are 

going to have an industrial revolution that many of us missed out 

on or our parents and grandparents missed out on at the turn of 

the 20th Century. This revolution will not be an industrial revolution as such, but will be a green revolution. And if we do not have 

green collar job training, I think we are going to miss out again. 

So I am wondering if there is in place green collar job training, beVerDate Nov 24 2008 12:01 Mar 02, 2010 Jkt 053251 PO 00000 Frm 00029 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 K:\DOCS\53251.TXT TERRIE
24 

cause if we are going to make green the new—the rehabbed units, 

the ‘‘Big Four,’’ or the others for that matter, we are going to have 

to have people who do it. 

In many of the cities, we are having green collar job training and 

those who complete it are certified as green collar job specialists— 

I am sorry, as weatherization specialists. And then some of them 

are even opening up their own companies to do this kind of work. 

So I am not concerned yet, but I may be concerned after you answer. 

Mr. WOODS. Well, I will answer in two fashions. First of all, with 

regard to the stimulus dollars, we cannot use those—that funding 

is only available for capital outlays. So what HANO has done is the 

actual training that we are providing to those residents is coming 

out of HANO’s funds and that training, albeit it is not a green 

training, it is a basic training for those residents who did not have 

or were not employed at the time that we started this program. 

And again, that is why we brought on the Urban League to assist 

us with that training. 

Now overall, there is a weatherization issue all across the State 

and the Louisiana Housing Finance Agency is actually the entity 

that is administering the weatherization dollars for the State that 

the State has received. I could speak about that as the chairman 

of the board of the LHFA, but that is a whole separate entity. 

But what we have tried to do, and even in our development plan, 

is to be green in everything that we are doing right now, particularly what we are doing at Guste and other developments, is to 

make sure that we are doing green building, because we do have 

to figure out a way to bring electricity bills down, we do have to 

figure out a way particularly even for our scattered sites to bring 

down the cost of electricity bills and utility bills. So that is part of 

what we have done in our needs assessment, part of what we are 

focused on. 

Mr. CLEAVER. Let me just say—and I am glad that you are doing 

that—let me suggest that you work with HUD to develop an application to the Labor Department and we have a Secretary there who 

I think is very sensitive to this issue. In fact, she received the Kennedy Award for the work she did in energy conservation in California. And the reason I am saying this is we need to have certified 

auditors, energy auditors, and certified weatherization specialists 

because if we do not, we are not going to be able to produce the 

kind of workforce and deliver the jobs that the President stipulated 

when he put forth the stimulus package. 

And I am not talking about HUD dollars, I am now talking about energy, which was $60 billion in the stimulus package, $60 billion. 

And many of the cities have opened up through metropolitan community college systems job training and creating the opportunity 

for the jobs because of all of the green work that is taken place 

with the stimulus package. 

Ms. HENRIQUEZ. Mr. Cleaver, you are absolutely correct. And 

that was also an agreement between the two Secretaries of HUD 

and the Department of Energy, to begin to get housing authorities 

access to weatherization dollars, to figure out other kinds of partnerships to really work across and out of our silos across the Federal Government. And this is a prime example of that. 

25 

Mr. CLEAVER. So you do not need any help from us, you are already moving in that direction? 

Ms. HENRIQUEZ. We are already talking and moving in that direction. 

Mr. CLEAVER. So when we come back, you are going to have 

green collar job training coming. 

I will yield back the balance of my time, Madam Chairwoman. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you very much. 

Mr. Cao. 

Mr. CAO. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. 

Mr. Mayor, I have one question concerning the loan gap that was 

implemented by the City. This is the first time that I heard of it 

and I just wonder whether or not you adequately conveyed this program to the public so that every elderly, every person who is disabled in the City has access to this program. 

Mayor NAGIN. Well, it was a new program, Congressman, and we 

did some advertising and the response was so overwhelming that 

we had to go back and find some more dollars to put into the program. Simultaneously, we are talking to the State about some of 

their excess funds, to really do it in a much bigger way. But this 

is a very new program that we are just rolling out. 

Mr. CAO. Okay. And my next question is, first of all to you, Mr. 

Mayor, and then secondly, to Secretary Henriquez. One of the decisions, at least based on my understanding of the decision that was 

made by the City, in connection with mixed-income housing was to 

improve the quality of life for the residents. Has there been a study 

that has been done, maybe even a survey, to keep track of whether 

or not residents feel better or feel happier with respect to the 

mixed-income units, whether or not the number of crime incidents—has that been kept in these mixed-income housing units 

versus what it was before? 

Mayor NAGIN. I do not have that study. I know there have been 

many studies, attitudinal studies, on our residents but I am not 

sure there has been one focused primarily on public housing residents. 

Mr. CAO. Madam Secretary, is there, at the national level, a 

study that has been done to compare the traditional housing 

project versus the mixed-income projects that is being done in the 

City of New Orleans? 

Ms. HENRIQUEZ. There have been some studies that have generally focused in large part on the effect on the economy, and then 

secondly on growing the economic development and self-sufficiency 

of residents. I do not have them specifically but I certainly will look 

at the body of work and I can get that information to you. 

Mr. CAO. Thank you. 

And my question to Mr. Woods, you stated that at the Lafitte 

housing project there are 94 units that have not been demolished, 

is that correct? 

Mr. WOODS. That is correct. 

Mr. CAO. And are they ready—can people live in those units or 

what has to be done? 

Mr. WOODS. Well, actually at this point, they are slated for demolition. We have a notice to proceed that has been issued to the 

demolition contractor. But we have done previously, a couple of 

26 

years ago, studies to determine the feasibleness of reopening those 

units. 

Now as you may know, those units were built back in the 1940’s, 

they are brick masonry buildings. The plumbing in the buildings 

currently have a diverter system. To explain a diverter system, if 

you were married and your wife was taking a bath, you could not 

brush your teeth at the same time because the water could not 

move from the tub to the sink. 

Likewise the energy systems at those buildings were built to accommodate 1940’s energy needs. So to include an air conditioner 

and a cell phone plug-in and a computer and other electronic items 

that we currently have today would overload the system. 

Now we estimate at this point that if we were able to maybe gut 

and rehab the units, it would cost somewhere in the neighborhood 

of about $400,000 to do so, per unit. However, it is much cheaper 

to demolish the units and rebuild the units. I think that they are 

absolutely beautiful buildings, I have a lot of memories at that site 

during Mardi Gras. However, based on the cost analysis that we 

have been able to get to date, and again, that study was maybe 

about 2 or 3 years ago, it would cost again, $400,000 per unit to 

just rehab to bring them up to standards. 

And then the other piece is that those buildings, if you look at 

them, the stairwells are small, the bedroom sizes are small, they 

do not accommodate the type of furnishings that are currently 

being sold and that our residents are buying. And so in order to 

be able to have what I consider to be a liveable space, it would require us to rehab those units to an extent that we would have to 

expand the size of the units. 

You know, so those are the challenges that are facing us and at 

this point it is just not economically feasible to rehab those units 

to make them liveable. 

Mr. CAO. And in addition to your position at HANO, you also sit 

on the board of the Louisiana Housing Finance Authority, is that 

correct? 

Mr. WOODS. That is correct. 

Mr. CAO. What are some of the finance-related obstacles in these 

projects being completed? 

Mr. WOODS. Well, as has been previously stated, again the placed 

in service date is a big obstacle. If the placed in service date is not 

extended, we are going to have potential issues with some investors. Right now, the placed in service date is December 31, 2010. 

What we are concerned about is whether or not we will be able to 

complete construction by that time. 

The other thing that we are concerned about is also on the exchange program under TCAP. Congress or the Treasury has opined 

that GO Zone credits are not eligible for the exchange program. 

Right now, credits are trading somewhere in the neighborhood of 

59 cents to 63 cents on the dollar. Under the exchange program, 

those credits could be exchanged for about 80 cents on the dollar 

and it would allow additional funding in order to complete development. 

So I think those are the two largest obstacles that are facing us 

right now for the completion. And that is not just necessarily for 

27 

the ‘‘Big Four,’’ but that is for a lot of the affordable housing units 

across the State. 

Mr. CAO. Mr. Mayor, you also stated that there—or at least every 

time when I talk to the State, the State blames it on the City; 

every time I talk to the City, the City blames it on the State. 

Is there a system of dialogue where you all can communicate to 

see who is doing what and when so that there is no finger pointing? 

Mayor NAGIN. We talk all the time and we make progress at 

times and at times we do not make as much progress. This is an 

enormous undertaking. The City by itself is managing over 300 individual recovery projects. That is before we start talking about the 

community disaster money that is coming down. We talk to them, 

but the rules at it relates to community disaster dollars, there is 

just so many things you have to go through. And everybody wants 

to move the money out fast, but the reality is that it does not move 

fast in its current form. So there is lots of frustration on both sides. 

Mr. CAO. And I recently—if you would allow me just one more 

question, Madam Chairwoman—I recently spoke with the State in 

connection with its Small Rental Program. I know there were 

issues with respect to that particular program, to allow small and 

local contractors to be more involved. And we proposed and we basically asked them to revise that particular program to allow more 

small contractors, more local contractors in this program. Based on 

your understanding of the program, has the request been implemented? 

Mayor NAGIN. I could not speak on that particular program. All I know is they allocated about $700 million to the program and I 

think $690 million is unspent. So I do not know where that program is going or what is the direction. 

My frustration, Congressman, is that the City of New Orleans 

can only move as fast as the State moves because of the way the 

Federal laws are set up. And I am really concerned about the $3 

billion that is sitting up there. I do not know how they are going 

to spend that any time soon and at some point in time, you as a 

Congressperson, and the Administration facing a huge deficit, is 

probably going to ask for that money back. And that would be an 

absolute tragedy—absolute tragedy. 

So if I could ask anything of this panel is to try and figure out 

a way to help us to reduce some of the rules associated with spending this money so that it can get to the street and do some good 

for more people. 

Mr. CAO. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. I yield back the balance of my time. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you very much. I would like to 

thank this panel for your participation. Let me just wrap up by 

saying that you have probably seen—or you have already testified 

to in some shape, form or fashion about the numbers and the way 

the units will be replaced and who they will be available for. This 

is an outline, a demonstration of that, that was published in the 

Times Picayune, who clearly—and this clearly identifies that, for 

example, at B.W. Cooper that had 1,546 units, even though 441 of 

them were unoccupied, basically what happened over the years, it 

appears that when units became vacant or they were not repaired 

28 

or what-have-you, you just took them off the market. And so 441 

at B.W. Cooper were unoccupied. 

But look at this, in the planned units, only 143 are set aside for 

public housing residents. At C.J. Peete, it is very interesting in 

that of the 867 units over the years somebody allowed 723 of those 

to go unoccupied, for whatever reason, at C.J. Peete. And it looks 

as if only 193 units will be available for public housing, people who 

meet that criteria, for public housing, for a total replacement out 

of the 867 units, 460 units altogether, but again, only 193 for public housing. 

At Lafitte, they appear to do better with only 31 unoccupied, a 

total of 896, and they plan on putting back in 812 but only 176 of 

those will be for people who meet the qualifications for public housing. But look at this number, 392 of those will be for the tax credit 

units, which means that most people who lived in public housing 

will not be eligible for those. You understand? They have to be subsidized further I suppose with the Choice vouchers or Section 8. 

And then you have 244 of those that are going to be sold under the 

homeownership portion of that. 

And at St. Bernard, of 1,436 units, 473 were going unoccupied. 

You are only going to restore 466 in total with 157 of those only 

being for those who are eligible under the criteria for public housing with 160 of those for the tax credit units that will require a 

subsidy for those who do not make the required amount of income. 

And of course another 149 of those at market rate. 

So I understand thoroughly, and Mr. Cleaver, who was a mayor 

of a city understands, that you have the responsibility for land use 

planning, the City does, I understand that. 

Chairwoman WATERS. I understand that, but you know, as Members of Congress trying to carry out the intent of the public policy 

that has been developed about how we are going to deal with those 

people who cannot afford, who do not have the salary, who do not 

have the money to pay for market rate rental, we have the responsibility to make sure that the public policy is implemented to provide these units. I am worried about where these scattered units 

are and we will talk with you more about that and we will talk 

with the developers and all that. But this looks like what the City 

has been accused of. 

And let me just say this, because I do not know, but the City has 

been accused—and perhaps because the former Secretary Mr. Jackson said it, he said—you know what he said, he said something like 

this: That they were not interested in maintaining the public housing units for poor people as we knew them, in essence that the City 

was going to be less poor and less black. Is that what he said? 

So even though the goals of perhaps thinning out the public 

housing units so that they are more liveable perhaps, all of those 

goals may be commendable. But you cannot help but wonder 

whether or not these policies are going to do precisely what Mr. 

Jackson intended them to do. 

Yes, ma’am? 

Ms. HENRIQUEZ. If I might. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Yes. 

29 

Ms. HENRIQUEZ. I am not going to offer an opinion on a former 

Administration. I can only tell you about this Administration, of 

which I am a part. 

Chairwoman WATERS. I am sorry, you are not going to offer an 

opinion about what? 

Ms. HENRIQUEZ. On the former Administration. 

Chairwoman WATERS. No, please do not, you do not have to do 

that. 

[laughter] 

Ms. HENRIQUEZ. I can offer an opinion and tell you about this 

Administration, of which I am a part. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Sure. 

Ms. HENRIQUEZ. This Secretary and this Administration are committed to increasing and improving the numbers on affordable rental housing. Homeownership is important, but not everyone wants 

to be or can be or should be a homeowner. And so it is our—we 

see it as our responsibility to create as many affordable housing 

rental opportunities as possible in the marketplace—not just here 

in New Orleans, but across this Nation. 

To that end, I have not seen the numbers from which you were 

quoting; however, I will say that there are a variety of affordable 

housing types based on how they are funded in a redevelopment 

opportunity, such as with the ‘‘Big Four.’’ And there are ACC or 

public housing units that come back with public housing subsidies 

where the rent for the occupant family is based on a percentage of 

their income. There are also tax credit units which are affordable 

which may or may not meet the income levels of affordability for 

some public housing residents— 

Chairwoman WATERS. They will not, based on the formula that 

I have seen. 

Ms. HENRIQUEZ. —however, Section 8 vouchers can be—which 

the family will have, could then create affordable living spaces in 

those redeveloped units in the tax credit. So that when we look at 

the totality of where public housing level rent at 30 percent of your 

income, with or without a Section 8 voucher attached to you or to 

the unit, about a third of all those units of the more than 7,600 

we talked about, when all is said and done, will come back as deeply affordable units at the ‘‘Big Four’’ and across this City. That is 

just what is going on with what is being developed through HUD’s 

formula, not what else might be developed by other developers who 

have access to affordable tax credits and so on. 

Chairwoman WATERS. I appreciate that very much. And as I 

said, I am going to certainly dismiss this panel, but let me tell you 

what it means when you have less units in public housing, which 

may or may not be good, and when folks who are part of a community are given vouchers to go distances from where they have community connections and support. They oftentimes find themselves 

in communities where they are not wanted, they oftentimes find 

themselves in a community where they have no transportation 

even if they are trying to get trained and look for jobs. They oftentimes find themselves alienated, isolated, and what you intend to 

do in maybe putting them in maybe nicer four walls is creating all 

kinds of other pressures and stresses. 

