I have been looking at the Master List that Matt McBride compiled using several data bases.
Here is partial text of his letter
The city’s notification process for demolitions has been notoriously ineffective. Lists of Imminent Health Threat and Imminent Danger of Collapse properties are posted to the city’s website, and then disappear within days. The city has been hauled into federal court in two separate cases since Katrina because of its poor notification procedures for demolitions.
However, one should realize that the city’s failure to notify homeowners about pending demolitions is not due to a lack of information. In fact, the city has a bunch of information about demolitions, but they are – for whatever reason- wildly reluctant to release it.
I have obtained two lists of properties cleared by FEMA in December 2007 for demolition. I believe they have been compiled by a company called Beck Disaster Recovery (BDR), which has a contract with the city for property management ofdemolition properties. BDR has offices in 1515 Poydras, across from City Hall.
I have taken a partial sampling of this list and input it into Google Maps. As you can see the spreadsheet info looks a lot more alarming when you map it.
More from Matt
These lists are different than any other lists previously published, because it is a nearcertainty that these houses are targeted for demolition. They have already been cleared by FEMA as “eligible” for federal funding. Also, the raw numbers of properties (about 1400) matches closely with what has previously been announced as a total still to be taken down (about 1800, according to a FEMA press release from November).
Here is an example of an IHT property.
This is located at 2732 Iberville
Type of demo: this is information that came with the lists. The types are IHT (Imminent Health Threat), IMA (Imminent Danger of Collapse), VOL (voluntary, i.e. homeowner-initiated), and there are a few noted as COMM (commercial, though this is not really a type of demo so much as a type of building). Imminent Health Threat demos are quite controversial, since there is no objective standard for what constitutes an Imminent Health Threat, and the notification process is poor.
Anyone who is interested in the full spreadsheet can leave a comment and I will e mail them the list.
“Here is a link to the map”:http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?client=firefox-a&hl=en&ie=UTF8&msa=0&ll=29.970253,-90.073042&spn=0.043348,0.083513&z=14&om=1&msid=105646371802170237687.0004439cd27b790e4ecfb