New Orleans – A flood of legal battles is set to be unleashed today in New Orleans when Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco lifts a post-Hurricane Katrina ban on evictions and 8,000 to 10,000 absentee tenants face the losses of their homes and possessions.
Landlords are expected to begin filing eviction requests with the courts immediately.
If they’re successful, they can clear out abandoned apartments and move tons of molding, waterlogged belongings to the streets within five to 10 days. In some cases, the landlords alone can make the decision to evict.
Attorneys and volunteers who represent low-income Louisiana residents are expected to gather today in Lafayette for briefings on eviction law and to rally in defense of a possible cascade of tenant grievances.
“That is somebody’s life in there: pictures of their babies and school photos … you would want a chance to save it,” said Laura Tuttle, a lawyer with Southeast Louisiana Legal Services.
Many residents fled Katrina hurriedly, leaving even their most valuable possessions behind. Some of those people remain scattered throughout the U.S. nearly two months later.
Now, with city officials eager to begin rebuilding, those tenants’ belongings are keeping precious apartment space out of the market, landlords said. That’s space where imported workers could live.
Landlords want to help in the rebuilding process, but “we can’t do that if we can’t bring in the people,” said Tammy Esponge, of the Apartment Association of Greater New Orleans Inc.
David Abbenante, the president of the management group for HRI Properties, said it was a “lose-lose” situation because landlords and tenants had major property damage. Landlords are “trying to do the right thing” but must get back to business, he said.
The property group gets about 30 calls a day asking for housing, sometimes from contractors who are looking for up to 1,000 units for workers, but the company is stymied. Tenants who lived in about 100 of its Orleans Parish units are unreachable, and HRI Properties can’t rent the units to someone else, Abbenante said.
Abbenante said he would work with the tenants.
“You would be surprised at the number of tenants who don’t know how to get in touch with their landlord in normal times,” Tuttle said.
She said the law was weighted in landlords’ favor but that evictions in New Orleans might lead to changes that give tenants more power.