30 

So, you know, we have to keep that in mind and we are going 

to have to follow this very closely. Again, this is already done and 

we are not blaming this Administration certainly, but we are concerned. And we have to follow this to make sure. 

And lastly, Mr. Mayor, the homeless problem, as it is in Los Angeles, is a problem here. And the Section 8 vouchers that are going 

to become available, are they available to the homeless also? 

Mr. WOODS. They would be available, anyone can apply and so 

they would be available— 

Chairwoman WATERS. But they would not necessarily get the 

newspaper that you are talking about advertising in. 

Mr. WOODS. Right. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Does a mobile van go to under the bridges 

where the homeless are? 

Mr. WOODS. We have not started that outreach. 

Chairwoman WATERS. But it could happen, they could do that. 

Thank you all so very much. You have been so patient and I appreciate your cooperation, and again we will continue to work with 

you. 

Let us take the next panel so we can—what we really need to 

do is we need to learn as much as we can about what they are 

doing or what they have not done so that we can correct it. So bear 

with me, bear with me for awhile. 

Thank you all very much. 

Ladies and gentlemen, we are going to move right into the second panel, so I am going to invite those panelists to come to the 

seats that are provided. For panel number two, we have: Ms. Anita 

Sinha, senior attorney, The Advancement Project; Mr. James 

Perry, executive director, Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center; Ms. Laura Tuggle, Southeast Louisiana Legal Services; 

Ms. Cynthia Wiggins, HANO Resident Advisory Board; and Ms. 

Angela Patterson, director, UNITY Welcome Home. 

For those who are exiting the room, please do it quietly. Others, 

please take your seats, the panel is in place. And let me apologize, 

I spent a little bit more time than was allocated because it was important for us to query those who have responsibility for this redevelopment, to try and understand exactly what has been done and 

what they are doing and what kind of oversight they have. 

So I am going to ask each of you, most of whom I have met, I 

have worked with and it is so good to see you all again. Ms. 

Wiggins, I came looking for you yesterday over at the park. I do 

not know what happened, I may have missed a meeting but I 

thank you all for being here and we are going to get started right 

away. We are going to hold you each to your 5 minutes. 

So let us begin with Ms. Anita Sinha, the senior attorney for The 

Advancement Project. 

STATEMENT OF ANITA SINHA, SENIOR ATTORNEY, THE 

ADVANCEMENT PROJECT 

Ms. SINHA. Good afternoon. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Good afternoon. 

Ms. SINHA. My name is Anita Sinha, and I am a senior attorney 

at The Advancement Project. I direct a— 

31 

Chairwoman WATERS. Speak right up as much as you can so 

they can hear you in the back. 

Ms. SINHA. I direct our post-Katrina project which since August 

29, 2005, has helped residents fight for just reconstruction in New 

Orleans. 

I am also counsel on Anderson v. Jackson, a class action lawsuit 

that continues to pursue justice for displaced public housing residents of the ‘‘Big Four.’’ 

The 4-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina is imminent. The 

economic crisis plaguing our country has reared its head in New 

Orleans where the rates of foreclosures, empty and blighted properties, and homelessness are staggering. 

I am both honored and dismayed to be testifying today. Honored 

because this hearing is a very strong statement that you, Ms. 

Waters, and the subcommittee know that the people who continue 

to suffer greatly since Katrina are not forgotten. I am dismayed 

though because over 4,500 public housing units have been destroyed and big questions about redevelopment and re-occupancy 

loom large. 

There are presently less than 2,500 public housing units in New 

Orleans, and even these units are at risk. We are deeply concerned 

about reported plans to demolish the Iberville development. Essential repairs and maintenance in Iberville have gone unattended and 

we fear that this is yet another example of disinvestment as a way 

to justify demolition. There is no justification for demolishing 

Iberville, especially before public housing units have been built on 

the ‘‘Big Four.’’ 

We are also concerned about the 94 units at Lafitte that HUD 

and HANO have spent million of dollars, about $29,000 per unit to 

repair. I think the previous panel testified on these 94 units and 

Mr. Woods was talking about the cost to rehab or something. But 

these units have been rehabbed, they have spent millions of dollars 

on them and they sit vacant, and as Mr. Woods testified, are slated 

for demolition. These units should not be demolished. In fact, there 

should be a moratorium on any further demolition of public housing in New Orleans. 

As for the ‘‘Big Four,’’ we are concerned that families most in 

need of housing will be left out or left for last. The initial disposition plan for the ‘‘Big Four’’ was to rebuild only a fraction, as you 

mentioned, Ms. Waters, about 15 percent, of the original public 

housing units. That was bad enough, but now we are concerned 

that the current state of the market will mean even less housing 

will be rebuilt. Particularly of concern is what construction is financed past phase I of the building on each site. For example, we 

really would like to know whether Lafitte developers still can do 

one-for-one replacement. 

The other issue concerning reconstruction is whether building a 

partial number of public housing units to market based units is 

part of the initial phase of constructing the ‘‘Big Four’’ sites. We 

know that phase I is being completed or has been completed, but 

we still do not know how many are apportioned to public housing 

as opposed to how many public housing is being left for later 

phases of redevelopment. We do not think the public housing famiVerDate Nov 24 2008 12:01 Mar 02, 2010 Jkt 053251 PO 00000 Frm 00037 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 K:\DOCS\53251.TXT TERRIE
32 

lies should be the last to get home and we would like to see their 

homes be built sooner than they already are. 

We are also concerned about re-occupancy rules. We believe that 

residents of at least one of the sites, the site of St. Bernard, are 

being subjected to illegal work requirements. HUD regulations do 

allow for work preferences, which is giving admission preferences 

to households where one family member is working. But the law 

does not permit work requirements. It is our understanding that 

the residents of St. Bernard have been told by Columbia Residential that all adult household members must have full time employment. And that is not what the law says. Columbia also claims to 

its residents that HUD has granted waivers to the developers so 

they can set such rules. We have not been able to verify whether 

this is true. 

The other issue is credit and extensive background checks. These 

checks have been reported as ways to keep families out of public 

housing. Now is the time to move obstacles out of the way, not impose new hurdles in the path of displaced residents. 

The last issue I would like to raise here is whether employment 

opportunities from the redevelopment of the ‘‘Big Four’’ are going 

to public housing residents as you know is required by Section 3 

of the 1968 HUD Act. 

Each of the ‘‘Big Four’’ sites are subject to Section 3. Part of 

HANO, HUD, and the developers’ duties under Section 3 is to track 

the jobs given to residents. As Mr. Woods and Ms. Henriquez testimony just showed, this tracking is not happening. But the law says 

they must be tracking Section 3 jobs. Anecdotally, we know that 

jobs are not going to residents. So we respectfully urge the subcommittee to closely monitor Section 3 compliance, including receiving regular updates from the new internal task force that Ms. 

Henriquez just testified about. 

I respectfully direct the subcommittee to my written statement 

for further details on what was read in my testimony. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Sinha can be found on page 105 

of the appendix.] 

Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you very much. 

Mr. Perry, it is good to see you again. 

STATEMENT OF JAMES PERRY, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, 

GREATER NEW ORLEANS FAIR HOUSING ACTION CENTER 

Mr. PERRY. Same here, thank you. 

Thank you, Congresswoman; thank you, Congressman Cleaver, 

for the opportunity to testify. Of course, I run the Fair Housing Action Center here in New Orleans, and before I get into my substantive testimony, I wanted to offer two things. 

One is a thank you for the hearing yesterday about Road Home 

issues. My organization is the plaintiff in the lawsuit against the 

Road Home organization in taking on this basic issue of making 

payouts based on the value of homes rather than the cost to repair 

homes. So it was very important to us that you addressed that 

issue yesterday. 

Second is that in the last panel, one of the questions that you 

raised was about the data tracking residents who formerly resided 

33 

in public housing. In one of our lawsuits against the housing authority in 2007, they were required to turn over information about 

where residents were. And when we got the list that they provided 

to us, many times they sent surveys and information to addresses 

that were pre-Katrina addresses. In fact, some of the addresses on 

the list were the addresses of the public housing developments that 

were, of course, vacant. So I can tell you that accounted for about 

30 percent of the mailouts, the survey that they provided to us in 

the course of that litigation. 

I am hopeful that the new Administration is working hard to 

make sure that those lists are clean and accurate, but at least during our experience in 2007 under the prior Administration, those 

lists were far from accurate and far from reliable. 

The thing that I want to focus on in my testimony is what happens in the aftermath of demolition of public housing. You know 

there is so much work and so much discussion around mixed-income housing about whether or not it works, but with a typical 

mixed-income development, what happens of course is that the majority of the units and so the majority of residents cannot return. 

In New Orleans, an example of that was the former St. Thomas development where there had been 1,500 families. Only 246 units are 

reserved for low-income residents at the new development, so there 

is a question about what happens to the remaining more than 

1,200 families, where did they go? For the most part, they get Section 8 vouchers, Housing Choice vouchers. 

And so the fundamental issue, I think, during the time when we 

are rebuilding housing and making sure there are enough units— 

and there is a question about whether or not that is being done effectively—is are people able to use the units—I am sorry, the 

vouchers. 

Well, just yesterday, my organization released a study where we 

sent testers to apartment complexes and to small landlords all 

across the City and inquired whether or not they would allow a 

renter to use a voucher. What we found was 82 percent of the time, 

landlords refused to accept Section 8 and Housing Choice vouchers. 

So the thing that is supposed to bridge the gap right now for people 

who do not have public housing to rely on is the Housing Choice 

voucher. But what happens if landlords will not take the voucher? 

Now this is a huge and very difficult issue. And it also becomes 

racialized because 99 percent of people in the City of New Orleans 

who rely on Section 8 and Housing Choice vouchers are African 

American. So when landlords refuse to take vouchers 82 percent of 

the time, it has a disparate discriminatory effect on African-American voucher holders. 

In addition, we interviewed landlords and asked them well, why 

did you not take the voucher, what was your reasoning for denying 

folks based on the voucher? Sometimes we got very clear racial 

comments. For instance, people said, we do not want these people 

with dreadlocks living in our complex. I will read you one quote 

that is extremely disturbing, from a landlord. He said, ‘‘I won’t take 

vouchers until black ministers start teaching morals and ethics to 

their own so that they stop having litters of pups like animals and 

they are not milking the system.’’ And he refused to take the 

voucher based on that. 

34 

Now of course, generally people who live in public housing and 

have vouchers have to have jobs. For the most part, people work, 

right? Unless you are elderly or disabled, people work. So these are 

generally unfair stereotypes and untrue stereotypes about folks. 

The second thing that landlords said consistently was that they 

were frustrated with their own dealings with the Housing Authority of New Orleans. Consistently they would make agreements to 

take voucher holders in the past and what would happen is that 

they would go 2, 3, sometimes 4 or 5 months and never receive a 

payment. We talked to one landlord who said that right now he is 

owed more than $5,000 by the Housing Authority of New Orleans 

because they have not paid on valid contracts. There is another 

large scale landlord who is owed $25,000 by the Housing Authority 

of New Orleans. They also talked about basic issues of folks just 

not answering the phone and being discourteous. 

And all of these things work to make it such that people do not 

want to work with the Housing Authority and do not want to rely 

on the voucher program. 

So we are unclear about what is going to happen with hard unit 

public housing. But in the meantime, we are relying on vouchers 

and if vouchers cannot be used 82 percent of the time, then New 

Orleans renters in New Orleans are going to be in a very difficult 

position. 

So I encourage and implore you and the subcommittee to look at 

this issue and to consider it very heavily as you promulgate legislation on these issues. 

Thank you. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you very much. 

Ms. Tuggle. 

STATEMENT OF LAURA TUGGLE, SOUTHEAST LOUISIANA 

LEGAL SERVICES 

Ms. TUGGLE. Good afternoon. Thank you, Chairwoman Waters 

and Mr. Cleaver, for allowing me to come here today to testify 

about remaining affordable housing needs almost 4 years after 

Katrina. I especially also want to thank you for your leadership in 

bringing recovery funds to our area. 

I work at the Legal Aid office, which is called Southeast Louisiana Legal Services. Most of our service area was severely devastated by Katrina and the elderly, disabled, and low-income families that we serve on a daily basis are still struggling to try to obtain decent housing that they can afford. I know this committee’s 

interest and continued support will make a difference in that daily 

struggle. 

While tremendous resources have come our way, we still have 

such a long way to go. We all understand that the tax credit deals 

are in crisis, but even the tax credit deals that were planned were 

only going to repair a fraction of what we lost, only about 40 percent of our pre-Katrina affordable housing stock. 

There is also the looming end of the Disaster Housing Assistance 

Program, or DHAP, at the end of this month for most families. And 

the lack of affordable rental units, including public housing that is 

actually ready now is extremely troubling. Post-Katrina, we all 

know homelessness has doubled. We are also faced with other nonVerDate Nov 24 2008 12:01 Mar 02, 2010 Jkt 053251 PO 00000 Frm 00040 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 K:\DOCS\53251.TXT TERRIE
35 

‘‘Big Four’’ sites, such as Iberville and the Florida site that may be 

on the chopping block. 

Frankly, for many folks, the road home is still under construction, full of potholes, and the bridge is out. For many, it has been 

a road to nowhere. 

We are bracing ourselves here for the end of DHAP. Thankfully, 

we have been allocated voucher funding to provide permanent 

housing assistance to about half of the families locally. But the conversion process has gone extremely slow and additional extensions 

have been necessary, at least two so far. Of about the 9,000 DHAP 

families in New Orleans, only about half have been eligible for a 

voucher. That leaves us about 3,900 families who may have remaining unmet housing needs. Of course, 850 of them are elderly 

and disabled families who have been either denied vouchers or 

whose file is still in limbo. While HANO and HUD have worked 

very hard to reach these families, additional efforts are needed. We 

cannot afford folks falling through the cracks and we can certainly 

not afford any increase in homelessness. 

Despite voucher funding for DHAP and extensions, significant 

housing needs still exist, particularly for low-income families with 

incomes between 50 to 80 percent of area median income. Unlike 

other HUD programs, the income limit for vouchers is only 50 percent of AMI. Because of the high rents that pervade our City, many 

of our workforce families on DHAP will still face significant affordability gaps when the program ends in just a few days. 

The situation is even bleaker for homeowners who are on DHAP 

with incomes at these levels. Take Clarence, who is an outreach 

worker at UNITY, getting people off the street every day. He is 

worried that in a few days, he is going to have to join them. He 

cannot get a voucher due to his income, his rent is $995 a month, 

the mortgage on his Katrina-damaged home is $935, and his income is only $1,800 a month. 

