"New Orleans evictions skyrocketing"
Tags: housing, welfare stateFrom the NYT:
All over New Orleans, from brick apartment complexes in the east to crumbling stucco low-rises in the center, constables have been busy tacking eviction notices to often-empty apartments.
Landlords, many of them starved for rent and fearing foreclosure, have been trying to evict tenants who escaped New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. And that has pitted them against jobless and cash-poor tenants in a fierce race for survival that began playing out Thursday in the city's only functional civil courthouse.
Many tenants cannot pay rent or cannot get home – no small matter in a city where low-income renters are in the majority. And with as much as a fifth of the rental stock destroyed, demand is high and surviving apartment complexes have waiting lists. That creates a dangling temptation for landlords who think they might make more money.
After a moratorium on evictions imposed by Gov. Kathleen Blanco expired 10 days ago, the landlords in the city filed nearly 700 post-Katrina eviction notices. In some cases, they logged as many notices in a single day as court clerks usually see in a whole month.
…The laggard mail and New Orleans' chronically dysfunctional public housing authority – a big source of rent for private landlords here through subsidized Section 8 vouchers – were oft-cited culprits on Thursday, but that was of little help to tenants.
