The Lens recently visited the Rampart Street studio and office space of Spike Lee, who’s been in the city the past month filming a sequel to his HBO documentary “When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts.” He’d just gotten back from Houston, where he was interviewing people displaced by the federal levee disasters, [...]

Today, President Barack Obama announced $1.5 billion for the “hardest hit housing markets,” money that will go to state housing-finance agencies to help foreclosure and declining housing price chaos.
Though foreclosures are the main focus, the money may also be used for sustainable and affordable homeownership.
Louisiana likely won’t benefit much from the plan. The money is [...]

In my recent article about the slow release of money from the state for a program to address lead contamination across New Orleans, I wrote about arsenic levels in soil that are supposed to trigger a clean-up under state Department of Environmental Quality policy. In a document sent to me from DEQ entitled “Arsenic sampling [...]

Louisiana has been awarded $4.2 million by the U.S. Energy Department as part of the Energy Star rebate program, otherwise known as the Cash for Appliances program. Modeled after the Cash for Clunkers program that increased sales of fuel-efficient cars, and was heralded by the White House as a success, homeowners can get rebates for new [...]

Howard Mielke, a researcher for the Tulane/Xavier Center for Bioenvironmental Research Center, has been collecting soil samples in New Orleans since the late 1980s. Much of what we understand about lead contamination in soils, both locally and abroad, was culled from studies conducted by Mielke, particularly during his time at Xavier University before Hurricane Katrina.
Since [...]

By Brentin Mock, staff writer – Even before Hurricane Katrina, scientists  had established that the soil across New Orleans was laced with an alarming amount of lead, which can cause a range of health problems, particularly in children.
The 2005 failure of the federal levee system then sloshed a nasty stew across the city leaving behind [...]

A recent hearing led by Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., of the housing subcommittee of the House Financial Services Committee, included a testy exchange between the madame chair and John Trasvina, an assistant secretary for U.S. Housing and Urban Development Department over discrimination in St. Bernard Parish. For about five minutes, Waters pressed Trasvina for answers [...]

Since four men were arrested by the FBI for illegally entering U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu’s New Orleans office, many news media outlets have been quick to identify one of them, James O’Keefe, as a journalist – often an “investigative journalist.” They’ve also identified O’Keefe as a guy who dressed as a pimp and entered ACORN [...]

Thursday’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling lets corporations, unions and interest groups spend on ads for or against candidates without making financial disclosures. Some corporations, including at least two in Louisiana, have decided to voluntarily report to the public their political expenditures nonetheless.
Well in advance of this week’s decision, the Center for Political Accountability had been [...]

A highly touted $30 million federal grant to the New Orleans Redevelopment Authority arrived with some confusion about how it will be used. A nola.com headline announced that NORA got the money “to fight blight.” Meanwhile language on the Web site of the granting agency, the U.S. Housing and Urban Development Department, says first that [...]