There is a possible safety net for families like Clarence. The LRA has allocated $5 million in CDBG funds for up to 12 months of 

temporary rent assistance. Unfortunately, the service delivery system to administer this program is simply not ready. If DHAP were 

extended for 2 more months for everyone, there would be time for 

this program to kick in. Additionally, our City is poised to get $7.5 

million in homeless prevention funds under the stimulus, which 

should be hitting the street sometime in October. Our recommendations regarding DHAP are: 

To extend it for everyone to allow a smoother landing as new resources become available; 

To review all prior denials and withdrawn status of elderly and 

disabled families on DHAP for possible voucher eligibility; and 

To prioritize vouchers to families who moved out of FEMA trailers when they were being pressured earlier this year. 

Another huge problem is the current status of the HUD multifamily stock, which we never hear talked about. This stock of privately owned properties had a direct HUD subsidy and provided 

thousands of deeply affordable units. Also, these units had families 

in them with similar incomes as those in public housing. 

As of September of last year, HUD reported 3,314 units of this 

multi-family stock was closed. Of that amount, 96 percent had SecVerDate Nov 24 2008 12:01 Mar 02, 2010 Jkt 053251 PO 00000 Frm 00041 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 K:\DOCS\53251.TXT TERRIE
36 

tion 8 project based contracts. Those contracts had been suspended 

since Katrina. Many of the deals on the multi-family side that were 

hoping to reopen are plagued with the same financing gaps as public housing. Our community could wind up permanently losing not 

only thousands of public housing units but thousands of HUD assisted multi-family units. In addition to the 3,300 units above, 

there are another 1,500 units that have been lost from prepayments. 

We would like to recommend in regard to multi-family stock that: 

Any suspended project based Section 8 contracts be transferred 

to other deeply affordable properties if that site cannot reopen; and 

Tenant protection vouchers for all prepaid multi-family sites be 

issued. 

We need to get a report made to this committee from HUD on 

the status of all multi-family housing and a report on the issuance 

of tenant protection vouchers to 1,500 families. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Tuggle can be found on page 122 

of the appendix.] 

Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you very much. 

Ms. Wiggins, thank you. Again, I was at the park yesterday looking for you, but I want to thank you for all your work, all that leadership that you have provided to public housing residents, and I 

look forward to talking with you. 

STATEMENT OF CYNTHIA WIGGINS, HANO RESIDENT 

ADVISORY BOARD 

Ms. WIGGINS. Good morning, Congressman Cleaver and Congresswoman Waters. On behalf of the Citywide Tenant Association, 

we want to thank you for this opportunity to present before you 

today. We also especially want to thank Congresswoman Waters for 

her commitment and her dedication to ensuring that the rights of 

low-income families and public housing families were not being violated after Hurricane Katrina. 

In my written testimony, we presented information on all of the 

public housing sites and not just the ‘‘Big Four.’’ Since Secretary 

Donovan’s swearing-in, we have been afforded the opportunity to 

sit at the table and have conversations with the housing authority 

with respect to the redevelopment that is taking place at each of 

the public housing sites. So the information that we provided in the 

written testimony is information that we actually know is going on. 

However, we do have some concerns with respect to the Lafitte 

redevelopment and the lack of funding that has been awarded to 

the B.W. Cooper housing development. It is our opinion that HUD 

needs to allocate additional money for the redevelopment at B.W. 

Cooper and I am certain Donna Johnigan will speak to that following me. 

In my written testimony, we talked about the Section 8 program, 

and while the Section 8 program has truly assisted families here 

in New Orleans, we do believe that the discrimination that Mr. 

Perry is talking about is real and it is prevalent. Residents who are 

moving from subsidized housing such as public housing are feeling 

threatened with homelessness because of the utility costs, because 

of the enormous amount of security deposit that is being asked for. 

37 

They are feeling threatened because landlords, those who choose to 

manipulate the program, have placed them in leases that they cannot get out of, some of them to the extent that they have threatened the residents to get out because they were complaining about 

the conditions that they were living in. We have some concerns 

about the water bills that residents have been forced to carry and 

take on water bills that were not their water bills. We have residents who have been asked to pay utilities that were not their utilities, where construction work was taking place at their unit prior 

to moving in, and that utility cost was passed on to them when 

they went to have the lights turned on. 

While the Section 8 program is certainly a good program, we are 

of the opinion that it is not for low-income families. It is really for 

the working poor. And our elderly residents are suffering, some of 

them are living in houses without utilities, being very quiet about 

it because their living arrangement is in jeopardy. When the lights 

are turned off, the housing authority or the landlord is required to 

report it and then cancel the Section 8 voucher. That is a great 

concern for us and we have seen an enormous increase in our elderly residents having no utilities and struggling with paying high 

light bills and water bills. 

Also, we want to make a recommendation to this committee with 

respect to these lease agreements that our residents are being 

forced to enter into. It is our opinion that the housing authority 

should develop a lease, a lease that protects the resident as well 

as the landlord, where there is a standard lease that they can enter 

into and we do not have all of these different lease arrangements. 

We are also asking that HUD would mandate that there is a 

limit on security deposits and base that security deposit on the unit 

size. We have a lot of our residents who cannot come up with 

$1,800. We have residents who have been evicted or have been 

asked to leave by a landlord and the landlord would literally fight 

them to the bitter end to keep from giving them their security deposits even though they are turning the unit back over. 

We believe that there has to be some kind of control in place 

where residents can go and file grievances not just with Mr. Perry’s 

office but for the housing authority about the violations that are occurring with these landlords. Some of these houses are substandard, some of the conditions are awful, and we have residents 

in here today who will testify that some of these houses are in deplorable condition and it is worse than the units that we were living in when we were in public housing. 

We also want to say that the traditional public housing, there 

are some old and outdated standards there that must be changed. 

They must be changed because they do not conform to today’s 

standards. This housing authority does not conduct market studies 

with utilities. The utility allowance is not enough and it is not 

enough because the utility cost is going up every year and there 

is never a market study done to make the necessary adjustments. 

So persons who have to pay utilities, their rent can be offset 

through those utility adjustments. 

We also have some concerns about some of the issues within the 

housing authority admission and continued occupancy policy, but 

38 

the only way that we can address those issues is if the regulations 

are changed. 

Under the tax credit program, we believe that Congress should 

mandate that HUD and the PHAs and the developers all enter into 

an agreement that the tax credit ACC units and the project based 

units incorporate the same standards for occupancy. We have a difference in the occupancy standards and we believe that you guys 

need to ensure that you do not have a separation of what each developer is actually doing. 

Again, we want to thank you. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you very much. Thank you for 

being here. 

Ms. WIGGINS. May I say one last thing? 

Chairwoman WATERS. Yes. 

Ms. WIGGINS. At the request of Elisha, we also believe that HUD 

should be removed from the agency and that we bring in an executive monitor to oversee the housing authority. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Wiggins can be found on page 

154 of the appendix.] 

Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you very much. 

Ms. Patterson, I know of your work. Please tell us what you 

came today to testify about. 

STATEMENT OF ANGELA PATTERSON, DIRECTOR, UNITY 

WELCOME HOME 

Ms. PATTERSON. Chairwoman Waters, Congressman Cleaver, and 

the other members of the subcommittee, we thank you for inviting 

me to testify today on behalf of UNITY of Greater New Orleans. 

And by the way, if I might digress for a moment, I do not know, 

Madam Chairwoman, if you recall a moment when Martha Kegel 

and myself were in Washington, D.C., advocating for the recovery 

vouchers for the persons who were most vulnerable in our community. And it was a very, very dark moment for us because it did 

not look as though the vouchers were going to be passed. And we 

met you in the hallways of Congress and you said, ‘‘That’s not 

going to happen.’’ And it passed. And we so much thank you for 

your leadership and your support. 

Chairwoman WATERS. You are welcome. 

Ms. PATTERSON. UNITY is a nonprofit organization and HUDdesignated lead agency for an award-winning collaborative of 60 

nonprofit and governmental agencies providing housing and services for the homeless. Our mission is to coordinate community partnerships to prevent, reduce, and end homelessness in New Orleans 

and the neighboring Jefferson Parish. In addition to raising and 

distributing funds to support our member organizations’ work, 

UNITY conducts homeless outreach on the streets and, very importantly, in abandoned buildings and rehabs supportive housing 

apartment buildings in partnership with the New York based organization Common Ground Institute, which helps the public locate 

affordable housing and advocates for public policy to prevent and 

reduce homelessness. 

While thousands of homes in the New Orleans area have been 

repaired since the levees broke, often with the help of caring volunteers from across the Nation, the extent of the devastation here reVerDate Nov 24 2008 12:01 Mar 02, 2010 Jkt 053251 PO 00000 Frm 00044 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 K:\DOCS\53251.TXT TERRIE
39 

mains simply overwhelming. There is still so much more to be done 

to rebuild our community. 

Four years later, the effects of the levee failures are most keenly 

felt by New Orleanians who are its most vulnerable residents. For 

many New Orleanians with limited means, especially the elderly, 

those with physical or mental disabilities or those who are struggling to raise a family on the minimum wage, the struggle for a 

decent place to live continues. 

Although New Orleans currently stands at only 74 percent of its 

pre-Katrina population, homelessness has nearly doubled since 

Katrina, from 6,300 homeless persons on any given day before the 

hurricane, to a current estimate of 11,500 people meeting the HUD 

definition of homelessness. That is, people who are living and trying to live a human life in abandoned buildings, people living in 

cars and on the street, those living in homeless facilities who are 

stuck there and cannot get out, and those who are being evicted or 

discharged from institutions who have nowhere else to go. Six thousand people are currently estimated to be living in New Orlean’s 

more than 65,000 abandoned buildings, while about 5,500 others 

are living in other deplorable homeless situations. During the 

course of 2008, the UNITY network of organizations provided services and/or housing to 18,875 unduplicated homeless people, including 4,667 homeless children. 

Last year, UNITY and its member organizations and government 

partners successfully rehoused in the course of one year 457 people 

into permanent housing. Those people had formerly been living in 

large, squalid homeless camps in the middle of downtown New Orleans. We are looking at people in abandoned buildings. These people are the sickest of the sick and the work that is being done by 

the nine measly workers of the outreach team, these very, very 

committed and fearless people, is both dangerous and difficult 

going into these 65,888 abandoned properties. This work that is 

being done in these abandoned buildings is unprecedented anywhere in America. Abandoned buildings dwellers are living in the 

midst of crumbling ceilings and walls, mold all over the place, living with a bucket beside them where they have to use the bathroom. There is no electricity, no sewage, no running water in these 

places, and this is how people are being forced to live in the richest 

country in the world. 

We are so grateful to Congress for granting last year the request 

of UNITY, the Louisiana Supportive Housing Coalition and the 

Louisiana Recovery Authority for the 3,000 Hurricane Recovery 

permanent supportive housing vouchers which were meant for people with disabilities in hurricane devastated areas of Louisiana. 

And we are especially grateful to you, Congresswoman Waters, for 

the important role that you played in that effort, as well as to Senator Mary Landrieu, the House leadership, the Louisiana delegation, and the Mayor and City Council of New Orleans. 

Of the 3,000 PSH vouchers, 752 are being targeted to the New 

Orleans homeless. What we need is: 

$5 million to implement a robust City-wide campaign to search 

for and rescue the thousands of vulnerable people living in the 

City’s 65,000 abandoned buildings; 

40 

$35 million for 700 additional shelter plus care vouchers designated for the New Orleans disabled and elderly homeless, especially those living in those abandoned buildings; and 

$100 million to create housing stock for the poorest and most vulnerable which is needed to fill the anticipated gaps in financing, 

which is the goal of the New Orleans/Jefferson— 

Chairwoman WATERS. Ms. Patterson, I am going to have to bring 

you to a close and for one very, very good reason. Mr. Cleaver has 

to catch a plane and so we are going to yield to him the time to 

ask some questions before he leaves. 

Thank you very much. 

Ms. PATTERSON. Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Patterson can be found on page 

99 of the appendix.] 

Mr. CLEAVER. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. I apologize that 

I need to be in Kansas City by 7:00 tonight. I have just two questions. 

Ms. Wiggins, I am not sure, but were you suggesting that a receivership is where you would suggest the PHA be placed? 

Ms. WIGGINS. We are asking that HUD is removed and an executive monitor is put in place. And the reason for that is because if 

we have an issue, it is HUD where we get our redress. There is 

no place for us to get it because HUD is actually managing the 

housing authority at this point. So we are asking that they are removed and an executive monitor is put in place, so when there are 

issues that the residents are having, that we can go to HUD to get 

it. That is what we are asking for. 

Mr. CLEAVER. I mean, Federal legislation of course places housing authorities under HUD, that is Federal legislation. 

Ms. WIGGINS. They can appoint an executive monitor instead of 

a HUD employee. 

Mr. CLEAVER. No, sometimes courts will appoint a receiver, 

which I do not think you want. 

Ms. WIGGINS. No. 

Mr. CLEAVER. But I do not think you can remove HUD. 

Ms. SINHA. The legislation says that if HUD has been a receiver 

of a public housing authority for more than 3 years, they shall then 

be removed. Meaning that if they have done it for more than 3 

years and something is going on that has not been improved for 

more than 2 years. So there is a provision of law that says that 

there is a time limit when HUD is supposed to be receivership and 

when they are supposed to move it on. So the law actually says 

that HUD should move on after a certain point. And my understanding is that HUD has been a receiver of HANO since 2002. 

Mr. CLEAVER. So you are saying that you want the public housing authority, which means the board, a board, to now assume the 

leadership as opposed to the Federal Department of Housing and 

Urban Development. 

Ms. SINHA. Yes. 

Mr. PERRY. One of the things that has frustrated so many people 

in this City is that administrators from outside of New Orleans 

have been making decisions about housing for New Orleanians. 

And we just think that is simply unfair. 

41 

One of the things that happened in the course of the demolition 

process was that there was a memorandum which the Mayor submitted which said that in order to demolish you have to agree to 

allow there to be at least a three-person board and that three-person board would have a HUD representative, it would have a public housing representative and a representative of the Mayor. And 

the Administration has not been willing to do that so far. 

Mr. CLEAVER. Excuse me. I hate to interrupt you, but most housing authorities are appointed by the mayor and there is a makeup 

of course with—there is supposed to be a residential member and 

then probably the others are appointed maybe through some formula, it depends on the City. So I am trying to get a picture, you 

are saying the 2 years are over, Ms. Tuggle, and so you believe that 

now is the time for the housing authority—meaning the legal unit 

that supervises the housing authority—be appointed and assume 

that role or are you saying that we need to have a court-appointed 

receiver? 

Ms. WIGGINS. No, a citizen board. 

Ms. TUGGLE. The residents that I speak with would prefer to 

have local control, as their number one choice. 

Mr. CLEAVER. We use the term public housing authority, PHA, 

but that is not accurate, the authority is the board. And so you are 

saying that is what you want? 

Ms. WIGGINS. We want a citizen board put back in place. That 

is what we are asking for. 

Mr. CLEAVER. Is there unanimity, Ms. Sinha? 

Ms. SINHA. Anita. 

Mr. CLEAVER. Everybody is in favor of that? 

Ms. SINHA. Yes. 

Mr. CLEAVER. I am not mad about it, I mean I appointed the 

board when I was mayor and the residents generally prefer that 

because they could touch me and they can touch the housing authority as opposed to Federal—thank you and I appreciate that and 

again, I apologize for having to leave. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you so very much for spending time 

with us, Mr. Cleaver, please get your plane, get back to the district, 

I know that your constituents are waiting on you. 

Let me just say to this panel that I am familiar with all of you 

because of your advocacy. You have been on the front lines in all 

of the ways that you have continued to describe here today. I have 

worked so closely with The Advancement Project. We have done everything from, you know, tour and visit the ‘‘Big Four’’ units where 

women were busy scrubbing up mold, to march in Washington, 

D.C. And the testimony that has been provided by The Advancement Project has helped to educate me about what was taking 

place. 

Mr. Perry, I thank you for your work and this business of Section 

8 discrimination is going to have to be dealt with in some shape 

or form. We have fair housing laws but those laws do not reach 

into the Section 8 problem that you are describing. Not only are 

you vividly describing for us discrimination based on the fact that 

people just do not want to take Section 8 and they have all these 

myths about who Section 8 people are. You just told us that there 

was some outright racial discrimination that was described very 

42 

vividly to you, and we really have to see what we can do to make 

the civil rights laws extend into this Section 8 problem. 

Ms. Tuggle, Ms. Wiggins, Ms. Patterson, all of the talk about 

Section 8 that you have shared with us today helps me to understand that it is time for a revitalization of the policies that oversee 

and implement Section 8. This business about the deposits that are 

required of people who certainly cannot afford it is such a deterrent 

and such an obstacle to being able to just get into a place. And I 

have also been made aware before I came here today of another 

city where it appears that some landlords have been very, very 

good at keeping people’s deposits. As I understand it, not only do 

they come up with pictures to show damage, but sometimes there 

is longstanding damage that there has been an attempt to get the 

landlords to correct that have not been corrected, and then we do 

not have anybody advocating that the tenants get their deposit 

back, based on the fact that damage has been there and not been 

taken care of by the landlord. So I am focused on this and I am 

certainly going to deal with this. 

The lease problem had been brought to our attention when I 

went over to Dallas, I believe it was, and you are absolutely correct 

and I like the recommendation about what to do about this. Our 

tenants from public housing were confronted with having to sign 

leases that they could not get out of, and should not be put in that 

position of being in a lease that you cannot get out of, for a lot of 

reasons. And it seems to me that the housing authority or HUD or 

somebody needs to talk about what is a reasonable lease for public 

housing tenants or other tenants so they are not left with a big 

legal problem confronting them that they have to negotiate all by 

themselves on these leases. 

So I am going to take a look at the revitalization of all of Section 

8 dealing with these problems, including the problems of the cost 

of rising utility bills that people are confronted with. 

So what you have done today is to help me and the staff focus 

on what we need to do further in dealing with Section 8 and public 

housing and all of the issues that you bring before us. 

The homeless problem in America indeed, Ms. Patterson, is 

shameful, all over America, including Los Angeles. What has happened here in New Orleans is unconscionable and you are absolutely right, the consistent figures that we get about the doubling 

of the homelessness, and it has been described about people living 

under bridges and in cars, but you painted a picture today about 

these abandoned buildings and the conditions under which people 

are living, which must be dealt with. 

The question that I asked of the last panel about whether or not 

the availability of this new Section 8 would be made available also 

to the homeless was not clearly answered for me, but we will pursue that, because as I said, and I do not know if he understood or 

not, he talked about publicizing it and putting it in the local newspapers. When you are homeless and you have no money, you are 

not going to spend your money on a newspaper to see whether or 

not the housing authority has some new policies or practices. So I 

am going to pursue whether or not the mobile unit that was somewhat described will be moving around into those areas, and all of 

the other problems associated with Section 8. 

43 

Thank you so much for being here today. Do not leave. We have 

with us, as you know, the Representative for this area, Mr. Cao, 

who would like to raise some questions with you I am sure. In 

doing his job of representing, he is confronted with these problems 

every day. While we are in Washington, you are coming home to 

them and you must have a lot of thoughts about them. So I yield 

time to Mr. Cao. 

Mr. CAO. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. 

This is a question to the whole panel. As you know, there is not 

just one type of person or situation that creates homelessness. If 

you could advise the City and some of the developers and officials 

here about the best way to address the needs of this population, 

what are some of the suggestions you would offer. And I would like 

to begin with Ms. Sinha. 

Ms. SINHA. Let me repeat the question so I understand it. 

What— 

Mr. CAO. What would you advise the City leaders, the developers 

and officials with respect to how can we cope with the situation of 

homelessness when we know that there is not just one type of person or situation that would create this situation? 

Ms. SINHA. I think the theme that comes to mind—and this is 

very hard when you have rules and regulations governing this 

world—but is flexibility. We are in a place, both in terms of our 

current economic crisis but also the fact that we are dealing with 

the problem of people who have been displaced moving from home 

to home, city to city, for the past 4 years. And to then have them 

have this mound of requirements in order to get their foot into the 

door and a roof over their head is completely—it is inhumane. 

If you have credit checks, for example, you are required to have 

a credit card. 

Mr. CAO. If you would keep your answer please— 

Ms. SINHA. Yes, okay. So I would say barriers such as credit 

checks, barriers such as criminal background checks, the homeless 

population are exposed to a lot of criminalization, are two huge 

problems. The employment requirement is also a huge problem. So 

flexibility in those kinds of requirements are needed in this situation. 

Mr. CAO. Mr. Perry? 

Mr. PERRY. Thank you. I would offer a few things. The first is 

that oftentimes right now, people criminalize renters. It is this idea 

that it is so much better to be a homeowner. And of course it is 

great to have homeowners and we need them, but not all people 

will be homeowners. So you have to be open to the idea of folks 

being renters. 

The second is that a lot of times when people do create programs 

for renters, they do not focus on people who are extremely low income. And so you have to target funding for folks who are extremely low income. 

The third is the issue that has been raised today and that is that 

you have to realize that a lot of times people who are homeless are 

not going to be able to go through the typical application process. 

So you have to seek people out who are homeless and make sure 

that they can navigate, and you have to streamline frankly the application process. 

44 

And then the last thing, the support for nongovernment entities 

that actually get out in the community and do a lot of the work. 

So a group like UNITY, for instance, if fully funded, can put a huge 

dent in the homeless problem here in the City of New Orleans, but 

oftentimes nongovernmental organizations are struggling just to 

stay alive and so it is very difficult to then at the same time work 

in the homeless problem in the City. 

Mr. CAO. Ms. Tuggle? 

Ms. TUGGLE. Thank you. I would make a couple of recommendations. One would be even with the permanent supportive housing 

vouchers that have come down, some of those are already—were already in the works and some of that housing came on line without 

the vouchers and now there is a swap-out going on. And we have 

already encountered so many homeless clients and other disabled 

clients who have been denied admission to the PSH units that are 

subsidized with the vouchers. And it is to the point now where we 

are getting ready to write a fellowship proposal to find an attorney 

to just focus on some of the admission issues with that population 

and some other advocacy issues. 

We have had developers tell us that they will not consider any 

reasonable accommodation if someone happens to have a record of 

an arrest, even if it is somewhat of a minor arrest. We have had 

some developers tell us one bad unit will ruin the entire property. 

So one thing that would be important is for the developers, landlords, to get more training about fair housing so there could be 

more vigorous enforcement of a lot of the issues that arise. 

Additionally, we would suggest that developers be flexible when 

working with residents on security deposits. You know, even developers that only charge $500—I say only because we are used to 

now, unfortunately, seeing $1,300 and $1,400 deposits—that you 

let folks pay that out over time. It is a huge barrier. 

And one last thing that I would mention that often keeps folks 

out of housing, there is this idea—and I am not sure exactly where 

it comes from—that the utility bill can only be in the head of 

household’s name. And while that is desirable, many folks after 

Katrina had sky high—I am sure you have heard about the sky 

high energy bills that ran forever and they were never shut off. 

And that has been a huge problem with being able to have people 

get back into housing. 

Mr. CAO. Ms. Wiggins, Ms. Patterson, if you could keep your answers brief, I would appreciate it. 

Ms. WIGGINS. Mine is going to be really brief. 

I think that there should be—I would recommend a waiver to 

some of the requirements that people have to meet when they come 

into public housing or subsidized housing. 

I would also recommend that there is a waiver for utilities for 

a reasonable period of time, because a lot of times they are coming 

from the street and they are homeless and they do not have income. Those who do have incomes, their family members are holding it, so there should be some provisions put in place to allow for 

a waiver for a period of time so they can adjust to having that responsibility. 

45 

And also, I think there needs to be a support resource center put 

in place where these families can go to to get clothing, furniture, 

and the necessary things they need to survive in those units. 

Mr. CAO. Ms. Patterson? 

Ms. PATTERSON. Thank you for proposing this question. Actually, 

it is contained in the recommendations of UNITY and I will be very 

brief with the three major recommendations. 

First of all, $5 million is needed to implement a robust outreach 

program. We have nine workers, there is no way in the world that 

of the two workers of those nine, who are presently going into 

abandoned buildings and finding the sickest of the sick, that this 

work can continue to be effectively done. So we need more money 

to beef-up the outreach team. 

We need $35 million to provide for 700 additional shelter plus 

care vouchers which is for the sick, the disabled, and the elderly 

homeless. 

And then to create housing stock for the poorest and most vulnerable persons, another $100 million is needed. 

Mr. CAO. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. I yield back the balance of my time. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Well, let me thank all of you for your patience, for the time that you have spent here today, for the testimony you have afforded us and the concerns that you have caused 

us to focus on. 

And let me just wrap this up by saying we have some of the developers who are going to come next. Ms. Sinha, you have been focused on the policies that are developed by some of the developers, 

or the developers. I have been talking with my staff about why 

does government allow developers to make public policy to begin 

with. But in addition to that, as I understand it, this is not a moveto-work situation, which means that they do not get to develop 

those kind of policies anywhere that relates to the criteria. So I will 

be taking a very, very, very close look at that. 

Thank you all very much. 

I would now like to invite our third panel to come forward: Mr. 

Jim Grauley, president and chief operating officer, Columbia Residential; Ms. Stephanie Mingo, former resident, St. Bernard Public 

Housing Development; Ms. Michelle Whetten, vice president and 

Gulf Coast director, Enterprise Community Partners; Ms. Valerie 

Johnson, former resident, Lafitte Public Housing Development; Mr. 

Keith B. Key, chief executive officer and president, KBK Enterprises; Ms. Donna Johnigan, vice president, B.W. Cooper Resident 

Council; Mr. Yusef Freeman, project manager, McCormack Baron 

Salazar; and Ms. Jocquelyn Marshall, president, C.J. Peete Resident Council. 

Thank you all for your patience. Thank you for coming here 

today to share your testimony with us. And we are going to start 

with Mr. Jim Grauley, president and chief operating officer, Columbia Residential. 

Am I pronouncing your name correctly? 

Mr. GRAULEY. It is ‘‘Grauley.’’ 

Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you. Will you begin the testimony 

for us? 

46 

We have a pretty large panel, so we are going to hold you to your 

time limits so that we will have an opportunity to raise some questions that need to be dealt with. Thank you. 

STATEMENT OF JIM GRAULEY, PRESIDENT AND CHIEF 

OPERATING OFFICER, COLUMBIA RESIDENTIAL 

Mr. GRAULEY. Good afternoon, Madam Chairwoman, Congressman Cao. My name is Jim Grauley, and I am the president and 

chief operating officer of Columbia Residential. I would like to 

thank you and the members of the Subcommittee on Housing and 

Community Opportunity for affording me the opportunity to address the subcommittee regarding the status of the ‘‘Big Four.’’ It 

is my honor to speak to you today representing our development 

team. 

Hurricane Katrina and the broken levees that followed devastated the City and the region. Included in the destruction was 

the St. Bernard housing project, which was deluged under several 

feet of water. These homes and the entire surrounding neighborhood were destroyed and the citizens were scattered across the Nation. This was an immense human tragedy as well as an unprecedented destruction within an American City. Madam Chairwoman, 

in this context, we began the daunting task of rebuilding the St. 

Bernard community and it is well underway for the affected families and the broader community. 

My company, Columbia Residential, was invited to New Orleans 

as a development partner for the redevelopment of St. Bernard. 

Building on the vision of HANO, the City and our partner, the 

Bayou District Foundation, we have launched the redevelopment of 

the surrounding area. Columbia Residential is a leader in the revitalization of housing—of distressed housing neighborhoods in several cities across the country. It is our experience and success in 

these other communities that made Columbia Residential the right 

partner to work for the Bayou District Foundation and the Housing 

Authority of New Orleans. 

Columbia builds and manages healthy mixed-income communities comprising over 4,500 units of housing, which are known for 

setting the standard of design quality and responsive management 

in their communities. Fully half of the families in these communities are public housing and former public housing families, either 

in the redeveloped sites or within off-site replacement housing. 

Over 1,000 of these units are apartments for low-income seniors in 

public housing assisted units. We serve also hundreds of families 

with special needs, disabilities, or who are transitioning from 

homelessness working with partners providing social services. 

I am pleased today to report that thanks to the incredible efforts 

of our partners at HANO, HUD, the State of Louisiana, the City, 

financial partners, and the resident partners, we were able to close 

phase I of the development late last year. As of today, construction 

is 30 percent complete on phase I of Columbia Park at the Bayou 

District, which includes the first 466 new homes. 

Ten new city blocks with new infrastructure are now in place 

and are filling with new homes. A community center and first 

apartment and townhome units will be available later this year. 

47 

Phase I will be completed by late 2010 with resident move-ins ongoing and continuing into 2011. 

I would like to pause, given the discussion about Section 3. We 

take very seriously our Section 3 compliance and reporting and outreach efforts. We report that regularly to HANO. But it was not 

characterized correctly in the prior testimony. 

During demolition at the St. Bernard site, we had 17 Section 3 

workers, 8 of whom were residents. As of today, on the new construction, we have 50 Section 3 workers who have been hired by 

our contractors and suppliers and by the general contractor, and 12 

of those are former residents. We take this seriously and we are 

at an early point and we will continue those efforts. Those numbers 

represent more than 70 percent of all the new jobs created at the 

site. 

Columbia Parc is a mixed-income community with multiple 

phases of development, 157 units in phase I and at least one-third 

of the units in subsequent phases, are set aside as public housing 

units specifically for returning families. We are pleased at the early 

response at this stage. 

Let me skip ahead just for time. We are principally a real estate 

developer and our communities serve people and families. We have 

made a sincere effort to firmly understand the unique circumstances in New Orleans and be sensitive to the pain and incredible challenges faced by families affected by the upheaval over 

the past couple of years. 

With the assistance of former St. Bernard residents, HANO, and 

a variety of outreach mechanisms, we have identified more than 

900 affected St. Bernard families who have traveled to other communities around New Orleans and across the country. After extensive outreach and a widely advertised application period, thus far, 

more than 400 families have expressed an interest in returning to 

the site. As of today, 276 former St. Bernard households have made 

application and been qualified by HANO for the initial site-based 

waiting list for the development. The opportunity to return will 

continue to be open to all former residents and this outreach on our 

part will continue. 

Kingsley House, a leading provider of social services to families 

in southeast Louisiana, is our partner who provides an array of 

services to returning former residents. They are working with families on an individual basis to prepare and succeed in returning to 

the community. 

Madam Chairwoman, I believe it is important that we say to you 

that throughout the life of this project and our involvement, priority for occupancy will be given to former residents of the St. Bernard community, particularly those who are elderly or disabled. 

Madam Chairwoman, we are well on our way through the first 

phase of building a healthy community that will transform an important area of New Orleans. We continue to learn daily as we, 

HANO, and Kingsley House work with resident families. We learn 

more ways that we can assist and provide services that will help 

make a return possible for as many families as possible. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you very much. 

Ms. Mingo. 

48 

STATEMENT OF STEPHANIE MINGO, FORMER RESIDENT, ST. 

BERNARD PUBLIC HOUSING DEVELOPMENT 

Ms. MINGO. My name is Stephanie Mingo. I want to thank you 

for allowing me to speak today. My heart kind of hurts me right 

now. 

I just want to talk about other residents. Every resident of public 

housing, just like every New Orleanian, has a right to return. Planning at the ‘‘Big Four’’ should be reflected on this. Currently, they 

do not. Public housing residents are being denied the right by 

HANO and the development. 

Columbia plans to bring 150 homes for public housing residents 

at the former St. Bernard, excluding at least 90 percent of the 

former residents. We should be rebuilding 1,500 units of public 

housing at St. Bernard, not 150. If they do one-third of public housing, one-half of Section 8, and one-third of tax credit, then it would 

take care of the low income. But why is two-thirds of St. Bernard 

being developed on purpose for the people who did not live there 

before Katrina? 

Finally, the rules and regulations or eligibility requirements at 

the redevelopment of the ‘‘Big Four’’ are being designed to exclude 

low-income New Orleanians, especially public housing residents. 

I have been working on Section 3 a whole lot, I have something 

written down, but I want to clarify something. I have to write letters to the development. HANO and the developments are not complying with Section 3 requirements. They claim to be, but we have 

yet to see hard data provided for what they said. 

Section 3 was created so that impacted communities will benefit 

from redevelopment. In other words, as a resident of St. Bernard, 

I do not see my constituency benefitting from the jobs and the contracts produced so far. I have attempted to contact HANO’s Chairwoman Diane Johnson and HUD staff members, including Stacy 

Hanson, the Director of HUD’s Economic Opportunity Division, and 

Marvelle Robinson, the field office director for HUD in New Orleans about my concern. I have yet to hear from any of them. I have 

copies of my June 14th letter sent to them, and if this committee 

would like it, I will provide it for you. 

I feel this committee should force HANO to release all data of 

hiring and contracts to be published so that we can get to the bottom of this quickly. 

Iberville, stimulus money is being used to fix up some part of 

Iberville. As much as we appreciate it, we need much more than 

a fresh coat of paint or new lightbulbs. We need to have all the unoccupied units fixed up and rented out so what happened to St. 

Bernard, Lafitte, C.J. Peete, and B.W. Cooper will not happen in 

Iberville. This is also a security issue. If you occupy those developments, you would not have to worry about crime—neighbors can 

watch out for each other, is what I am trying to say, if they were 

occupied. 

Having them board-up apartments increases crime and reduces 

the community’s ability to keep on one another’s space. We need 

our utilities permanently upgraded. The needs of Iberville should 

never be used as an excuse to demolish or redevelop it along the 

lines of the ‘‘Big Four.’’ We need a reinvestment in Iberville as it 

once was. 

49 

As for Lafitte, I believe the remaining 100 apartments should be 

reopened and reoccupied by residents immediately. Across the City 

and across the Nation, we should implement a moratorium on the 

demolition of public housing. 

To conclude, we need a one-for-one replacement of public housing 

that was demolished after Katrina. This means building more than 

5,000 units of public housing in New Orleans. Vouchers have failed 

us. They do not secure quality housing and they do not provide tenants with a home. Vouchers might be a part of a housing strategy 

but only true public housing can reduce the rent price in our City. 

And one more thing I would like to say, I probably have more 

names of public housing residents than Mr. Grauley. Me and a lot 

of other residents have worked on the ground every single day. I 

have a job, I have been working 13 years where I am at. I mean, 

do not get me wrong, I want something new and I like something 

new, because I deserve something new, but the way that St. Bernard is coming up, it is no better than what it was before. We cannot talk to the developer. We are shut out. If we say something 

that they do not like—and this is the God’s honest truth—we are 

shut out. We have at least 10 people—he was right, because I give 

him the benefit of the doubt, he might be right, eight people working on the ground. We had our own—I forgot the word I am looking 

for—but we had our own job fair, we had 150 people come out. We 

went out on the street to deliver the applications, then we did a 

re-check on the applications. They said we had to go to HANO, I 

just saw HANO at a meeting. HANO said we have to go back to 

Columbia. We did our own diagram and wanted our own builder, 

they denied that. My heart is still hurting. Thank you for listening. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Mingo and other material referred to can be found on page 91 of the appendix.] 

Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you, and without objection, your 

letter and your list will be submitted for the record and I will take 

that and we will review that. 

Ms. Whetten. 

STATEMENT OF MICHELLE WHETTEN, VICE PRESIDENT AND 

GULF COAST DIRECTOR, ENTERPRISE COMMUNITY PARTNERS 

Ms. WHETTEN. Thank you, Chairwoman Waters and Congressman Cao, for holding this important hearing. My name is Michelle 

Whetten and I am vice president and Gulf Coast director for Enterprise Community Partners. To date, Enterprise has invested over $100 million in grants, 

loans, and equity with 1,450 homes completed and 3,000 in some 

stage of construction or development in Louisiana and Mississippi. 

Our most ambitious project in this effort has been the redevelopment and revitalization of the historic Treme/Lafitte neighborhood 

on and around the site of the Lafitte public housing development. 

Before creating a plan for Lafitte, Providence and Enterprise engaged a local community organizing group to help us locate nearly 

600 of the nearly 865 Lafitte households who had evacuated to cities across the country. With a team of architects and planners, we 

held a series of charrettes both in New Orleans and in Houston, 

where residents were involved in the design process and articuVerDate Nov 24 2008 12:01 Mar 02, 2010 Jkt 053251 PO 00000 Frm 00055 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 K:\DOCS\53251.TXT TERRIE
50 

lated a vision for what the new community would look like. And 

our site plan today reflects very closely that vision of the residents. 

The 27-acre parcel of the Lafitte site and the scattered site properties involved in the redevelopment do allow us to accomplish two 

important goals: to honor our commitment for a one-for-one replacement standard; and to deconcentrate an area of poverty. And 

I would like to correct—the information that was presented from 

the Times Picayune was inaccurate. In our first major redevelopment phase, which includes 568 rental units, only 40 of those are 

low income tax credit only units. A full 387 units are project based 

Section 8 and the balance are ACC, which means that 528 of our 

first units will be affordable to the typical public housing occupant. 

With the Housing Authority of New Orleans and our local partner Providence, we will break ground on the first phase of the new 

development next week. This development will meet Enterprise’s 

nationally recognized green community standards. And while we 

look forward to getting construction underway, we would be the 

first to acknowledge that it has taken far too long to get to this 

point. 

Although we were awarded CDBG funds and tax credits in 2006 

for this development, demolition was not completed until October 

2008. And that timing coincided with the dramatic decline in the 

credit market that I am sure you are all too familiar with. 

While the stimulus act provided several important and helpful 

programs to address the problems with the low income housing tax 

credit market, Gulf Opportunity Zone loans and housing tax credits 

have been determined by Treasury to not be included in the important tax credit exchange program and the current deadline of December 2010 for placement of these credits in service is causing a 

major point of risk and disincentive for investors to purchase credits in the GO Zone. And I think it is important to note that a majority of the affordable rental housing that was to be redeveloped 

following Katrina in Louisiana and Mississippi in particular depended on these GO Zone tax credits to be constructed. So we believe that extending that placed in service date and allowing the 

exchange program to apply to these credits would allow the majority of those units to be finished, which currently there is approximately 6,800 units in Louisiana and Mississippi at risk of not being 

developed. 

We maintain a database of former residents that is regularly updated and verified through letters, surveys, and monthly meetings 

and we provide residents updates on the progress of the development and solicit their input on important issues such as selection 

of a property management company and other activities. As construction gets underway, we will provide clear instructions to residents on the process for applying to live in the community, the new 

community. 

With $2.5 million in in-kind services provided by Catholic Charities USA to former Lafitte residents in New Orleans, Houston, and 

Baton Rouge, and other philanthropic support, over 450 former Lafitte resident families have been assisted with finding stable housing and addressing basic needs after being displaced by Hurricane 

Katrina. 

51 

And Catholic Charities in January of this year reopened the Sojourner Truth Community Center adjacent to the Lafitte site, 

where families and residents can access a variety of programs. 

We are grateful for the leadership of Chairwoman Waters and 

others in Congress for keeping a spotlight on the ongoing recovery 

needs of the Gulf Coast. Four years following the most devastating 

disaster in our country’s history, the long-term recovery of the region, particularly for the region’s lowest income and most vulnerable residents, is far from complete. 

So we would ask again that Congress take action to extend the 

placed in service deadline 2 years and consider the tax credit exchange program so that these units can get built. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Whetten can be found on page 

147 of the appendix.] 

Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you. 

Ms. Johnson. 

STATEMENT OF VALERIE S. JOHNSON, FORMER RESIDENT, 

LAFITTE PUBLIC HOUSING DEVELOPMENT 

Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you. My name is Valerie Johnson, and I am 

a former Lafitte resident. Thank you for taking time out of your 

busy schedule to hear from the ‘‘Big Four’’ and what relates to 

their future. 

I had to do a little change on my agenda, where I said the current status of public housing in New Orleans appears to be on the 

fast track. I changed it. Right now I am looking forward to the 

building. In the process, I have been afforded the opportunity to be 

a part of the planning process from the beginning as it relates to: 

The type of housing we will live in; 

Saving of the oak trees; 

Monthly meetings since its inception; and 

Working in concert with Providence and other social service entities at Sojourner Truth Community Center addressing the needs of 

residents and identifying resources to support these needs. 

We are looking forward to the groundbreaking in the upcoming 

week at the Lafitte public housing development. 

The Section 8 program offers little or no support as it relates to 

assisting residents making conscious decisions in the application of 

the Section 8 program. Many residents and elderly and persons on 

fixed incomes are struggling to survive, making decisions on buying 

their medications, food, and other staples to sustain them or paying 

their utilities. 

There is little or no affordable housing for former residents and 

attaining a job with livable wages is virtually obsolete. The challenges may seem unreachable, but with the right support services 

in place, it could ease the stress of making dire consequences to 

survive. 

Many residents of public housing are currently spread throughout this country in strange lands with strange people. They want 

to come home, but where is their home that was promised 4 years 

ago? 

It is time to stop procrastinating and blame shifting and work in 

concert with social service agencies to reach goals that seem out of 

52 

reach, and receive the residents of public housing back home in a 

land that is familiar to them and they call home. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you very much, Ms. Johnson. 

Mr. Key. 

STATEMENT OF KEITH B. KEY, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER 

AND PRESIDENT, KBK ENTERPRISES 

Mr. KEY. Good afternoon and thank you for allowing me to come 

and speak about the B.W. Cooper project. My name is Keith Key, 

and I am the president and CEO of KBK Enterprises. 

Let me start by saying that it has been an honor for me to be 

involved in this project and an honor to work with our partners at 

the B.W. Cooper Resident Management Corporation. We were fortunate that they chose us to be the developer prior to even the submission of the RFP, which we all agreed to respond to together as 

a team. So we were proud to be selected by the residents before we 

were selected by HANO. So that is an honor for me just to be involved and trusted by the residents. 

Let me begin at least summarizing my response. The project is 

currently in the status where we have completed demolition, the 

infrastructure is approximately 40 percent complete, the drawings 

are complete, submitted, and approved by the City. We currently 

have a $22 million gap. That gap is the distance between us beginning construction and going vertical and completing the project 

moving forward. So we are working very diligently on filling that 

gap. 

Our current strategy for the gap is we have an application with the stimulus package with HUD for $10 million; we have a structure to reduce a portion of our reserve by $4 million; and we are 

seeking City, State, and Federal resources for another $8.2 million. 

That would close the gap on the project and allow us to move forward with our vertical construction. 

We have looked at a variety of proposals and options to pursue 

various support systems to encourage our investor to stay involved 

and continue to look at the rate and structure of our financing. One 

of the important issues that we would like for Congress to help 

with is the extension of the GO Zone credits. They currently have 

a closed and placed in service date by end of 2010. We would like 

to look at an extension to that. 

We would also like for Congress to help with the TCAP exchange 

program, in making that available to GO Zone credits as well. That 

would greatly enhance the capitalization of our project, which is 

currently at about 59 cents in credits versus the 80 cent plus that 

you would be able to have from the exchange program. 

We are also looking to work with the Louisiana Office of Community Development. We have supplied an application to provide 

project based vouchers at our site in contrast with the LIHTC program, the low income housing tax credits, so that would allow us 

to actually reduce our reserve and allow us to provide residents 

with access to Section 8 program vouchers, support their rent for 

lower income. 

The other key piece of our proposal I think that should be mentioned, in terms of occupancy, the first phase of the project is 410 

units. We are expecting 173 of those units to be units that will be 

53 

occupied by public housing residents, another 106 of those units 

would be in the phase two, totaling 279 public housing units in 

phases one and two of the total 660 units planned. 

We have also looked at the numbers of that 173 and 106, 20 percent of those units would come from LIHTC units. We did a survey 

with the residents and the resident management corporation of 

looking at the residents and their income base and their income 

base stipulated that there are many of them who would be eligible 

for LIHTC rents. And so we estimated about 20 percent of those 

residents using LIHTC available units for their occupancy. 

One of the questions was asked about the information of how we 

would find residents and work with HUD and HANO to bring those 

residents back to the community. It is important to note that the 

resident management corporation has been by far not only a great 

relationship for us but they have maintained great relationships 

with the current residents. We have nearly 300 residents on site 

today and they have done an incredible job of seeking and communicating with those residents who have left New Orleans and left 

B.W. Cooper. And they have developed a database that we are currently working to purge and refine so that we can make sure that 

those residents who are on their lists are identified and responded 

to. 

Lastly, the question regarding the occupancy and the rental 

terms that the residents would have to endure when leasing the 

property, those structures are actually going to be created in selection process with the resident management corporation and the 

residents. So our plan is to sit down with the residents and build 

a selection policy that would be amenable to both the residents, 

HANO, HUD, and our investors. 

Thank you. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you very much. 

Ms. Johnigan. 

STATEMENT OF DONNA JOHNIGAN, VICE PRESIDENT, B.W. 

COOPER RESIDENT COUNCIL 

Ms. JOHNIGAN. To the Honorable Chairperson and Congresswoman Maxine Waters and other distinguished members of the 

subcommittee, and most importantly, to the thousands of public 

housing families of New Orleans who were impacted by Hurricanes 

Katrina and Rita. 

My name is Donna Johnigan, and I want to start my testimony 

by thanking you all for allowing me the opportunity to appear before this distinguished panel to express my personal observations 

and experiences since the devastation of 4 years ago. 

I am a life-long resident of New Orleans and have spent 4 decades of my life living in New Orleans public housing and working 

to better the living conditions of public housing residents in New 

Orleans and nationally. 

I have served in numerous public housing resident advocacy positions over that period and served as one of the founders of an organization of mothers who have lost children to the senseless violence 

that plagues our youth in public housing communities across this 

Nation. 

54 

Currently, I am the vice president of the board of directors of the 

B.W. Cooper Resident Management Corporation. 

B.W. Cooper RMC is a residential property management entity 

that contracts with the Housing Authority of New Orleans to manage the development I live in. 

We are one of only two such corporations in the City of New Orleans and the State of Louisiana, and have existed for over 20 

years, successfully demonstrating our capability to manage our 

lives and our communities. 

Unfortunately, my community and other public housing communities are not what they were once, in part because of Hurricanes 

Katrina and Rita, but also because of a housing authority that 

seems to be insensitive and out of touch with the realities of the 

uniqueness of our plight in New Orleans. 

As you know, thousands of public housing units were destroyed 

5 years ago, and thousands of families were displaced as result. 

Since that time, there has been a major effort on the part of the 

Federal Government and the Housing Authority of New Orleans to 

rebuild our communities, and we welcome that effort. However, a 

great majority of families who were displaced will not benefit from 

this massive effort. 

Our communities are being rebuilt as mixed-income housing, 

with only a small number of units targeted to return as public 

housing units. And though it is claimed that a majority of units 

will be affordable, the term ‘‘affordable,’’ while appropriate in other 

cities, will not be affordable to or serve the majority of needy families in this City. 

‘‘Affordable’’ includes families whose incomes are up to 60 percent of median income for this City, when in reality, the majority 

of families who need affordable housing fall well below that and the 

national poverty level. 

We welcome the opportunity to live in a community that has diverse income levels, but that should not come at the expense of 

harshly impacting the families who need help and once made up 

our communities. At least 50 percent of units constructed in these 

communities should have been actual public housing. 

Also, there is a local and national effort for the Section 8 voucher 

program to replace conventional public housing as the primary 

source for the provision of assisted housing. But in reality, Section 

8 vouchers are not good for very-low-income families, because of 

the uncertainty of utility costs as an added burden, and the requirement that families receiving these instruments must find and 

convince a landlord to lease to them in a competitive market. 

Those requirements and others are burdensome to families who 

have never had to perform those tasks. And the housing authority 

staff is not informing families of all the consequences of selecting 

Housing Choice vouchers, which is inexcusable. 

Finally, the opportunities for resident management corporations 

to continue to manage in the future has been seriously eroded because of the move away from traditional public housing that they 

and we have experience in managing. 

At a time when government is asking us to take more responsibility for our communities, one of the instruments that allows us 

55 

to do that is being systematically phased out. We are being left to 

compete with private market management companies. 

I have fought all my life to remove the image of the stereotypical 

public housing resident that the public holds in general. And I now 

find myself having to gear up again to fight for the rights of public 

housing residents to reclaim their communities. 

I am up for that fight. 

With the help of people like you, Congresswoman Waters, I am 

confident that we will again overcome the barriers that have arisen 

to prevent us from controlling our communities. And I am equally 

confident that we will eventually prevail in providing really affordable housing to the families who are relying on the government to 

help them return to their communities. 

Again, Congresswoman Waters, I want to thank you and your 

committee for coming to New Orleans to see and hear our stories 

firsthand. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you very much, Ms. Johnigan. 

Mr. Freeman. 

STATEMENT OF YUSEF FREEMAN, PROJECT MANAGER, 

MCCORMACK BARON SALAZAR 

Mr. FREEMAN. Madam Chairwoman, Congressman Cao, thank 

you for this opportunity to speak before you today. My name is 

Yusef Freeman and I am an employee of McCormack Baron Salazar and the project manager of the redevelopment of Harmony 

Oaks, formerly known as the C.J. Peete and Magnolia public housing development. In partnership with the New Orleans Neighborhood Development Collaborative, a local nonprofit organization, 

and KAI Design and Build, an MBE architecture firm, we were selected by the Housing Authority of New Orleans through a response for qualifications procurement as Central City Partners 

with Urban Strategies, to redevelop the former public housing site, 

provide community supportive services to the former residents of 

the site, improve educational opportunities in the neighborhood, develop sports and recreation facilities, and develop quality commercial services for the community. 

The mission of McCormack Baron Salazar is to rebuild neighborhoods in central cities across the United States that have deteriorated through decades of neglect and disinvestment. In partnership 

with communities, we bring vision, experience, and commitment to 

the challenge of community revitalization. 

When Hurricane Katrina struck, 144 families were still living at 

the C.J. Peete site. These families were displaced, many out-ofState. The buildings remained vacant until they were demolished 

in the spring of 2008. 

The new Harmony Oaks mixed-income community will include 

460 mixed-income rental units. Of those, 193 will be public housing 

units, 144 will be low income housing tax credit units, and 123 of 

those units will be market rate rental units. Public housing residents with vouchers will be eligible to use those vouchers in both 

the low income housing tax credit units and the market rate rental 

units. 

Three on-site historic buildings are being rehabilitated, including 

one residential building, the administration building, and the comVerDate Nov 24 2008 12:01 Mar 02, 2010 Jkt 053251 PO 00000 Frm 00061 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 K:\DOCS\53251.TXT TERRIE
56 

munity center. In addition to the community center, which houses 

the computer lab, the site will include a swimming pool, fitness 

room, community space, an on-site management building and each 

cluster of buildings will have tot lots and secured parking. The 

community center is currently run by the head of the C.J. Peete 

tenant’s organization, Ms. Marshall, who will speak after me. 

Harmony Oaks was designed in partnership with the C.J. Peete 

Resident Council, HANO, and community stakeholders. A project 

steering committee that includes representatives from the resident 

council, HANO, State and local government, the school district, 

neighborhood faith community, and other community stakeholders 

continues to meet on a quarterly basis to contribute to the development of the site. 

The for-lease apartments are all designed with market rate features. There are no amenity distinctions between public housing, 

market rate and tax credit units. Each unit will feature high quality flooring, window treatments, central heating and cooling, wood 

kitchen cabinets, refrigerators, ceiling fans, microwaves, dishwashers, clothes washers and dryers, and security systems. 

Construction of the 460 rental unit phase began in February of 

this year and is approximately 22 percent complete, 57 slabs have 

been poured, 27 buildings are framed, 95 percent of the drainage 

and sewerage are constructed, and 50 percent of the water lines 

are complete. 

The cornerstone of the new community will be a Campus of 

Learners comprised of a new state-of-the-art elementary school, 

recreation center, and health clinic. McCormack Baron Salazar has 

committed $20 million of our allocation of new markets tax credits 

to the recovery school district for the redevelopment of the Woodson School that is located across the street from the Harmony Oaks 

site. 

Fifty homeownership units are being developed by the New Orleans Neighborhood Development Collaborative in the communities 

surrounding the Harmony Oaks site. Eight of these homes are currently under construction. NONDC is working with HANO and 

Urban Strategies to qualify low-income homebuyers to participate 

in the homeownership program. Public housing residents have the 

first right to these homeownership units. 

The development team procured Urban Strategies to coordinate 

community and supportive services for households who lived at the 

former C.J. Peete development. Urban Strategies is a not-for-profit 

corporation that is coordinating all the support programs that assist former C.J. Peete residents achieve self-sufficiency, including 

intensive case management, job training and placement, quality 

child care and schools, access to physical and mental health services, senior programs, and enrichment activities for children and 

youth. Urban Strategies case managers are working closely with 

the residents to access needed services, regardless of where they 

are currently residing in the country. 

CSS activities currently operating out of the C.J. Peete Community Center include case management, technology programs, social 

activities, tutoring, construction job training, health programs, and 

community-based programs built on local partnerships. Urban 

57 

Strategies case workers are currently providing community supportive services to 485 former C.J. Peete residents. 

When complete, 193 of the 460 mixed-income units at Harmony 

Oaks will be public housing units. Public housing residents will 

also be eligible to use vouchers to rent market rate and tax credit 

units. All former residents interested in returning to the site will 

complete an application to the management company, McCormack 

Baron Ragan. To be admitted to a public housing unit, the applicant must meet all eligibility requirements for admission to public 

housing as established by HUD and HANO. Before an applicant is 

denied admission for any reason, they will be able to refute that 

denial. 

HANO adopted the re-occupancy policy under which residents of 

the former C.J. Peete public housing development and of other 

HANO-owned public housing developments, will have priority 

rights to admission to the public housing units in Harmony Oaks, 

subject to the previously mentioned eligibility requirements. 

In closing, in partnership with the C.J. Peete Resident Council, 

HANO, HUD, the Louisiana Housing Finance Agency, the Louisiana Office of Community Development, the City of New Orleans, 

Council member Stacy Head’s office, the Ford Foundation, the 

Casey Foundation, LISC, Living Cities, the Greater New Orleans 

Foundation, and others, the development and community supportive services team have been successful in commencing construction and connecting residents to needed services. 

The last thing is to continue this success, further investment is 

needed to provide additional community supportive services. While 

Katrina was 4 years ago, the traumatic impact on residents is still 

at the forefront. More funds are needed to provide mental health 

services to families impacted by the storm. In addition, more resources are needed to sustain case management services— 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Freeman can be found on page 

74 of the appendix.] 

Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you, Mr. Freeman. 

Ms. Marshall. 

STATEMENT OF JOCQUELYN MARSHALL, PRESIDENT, C.J. 

PEETE RESIDENT COUNCIL 

Ms. MARSHALL. Good afternoon, Madam Chairwoman, invited 

guests. It is indeed an honor to testify before you all today on the 

status of the ‘‘Big Four’’ as well as the state of housing throughout 

the City of New Orleans. 

The status of public housing, including the ‘‘Big Four,’’ is bleak. 

The supply does not meet the demand. 

The families who were typically middle class before Katrina have 

fallen into a lower tax bracket because of their inability to find livable wage jobs and meet the high cost of rent in the current housing market. With the state of the economy and the housing market, 

it leaves all New Orleans residents with little hope that things will 

improve. 

As it relates to the redevelopment of C.J. Peete, initially there 

was apprehension. That apprehension was based upon what the 

demolition of public housing would mean to the state of affordable 

housing throughout the City of New Orleans. However, as it speVerDate Nov 24 2008 12:01 Mar 02, 2010 Jkt 053251 PO 00000 Frm 00063 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 K:\DOCS\53251.TXT TERRIE
58 

cifically related to C.J. Peete, we knew that demolition was inevitable but we did not agree with how HUD proceeded with their 

plan. 

To my surprise, redevelopment at C.J. Peete is proceeding very 

well. We have a very unique working relationship with the redevelopment team which consists of Central City Partners, C.J. Peete 

Resident Council, McCormack Baron Salazar, KAI Design and 

Build, NONDC and Urban Strategies, Inc., our community and social services contract administrator. 

What is unique about this project is that Urban Strategies works 

side-by-side with the resident council to provide technical assistance and support for the residents and resident leaders. Also, we 

have case managers onsite to address the needs of the many families that we serve. 

As it relates to the Section 8 program, it has been my experience 

that the Section 8 program basically creates disparity between lowto moderate-income families and market rate tenants. You are either too rich for public housing or too poor for market rate units. 

There has to be a balance across-the-board. 

What housing challenges are facing former C.J. Peete residents 

and how should those challenges be addressed? 

I would like to break those challenges down into three categories, 

if I may. There will be current challenges that they will face. There 

will be challenges that they face trying to get back home. And 

there will also be challenges when they come back and reside at 

the new redeveloped sites. 

Their current challenges are the social needs—employment, literacy, transportation, affordable, quality early childhood education, 

locating services in the cities where they currently reside, lack of 

community schools, and limited healthcare. 

My recommendations are: 

Each redeveloped site in conjunction with a community center, 

needs a community social service component to address the needs 

of residents. Consequently, if we do not address the social element 

of everyone in the household and provide services at every site, we 

will be back where we were 10 years ago. Redevelopment should 

not be focused on bricks and mortar; the social elements must be 

addressed as well. 

Since the lack of employment opportunities is a real challenge for 

residents, the enforcement and oversight of the Section 3 hiring 

process is critical in assisting qualified low- to moderate-income individuals in gaining employment. We recognize the challenges each 

site faces in addressing the pressing needs of many families we 

serve. We have formed a collaboration with the other sites, beginning with a construction training program coordinated by the C.J. 

Peete team and community partners to proactively address the Section 3 hiring process at each site. I recommend that all sites address redevelopment from the holistic approach by doing our part 

in addressing all of the issues to the greatest extent possible. 

The challenges that they will face coming home: Getting out of 

their current leases with landlords, relocation expenses, paying deposits. 

Currently, HANO will approve a family or individual to get out 

of a lease to return to public housing, but that does not typically— 

59 

they do not typically approve it if you are a voucher recipient. I recommend that HUD, HANO or the developer pay an early termination fee to the landlord. 

Relocation expenses are only offered to residents returning to 

public housing sites. Therefore, I recommend that the fees be offered to anyone deemed having a right to return to the site, especially if in fact they are returning to that site. The rationale is each 

resident was involuntarily moved out, so each should be assisted in 

moving back in. 

The challenges that they will face when residing back in the 

sites: There will be no group to advocate on residents’ behalf. There 

are outdated HUD regulations. Lack of male involvement in the 

family. 

I would recommend that each site needs a resident council or an 

advisory group made up of a diversified group of residents who reside in the community, to advocate on their behalf. There should 

be a set criteria that is developed with the current leadership, 

Legal Aid, HANO and the developer approved by HUD. There 

should be consistency across-the-board. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Marshall can be found on page 

86 of the appendix.] 

Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you very, very much. 

Let me thank again all of our panelists who have come today to 

share such important information with us. I am particularly proud 

of the public housing advocates, residents and former residents 

who have worked so hard, informed themselves so well and who 

are advocates on behalf of people who do not have fancy lobbyists 

working for them at the City, County, or Federal level. 

I am extremely impressed with your recommendations and will 

take them seriously and do everything that I can to try and right 

some wrongs and to prevent some wrongs from happening in the 

future as we look at how we rehabilitate and how we restructure 

Section 8. 

Let me start with Mr. Grauley, however. I want to ask each of 

the developers just quickly, you do not have to go into detail. As 

you penciled out your proposals and as they were accepted for development, do you now have all of the financing that you need, except for the tax credit part that I understand is not available because of the lack of investment because of the meltdown in our 

economy? But other than that, do you have all of your financing 

lined up? 

Mr. GRAULEY. We have all the financing for phase I, 466 units. 

We have a commitment from the housing authority that is in place 

for the infrastructure for the remainder of the site. After that, 

there is not funding in place that we are aware of from HANO, but 

they have committed to see the whole thing through. We have 

made an application to the State of Louisiana and to HANO for 

phase two, it is a very strong application and our intention and 

what we believe will occur is we will roll immediately into phase 

two late in 2010 with our current application, that will allow us to 

continue build out. 

There is a lot of talk about how there are only so many units, 

but the focus and the numbers in the Times Picayune are focused 

60 

on phase I. Our phase I is an extraordinary size, 466 units, as the 

other developers— 

Chairwoman WATERS. I am just interested in the financing right 

now. As you developed your proposal, had you anticipated the needed funding from HANO or from any other sources other than your 

traditional financing sources—well, that may be even traditional, 

but were you expecting any more money from HANO or HUD? 

Mr. GRAULEY. HANO was clear that they were committed to seeing the development through all phases. 

Chairwoman WATERS. I am sorry, start that over again, I was a 

little startled by God’s work. 

Mr. GRAULEY. HANO was clear that they were committed to seeing the development through all phases and they have stood by us 

on that. There was a significant traunch of funding for all the ‘‘Big 

Four’’ from the State of Louisiana and the CDBG program. Those 

funds have largely been used with the first phases of the ‘‘Big 

Four’’ and so having additional funds to fill that gap are important. 

Further, I do not think any of us anticipated, as my colleagues 

have referenced, seeing the tax credit market occurring as we have. 

We certainly—I would echo the request around the GO Zone credits. That enhanced our equity raise very substantially, we were 

able to close it in time. And having that come back in place would 

be very important to allow future phases to get the kind of pricing 

that would bring a lot more private funds in. 

Chairwoman WATERS. So what you are basically telling me is, of 

course, you anticipated the cost and you organized your redevelopment based on real numbers that you submitted. But there are still 

some questions about some portions of that funding coming from 

other sources, such as the State, HANO, etc. 

Mr. GRAULEY. Yes. In our case, we do not have questions about 

phase two, our phase two does not use the State CDBG resources, 

but in subsequent phases after that, to get to the full build out of 

the site, which is very important, so we can replace all the units, 

there is a question about that. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Okay. All right, what about Lafitte and 

Enterprise, except for the investment tax credits. 

Ms. WHETTEN. Right. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Do you have all of your financing lined 

up? 

Ms. WHETTEN. For the first 568 rental units and 244 for sale 

units, we have the CDBG funds from the State of Louisiana 

through the piggyback program, and tax credits committed and we 

have HANO subsidy committed to complete those units. If there is 

one sort of gap in where we believe we need additional funds, it 

is for additional homeownership subsidy to make the for sale 

homes that we build more affordable to the residents wishing to 

buy a home. 

Now we have a committed investor for the first 137 rental units 

and we have, as I mentioned, the funds committed for the for-sale 

units, which is 47 in the first phase. We believe we have—we do 

have strong investor interest and believe we can sell the credits to 

complete the 568 units but for the placed in service extension. 

Chairwoman WATERS. So you in no way, either Mr. Grauley or 

you, are looking to HUD for any more money? 

61 

Ms. WHETTEN. As I said, we believe additional funds are necessary to make for sale homes affordable to the residents in 

Treme— 

Chairwoman WATERS. Okay, and what about you, Mr. Grauley? 

Mr. GRAULEY. Not on phase I and phase two, Madam Chairwoman, but in additional phases, certainly we will be and HANO 

has committed to that. 

Chairwoman WATERS. All right. Mr. Key? 

Mr. KEY. Congresswoman, I am looking to HUD for help. 

Chairwoman WATERS. You need some money. 

Mr. KEY. Yes, we need $22 million. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Okay. Mr. Freeman? 

Mr. FREEMAN. We have all of our funds for the original phase 

with the soft second program for homeownership. We are looking 

for additional funds for our homeownership phase and for additional funds for a commercial phase. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Okay, what I have heard here today, developers, from residents and from our advocates is there should be 

more low-income units or units that people could qualify for, who 

only have—meet the criteria for public housing. 

So you have already designed your projects, you have penciled 

them out, you know what the costs are, but if you need more 

money to complete it and if you were asked in exchange for that 

money to modify your plans so that you could increase the number 

of low-income units, what would you do? 

Mr. GRAULEY. I believe we would like to look at that and consider that. We do believe in the mixed-income model and that 

was— 

Chairwoman WATERS. No, I know all of that. I see your mixedincome model, I see what you have for public housing in essence, 

I see what you have for the tax credit units, I see what you have 

for homeownership. That is not my question. My question is that 

would you, could you modify your plans to accommodate more lowincome housing opportunities, if you had to. 

Mr. GRAULEY. We could—yes, we certainly would consider it. 

Chairwoman WATERS. What about Enterprise, could you do that? 

Ms. WHETTEN. In our first major development phase, the 568 

rental units, all but 40 are permanently affordable to households 

that could previously afford public housing rents. 

Chairwoman WATERS. For Lafitte, I am looking at your planned 

units are 176 from the Times Picayune very graphic description of 

the total number of units that they had at Lafitte, the number that 

was unoccupied, the number that is planned in the blue section for 

the low income or the public housing criteria eligible, etc. What I 

want to know is if you are looking at the same thing I am looking 

at or if you understand the same thing I understand, would you increase that 176? 

Ms. WHETTEN. I am not familiar with the numbers you are looking at and they do not match with anything in my understanding 

of what— 

Chairwoman WATERS. Well, let me just ask it this way, if you 

need money from HUD and you were told by HUD the legislators 

will not let us do it unless you increase the numbers, what would 

you do? 

62 

Ms. WHETTEN. Our commitment is to build 900 affordable, subsidized permanently affordable rental units in the full development. 

Chairwoman WATERS. We know that, we know that, you told us 

that already, and we know that you have some units on the footprint and you have some that are in scattered housing. 

Ms. WHETTEN. Right, our first phase— 

Chairwoman WATERS. We are talking about in the footprint, that 

is what I am talking about now. I am asking a question. I do not 

have any plans yet, I do not know anything. I am just wondering, 

since the residents tell me that they believe, as I do, that there 

should be one-for-one replacement, they do not necessarily believe 

that it should be a reduced number on the footprint and the rest 

of it in scattered housing, that maybe we should have more on the 

footprint. If you were asked to do that, based on the ability to help 

continue the funding, what would you do? 

Ms. WHETTEN. Our site plan was carefully designed based on the 

wishes of residents to de-densify the site and provide more single 

and double occupancy homes and apartments. Our commitment is 

one-for-one replacement and deconcentration of poverty, and we are 

doing that through scattered sites and on-site development. Our 

on-site rental units are—our first phase is 568 and as I said, all 

but 40 are permanently affordable. So additional affordability if we 

had— 

Chairwoman WATERS. Okay, you are not prepared to answer my 

question at this time. 

Let me move on to Mr. Key. What would you do, Mr. Key? 

Mr. KEY. If we could make it economically affordable, we would 

definitely look at it. 

Chairwoman WATERS. You would consider what I am proposing? 

And like I said, I am not proposing it now, I am wondering. 

Mr. KEY. Sure. 

Chairwoman WATERS. And I am trying to—because all of you respect the residents so much and you work with them so closely and 

you want their input. And their input to a person is there should 

be more onsite low-income units. And so what you are saying is you 

would consider that. 

Mr. KEY. Yes, I would consider it. 

Chairwoman WATERS. What about you, Mr. Freeman? 

Mr. FREEMAN. All 50 of our homeownership units that we need 

additional funds for are public housing replacement units. 

Chairwoman WATERS. I beg your pardon? 

Mr. FREEMAN. All 50 of our homeownership units that we need 

additional funds for are public housing replacement units. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Okay. I am certainly not talking about 

homeownership, and you know that. 

Mr. FREEMAN. Well, the answer to your original question of do 

we need additional funds for— 

Chairwoman WATERS. No, no, no, no. That is not what I asked 

you. What I said was if you need additional funds to finish whatever you have to finish and if the requirement was, in exchange for 

the funding, that you have to maybe instead of having 50 homeownership units, maybe you have 25, and the other 25 are converted now to low-income units. Could you do that? 

63 

Mr. FREEMAN. On our current plan, we could not do that. 

Chairwoman WATERS. That would be impossible for you to do? 

Mr. FREEMAN. Yes. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Okay, so you would have to turn down the 

money if that was a requirement. 

Mr. FREEMAN. Right. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Okay. That is all I wanted to know. 

Secondly, let me ask about the jobs. And I do not want to prolong 

this discussion on this and I want to be as clear as I can possibly 

be. 

You gave me a number, Mr. Grauley, that you had—of jobs, that 

had been realized in what, the demolition stage? 

Mr. GRAULEY. The demolition stage and the new construction 

stage. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Okay, give me that again. On the demolition stage, how many residents did you hire and are they still 

hired, what happened to them? Did they transition to the new construction? What happened to those—what was it, 17? 

Mr. GRAULEY. That is right. We had—Section 3 requires that we 

report Section 3 hires against all new hires at the site. And in the 

demolition phase, we had 17 Section 3 hires. That was all of the 

new hires at the site, by our contractor. 

In the new construction phase, we have—our latest report to 

HANO is based on July and that was a total of 39 Section 3 hires 

on the site by the site contractors and subcontractors. That number, as of today, has increased to 50, because as each new contractor comes on site, new trades, painting, drywall is just coming 

on site— 

Chairwoman WATERS. Let me try and understand. The first 17 

that you hired, are they still working? 

Mr. GRAULEY. The demolition work is complete, so they are not 

working now. 

Chairwoman WATERS. That is complete, so that 17 is not there 

now. 

Mr. GRAULEY. Not at this time, they were hired for demolition. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Okay, so the 39 that you are referring to 

that you described as Section 3, they are now working on new construction, is that right? 

Mr. GRAULEY. Yes, they are. There are a couple who had been 

working and who are no longer working, one— 

Chairwoman WATERS. I beg your pardon? 

Mr. GRAULEY. There are a couple of those who have been working and who are no longer working, but we reported them as part 

of the total. 

Chairwoman WATERS. How many of the 39 are actually working 

today, have jobs? 

Mr. GRAULEY. Based on the numbers that I have, that would be 

37. 

Chairwoman WATERS. About 37? 

Mr. GRAULEY. It would be 37. 

Chairwoman WATERS. And what about—what is this number 50 

that you referred to, what does that include? 

Mr. GRAULEY. We report this every month and it builds every 

month as we have more contractors on site, we have more trades 

64 

on site, more opportunities. So 50 is as of August, the 39 is as of 

July. We reported to the community as part of your package in 

June that had a lower number than that. It is building as we go 

through. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Is this report a report that is cumulative 

of all the people that you have hired or are these new hires? 

Mr. GRAULEY. It is both, Madam Chairwoman, it is— 

Chairwoman WATERS. So the 17 who are no longer working there 

may be showing up in this 50 number, is that right? 

Mr. GRAULEY. There may be— 

Chairwoman WATERS. It probably is. Okay, Mr. Key. 

Mr. KEY. We just completed demolition, so we have not gone 

vertical yet, so our construction work has only been mainly demolition and beginning of infrastructure. 

Chairwoman WATERS. How many people did you hire during 

demolition, residents? 

Mr. KEY. We had 21 Section 3 employees. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Twenty one residents. 

Mr. KEY. Out of the 21, I do not know exactly how many were 

residents, it was about maybe 10 or 12 residents. 

Chairwoman WATERS. About 10 or 12 residents. And those 10 or 

12 are still working or no longer working? Demolition is over. 

Mr. KEY. Is done. 

Chairwoman WATERS. So they are not working? 

Mr. KEY. No. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Are you in new construction? 

Mr. KEY. We are not in construction yet. 

Chairwoman WATERS. That is it. 

Mr. KEY. Yes. 

Chairwoman WATERS. All right. Mr. Freeman? 

Mr. FREEMAN. During demolition, we had 23 Section 3, that was 

87 percent of all demolition staff on site. During construction, we 

are at 55 percent of new hires, which is 12 Section 3. Overall, 

which includes community supportive services, we are at 79 percent, which is 58 Section 3 hires. 

Chairwoman WATERS. What was that bottom line, 58? 

Mr. FREEMAN. Fifty eight, yes. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Total, including the— 

Mr. FREEMAN. Community and support services. 

Chairwoman WATERS. —the 23, the ones on demolition? 

Mr. FREEMAN. It does include demolition. 

Chairwoman WATERS. I beg your pardon? 

Mr. FREEMAN. It does include— 

Chairwoman WATERS. And demolition is complete? 

Mr. FREEMAN. Demolition is complete. 

Chairwoman WATERS. So 23 of the 58 are not working any more. 

Mr. FREEMAN. That may or may not be true. Some may be with 

some of the contractors. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Well, tell me what is true. 

Mr. FREEMAN. I cannot tell you how many of the demolition were 

hired by— 

Chairwoman WATERS. Okay. Well, we are going to have to get 

some oversight on these resident jobs and we are going to have to 

understand it a lot better. 

65 

And our numbers have to be—yes, Ms. Marshall, what do you 

know? Maybe Ms. Marshall can help us out. 

Ms. MARSHALL. I do want to state as it relates to the demolition, 

we really did have to fight to get residents hired with the demolition process, because at first when that contractor came in there, 

there were no residents hired. We brought it to the attention of 

McCormack Baron Salazar and they addressed the situation and 

for many reasons that contractor was cut. So that issue was addressed, and as a result of that, we coordinated that construction 

training program. 

But there needs to be more enforcement with the contractors to 

have some kind of set rules in place that if they do not adhere to 

hiring Section 3 qualified individuals, you hold their money or 

something or the contract is cut. 

But as it relates to the C.J. Peete construction training program, 

we have had two training sessions thus far. Our next session is on 

September 28th. We have trained 33 individuals. Out of the 33, 22 

new hires. We have exceeded the Section 3 first hire mandate by 

55 percent. Ten of the residents were C.J. Peete residents. We had 

three residents from B.W. Cooper. And when I stated that we are 

trying to coordinate with other sites, we recognize, we were awarded a whole big $20 million funding grant, so wherever we can help 

other residents at other sites, the goal is to train them and those 

developers hire them at that site. So those individuals—and we 

work very closely with B.W. Cooper and we are reaching out to 

other sites to send as many residents over so they can get those 

jobs on those sites as opposed to others. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Thank you very much. This is a real bone 

of contention with me. I do not think that people who are unemployed should stand around and watch other people who come from 

every place else, working on their site where they used to live or 

where they are going to live, and not be hired. So that is a real 

problem that needs to be monitored and oversight needs to be done. 

And we will be talking about how we get that done. 

Now let me just move to this criteria that is being developed. 

How many of the developers have developed criteria that would require credit checks for people moving into these units? 

[Mr. Freeman raises his hand.] 

Chairwoman WATERS. Why? 

Mr. FREEMAN. It is for all residents, not just public housing residents and it is— 

Chairwoman WATERS. I do not care about all residents. All I 

want to know about is public housing residents right now. 

Mr. FREEMAN. It is just a check to make sure that folks are who 

they say they are and it is just another check to make sure that 

they are on the list properly with the housing authority. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Well, if you are vetting to see if people are 

who they say they are, there are a lot of ways to do that. But one 

of the things I have a real problem with is people being denied because they have credit problems. If you are poor, you have credit 

problems. And I do not want people denied because they have credit problems. So what do you use this information for? 

Mr. FREEMAN. We do not deny residents because they have credit 

problems. If there are things on their credit that makes it hard for 

66 

them to get utilities, they work with the case management in the 

community center, which works with them through those credit 

agencies and we work with them well before lease up to make sure 

that they are ready for occupancy and can get utilities in their 

name and they are ready to move into the units. 

Chairwoman WATERS. It is great if you are helping people with 

utilities, but again, I am adamantly opposed to the refusal of rental 

units to people who have poor or weak credit. 

Let me also ask about this work requirement. You have work requirements, Mr. Grauley? 

Mr. GRAULEY. The documents that we have with HANO have a 

work requirement for head of household and co-head of household 

for all the residents of— 

Chairwoman WATERS. This is not a move-to-work housing authority. 

Mr. GRAULEY. I am not aware that it is. But this was part of our 

application from the outset, it was part of what we reviewed with 

HANO and with HUD and part of what was adopted as part of the 

management plan, the regulatory and operating agreement, etc. 

Chairwoman WATERS. That is being challenged in one of our advocacy groups that was here today. The Advancement Project is 

looking at this issue. And we will follow up on it. 

What about Enterprise, do you have credit requirements and/or 

work requirements? 

Ms. WHETTEN. As I understand it, as mandated by HUD or 

HANO policy, credit checks are conducted only on applicants who 

have a prior history of rent payment issues with the Housing Authority of New Orleans. Beyond that, we do not conduct credit 

checks. 

And we do not have a work requirement. 

Chairwoman WATERS. And the credit check is on residents who 

had previous problems with paying their rent? 

Ms. WHETTEN. That is my understanding, yes. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Do you understand that even if there were 

residents who had previous problems paying their rent, unless they 

were evicted, they should be eligible? 

[no response] 

Chairwoman WATERS. You do not know that either. Do not 

worry. 

Mr. Key? 

Mr. KEY. As I mentioned earlier, we have yet to create our— 

Chairwoman WATERS. I cannot hear you. 

Mr. KEY. We have yet to create our structure for rental policy. 

We will be working with the residents, the investor, and HANO to 

do so. 

Chairwoman WATERS. You are smart, Mr. Key. Work with the 

residents. 

Mr. Freeman? 

Mr. FREEMAN. We do not have a work requirement. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Good. 

I reviewed some of the identified requirements and it appeared 

to be almost hearsay. Information that has been presented by 

somebody sometime somewhere about somebody’s character. Do 

you have such loose requirements, Mr. Freeman? 

67 

Mr. FREEMAN. Character? No. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Run down your requirements for me. 

Mr. FREEMAN. We do not have those loose requirements. 

Chairwoman WATERS. What requirements do you have? 

Mr. FREEMAN. We do have the same screening process that 

HANO requires. 

Chairwoman WATERS. I do not know what it is. I want you to tell 

me. 

Mr. FREEMAN. To verify that they are eligible for public housing. 

We do criminal background checks. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Okay. What else? 

Mr. FREEMAN. And the credit checks. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Okay. Do you send people out to visit folks 

to view their living conditions before they can move in? 

Mr. FREEMAN. Yes, all residents do receive a home visit. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Is this what the residents told you they 

wanted you to do? 

Mr. FREEMAN. This was in consultation with the residents and 

they did not object to it. 

Chairwoman WATERS. I did not ask if they objected. I asked if 

they told you this is what they wanted. 

Mr. FREEMAN. That is my understanding, but I will let Ms. Marshall speak for herself. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Ms. Marshall, is that part of the requirements that residents helped to develop, that there be home visits 

to determine whether or not people should get units? 

Ms. MARSHALL. Yes. That is something that we actually proposed 

to the resident council and we thought the residents were really 

going to have a fit with that. But it was presented to residents at 

our community meeting and to my surprise, you know, a few residents asked questions in regard to it, but we consult with legal 

every day basically and legal is at the table and one of the things 

I asked legal was if someone may be living somewhere and their 

living conditions are not up to par, legally can they deny that resident to return. And the answer is no, so I do not know— 

Chairwoman WATERS. What do you know about this, Ms. 

Johnigan? 

Ms. JOHNIGAN. About what— 

Chairwoman WATERS. About what you guys—you said they developed their criteria in conjunction with the residents. Did you all 

require or are you going to require or have you required that there 

be a home visit before people can get a unit? 

Ms. JOHNIGAN. Because we still have families on site, we go out 

to visit the home. That has been a part of our process, to look at 

it to make sure that the resident—that the work that we have 

done, that the residents are still living in safe and sanitary conditions. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Did I not visit you at your home? 

Ms. JOHNIGAN. Yes, you did. 

Chairwoman WATERS. I was at your house. I understand how the 

residents—you are strong over there. 

Ms. JOHNIGAN. Yes. 

Chairwoman WATERS. I remember that. 

Ms. JOHNIGAN. But I have a smaller apartment now. 

68 

Chairwoman WATERS. I thought they were expanding your apartment when I was there? 

Ms. JOHNIGAN. I moved to a smaller apartment. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Oh, I see, okay, all right. I remember, yes. 

Ms. JOHNIGAN. But anyway, what we have to do is—that is a 

part of what we do, to make sure that the work we have done when 

we redid it, that our residents are keeping their apartments up to 

par. So that when something happens, it is nothing that we have 

done. Okay? So when we get ready to start, this is something that 

Mr. Key, and we were in a retreat yesterday talking about how we 

are going to go about putting the new lease together and what are 

the requirements going to be. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Would you come up with a requirement 

that if someone’s home has not been kept up in a way that you 

would want it to be kept up and thus they would be denied a unit? 

Ms. JOHNIGAN. No, let me go back and tell you why it makes it 

so unique for the relationship that we have. We have told Mr. Key, 

they have been out there and looked, some of the apartments have 

people living in them we already know have one bedroom. So if you 

go in and you see different things here and there, that is because 

that one bedroom is still not comfortable enough for a person to 

live in. So when you go in, do not think that person cannot pick 

up, it is the fact that there is no closet space, no kitchen space, no 

bedroom space. So there are boxes in corners and things like that. 

Cleanliness means if you go in and there is a greasy stove that you 

can use without even lighting a match are things that are inappropriate. But no, when we talk about coming in, you have to look at 

the situation they are in now. Even under Section 8 housing, if 

they go look, you have to look at the way that house is too. 

Chairwoman WATERS. All right. I think I saw several instances 

where you talked about resident councils or advocates who are 

going to be a part of the development, who will truly have the opportunity to speak for the residents and be involved in decisionmaking. The formulation of the resident councils or resident involvement now should be just that. If it is not, is there something 

else we need to do in order to ensure that there are well organized 

resident councils and involvement? I think Ms. Mingo, you said nobody pays any attention to what you say anyway. 

Ms. MINGO. No. 

Chairwoman WATERS. And that you do not feel as if you have the 

ability to influence these decisions. What do we need to do to 

strengthen the resident council? 

Ms. MINGO. First of all, the developer needs—they need to start 

building a relationship and stop ignoring and neglecting. I was one 

of the very first persons on the ground when they tore down the 

first brick in St. Bernard. They went straight non-stop because we 

were so strong trying to stop them. To my knowledge, and I was 

there, we never had any job training, we have no more than five 

residents working on that ground. 

If you ask Mr. Grauley or one of his colleagues a question when 

we are—I have so much anger in me with them, but when I go to 

their meetings to ask them to break it down—because some of the 

stuff they are talking about, really I do not understand it. So I try 

to break it down to the same level with me and a resident. But if 

69 

you ask them and you make them angry—we have residents right 

now that was here with me at that meeting. They will walk out on 

you. And the whole meeting will be shut down. I went to the last 

meeting so I asked Mr. Grauley or one of his colleagues who is sitting four rows back to explain what straight public housing is and 

what tax credit public housing is. So first I asked a resident and 

she said well, she told me, he told me. I said no, they did not explain it the way for you to understand. So the next time we went 

to a meeting, they didn’t explain it because I walked out, I was so 

mad. So it was a big old thing, but after I explained it some kind 

of way, they explained it the right way. 

And she got very angry because when they explained it, they 

said oh, no, there are 157 public housing residents, straight public 

housing residents can return. Columbia, they talked to probably 

one person who used to be on HANO’s board, but people who are 

on the ground who are fighting that are not getting picked, they 

totally ignore. The only way we will get attention, we have to bring 

50 and 60 people to get attention. And if you bring that, you are 

cut out, period. 

We do not have job training. When they demolished the buildings, everybody came running to me because they know we are out 

here, we were requesting jobs for them. We even went up to HANO 

building, all the people who sent them and when they went, they 

said oh, no, we have to put you on another site. I do not care what 

site you put them on. Like Ms. Jocquelyn was saying, as long as 

you are a public housing resident and you get on a site to help rebuild this. I never asked for a job with this because I do not want 

a job, I have a job. I do not want anybody to dictate to me, I will 

fight and say what comes from my heart. 

Chairwoman WATERS. So from your point of view, Mr. Grauley 

is not all that he says he is, is that right? 

Ms. MINGO. No. I never—this my first time meeting Mr. 

Grauley—this is my first time seeing him. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Okay. 

Ms. MINGO. This is my first time ever seeing him. You cannot 

hold a conversation with staff, because if you don’t understand 

while they read through their list, they act like you are not even 

there. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Do you have some people you want to report to him who have treated you in the fashion that you are describing? Do you have some names you want to give him so he can 

see if he can correct this? 

Ms. MINGO. Well, he can talk to Monica in the back. When you 

are sitting up in a meeting and you ask her a question, she [motions]. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Which one is she? 

Ms. MINGO. She rolls her eyes. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Is she here? 

Ms. MINGO. Right there, yes. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Really? 

Ms. MINGO. She will not talk to you. And there is another guy, 

I forgot his name. I tell you, I have so much anger. When you had 

a mother who died in Katrina because she wanted to come to St. 

Bernard—these people do not do any training. They say they have 

70 

50, you go count them. People across the street from public housing 

by the grocery store watch as others take jobs that rightfully belong to surrounding communities. Now I do not have a problem 

with the people who are working, but I do have a problem when 

St. Bernard residents come and ask you and beg for the crumbs, 

can we pick up a brick? When St. Bernard was down, public housing did not pick up any bricks. The only reason why I have two St. 

Joseph bricks is I went in and I got some St. Joseph bricks. And 

I can tell you a lot of other St. Bernard residents went up to save 

St. Joseph brick for remembering. St. Bernard is not like that and 

that is why what Jocquelyn was saying, that is good and I recommend her and I love her, but only if they can start by building 

a relationship and stop ignoring us, maybe me and the others, we 

would not be so angry. Because I know when I said my testimony, 

I know you can hear the anger in me. They do not tell you anything, they do not want to talk to you. We just had our own job 

fair, one of these guys, I do not know his name, but somebody in 

the audience knows his name. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Okay, I get it. Now obviously you need to 

develop a relationship. No matter what you say, the only thing that 

is true is the fact that they do not feel, and Ms. Mingo does not 

feel, that you have the kind of working relationship that is respectful. So you all need to work that out. 

Let me ask Mr. Grauley, do you have any minority joint venture 

partners in your development? Minority partners in your development. 

Mr. GRAULEY. Well, we have— 

Chairwoman WATERS. Minority partners. 

Mr. CAO. As part of the development team? 

Chairwoman WATERS. Yes. 

Mr. GRAULEY. Columbia Residential is— 

Chairwoman WATERS. I beg your pardon? 

Mr. GRAULEY. Columbia Residential is a minority-owned business, we have numerous contractors— 

Chairwoman WATERS. No, no, I am not asking about the contractors now, those are the people that you employ. I am asking about 

your development company, do you have minority partners? 

Mr. GRAULEY. Yes, Columbia Residential is a— 

Chairwoman WATERS. I beg your pardon? 

Mr. GRAULEY. Columbia Residential is a minority-owned business enterprise. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Oh, it is? 

Mr. GRAULEY. Yes, it is, ma’am. 

Chairwoman WATERS. And who are the minorities? 

Mr. CAO. Noel Khalil is the founder and chairman. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Who is? 

Mr. GRAULEY. Noel Khalil is the founder and chairman and built 

the company over the past 17 years. He does not wear his minority 

status on his sleeve at all, but it is the truth about our company. 

Chairwoman WATERS. We will check it out. 

What about Enterprise, do you have minority partners? Everybody at Enterprise is minority, right? 

71 

Ms. WHETTEN. Well, obviously, that is not the case. No, if you are 

asking just the members of the development team, the co-developers, we do not. 

Chairwoman WATERS. You do not. Mr. Key, obviously you are the 

CEO of the company. Did you joint venture with any other minorities? 

Mr. KEY. No. We partnered with the BWCRMC, they are our 

partners. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Okay, Mr. Freeman, what about you guys, 

McCormack Baron Salazar, do you have minority partners? 

Mr. FREEMAN. Tony Salazar is the minority partner in the firm 

and we partnered with KAI Design and Build. 

Chairwoman WATERS. What is your partner? 

Mr. FREEMAN. KAI Design and Build. 

Chairwoman WATERS. In St. Louis? 

Mr. FREEMAN. Yes, ma’am. 

Chairwoman WATERS. Okay, we will check it all out and see 

what is happening with these developers. 

You have something you are just dying to say, Mr. Grauley. 

What is that? 

Mr. GRAULEY. I would just like to respond to Ms. Mingo. I appreciate the anger that she has, but the fact is that we do meet regularly, we do review with the resident council, who are the resident 

leaders, not represented right here. On a regular basis, we have 

met over the past 2 years as part of the design. There are a lot of 

questions that come up, and we try to respond to those. I have met 

Ms. Mingo, I met her first in July of last year at a meeting. We 

also have responded to her letter of June to the housing authority. 

And so I just wanted to set that straight. We take it very seriously 

and we are trying to work with the residents. 

There are concerns that are raised, there is not always agreement and obviously we would like to do better with that, but to 

state that we do not hear and to state that our staff is not trying 

to hear the concerns of residents, I just wanted to put that 

straight. 

Chairwoman WATERS. As I said, you obviously need to develop a 

better working relationship. Ms. Mingo would not be here in a public meeting with these complaints and this kind of anger if she was 

happy, or if she was satisfied, or if she thought you had done your 

best. So it is on you to do what you can to develop a better relationship and have the people who work for you treat people respectfully 

and answer their questions and who do not snub or turn up their 

noses at them. That is just not acceptable and it leads to problems. 

So I hope you take her concerns seriously. 

Thank you all for being here today. You have helped me so much. 

And I guess I have some things I have to do here. 

Some members who have participated here with me may have 

additional questions for this panel, which they may wish to submit 

in writing. Without objection, the hearing record will remain open 

for 30 days for members to submit written questions to these witnesses and to place their responses in the record. 

And before we adjourn, the written statement of Mr. Sam Jackson will be made a part of the record of this hearing. 

72 

With that, I think I have complied with all that I must comply 

with. And this hearing is adjourned. Thank you so very, very much. 

Thank you for your participation. 

[Whereupon, at 2:25 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.] 

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A P P E N D I X 

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