In the New York Times, Harvard Economics Professor Edward Glaeser described the scenario facing Detroit Mayor Dave Bing, who hopes to implement a radical plan to reverse the decades of decline in his city.

Detroit has a large number of communities that are dominated by empty lots and vacant homes. Mayor Bing has spoken of providing incentives for the people still living in such areas to relocate, and warned them that “if they stay where they are I absolutely cannot give them all the services they require.”

For a big-city mayor to warn that some areas will be no-service zones is radical, but our country is filled with less populated areas that lack public trash removal, bus service and water provision. In a sense, Mayor Bing would just be treating the least dense areas of Detroit like those other less dense areas.

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If removing a largely vacant neighborhood really generates significant gains, then some sizable fraction of those gains can be given to the citizens who will have to give up their homes. If generous payments, rather than eminent domain, are used to move the remaining residents, then right-sizing can be win-win.

But if Mayor Bing tries to do too much, too quickly, without giving enough to the residents who have to move, then right-sizing will justly be seen as yet another example of the public insensitivity and folly that has unfortunately marred too many past efforts at dealing with urban distress.

Unless Bing gets really specific really fast about the “incentives” that will be provided to property owners whose neighborhoods have crumbled around them, I suspect his efforts to cluster the population where public services can be more efficiently provided will fall short, just as efforts elsewhere have.

You can’t just offer to compensate a homeowner for their home’s market value or even 25 percent to 30 percent above it; the value of the home is already suppressed based on the city’s failure to invest in infrastructure and services around it. It has to be more worth it, both financially and emotionally, to abandon your neighborhood and uproot your life.

Only trying to compensate someone at or near market value would, I think, just exacerbate the homeowner’s sense of injustice over the officially induced factors – white flight, municipal waste and corruption, national neglect of urban communities – that contributed to their community’s deterioration in the first place. It’s not about the value that a home has; it’s about the owner’s sense of the value the home should have had.

In New Orleans, supporters of the idea that New Orleans needs to close off large areas to development in order to be sustainable over the long term were badly tainted by efforts to do so that occurred immediately after Katrina. That plans to officially close neighborhoods – even if the intent was to simply put forth a concept – were announced while the city’s residents were largely scattered from there homes was an intolerable injustice for those disproportionately affected by both the storm and by the restrictions anticipated in the restrictive recovery plan.

But soon, once federal recovery dollars have been spent and the local tax base must stand on its own two feet again, the need to efficiently distribute public amenities and disburse municipal services to the city’s population will threaten those neighborhoods anew. The short-term existential crisis has been shelved for what could be a generation of uncertainty.

Other Rust Belt cities that believe the only way to save themselves is to amputate certain residential appendages will certainly be watching how Detroit’s residents take to Bing’s initiatives once talk of relocation incentives and service deprivation yields appraisal letters and the denial of trash collection.

Bing’s vision carries a softer touch than those that would rely on eminent domain – forced evictions and demolition crews – but a plan based on market value reimbursement and property tax incentives under threat of the elimination of public amenities isn’t that much softer. It’s more like de facto eminent domain; a slightly faster starvation for neighborhoods already deteriorated by decades of perverse development incentives.

If cities are ever to successfully pull the plug on the neighborhoods they can’t (or won’t) heal, I don’t think “just” compensation will do. It will take something resembling generous reparations, something that might make an apology for quitting on an entire community, seem less insulting.

Another 81 blighted properties were expropriated using the federal grant money, according to the Consolidated Annual Performance and Evaluation Draft Report released for public review Monday.

The city is accepting comments on the report through March 30. Here’s the report for you to download as a Word document.

The annual performance and evaluation report does not provide details about the work completed in 2009 though its authors do ask readers to “please note that various projects, especially housing projects, may presently be underway.”

The city declined to respond to questions about the report. When asked about it Wednesday, two days after a federally mandated public notice of the “complete draft” report was published in The Times-Picayune, a spokesman for Mayor Ray Nagin wrote in an e-mail to The Lens that “neither the Director of the Office of Community Development nor the Mayor (the persons listed as signatories on this) have seen or approved this report. Given that, none of the information here can be assumed to be accurate and you cannot assume that it would appear under their signature. A decision to publish this would mean that you are knowingly publishing information that may be inaccurate.”

After The Lens explained to Ross that the city actually published the information already, he responded that the information was accurate as of the date it was submitted for the draft report, but subject to change. He didn’t say when the information was submitted.

CDBG and HOME funds are awarded by the U.S. Housing and Urban Development Department annually according to federal formulas based on poverty, population and housing data. HUD can rescind commitments if local governments don’t complete projects in a reasonable amount of time. In total, the city received a total of $28 million in non-disaster entitlement grants from HUD in 2009. Affordable housing is just one of the uses for the money. Grants given through other HUD programs fund social services, including early childhood and after-school programs, counseling services and home care for the elderly or people with HIV and AIDS. The report outlines the spending of nearly all $28 million.

HUD requires all cities that receive such money to complete the annual review. New Orleans’ is due March 31. Federal law mandates a 15-day public review period so citizens can submit comments, which are included in the final report.

The city gave $50,000 in federal grant money in part to help support sexual abstinence education done by a Christian organization, according to a spending report presented Monday to members of the City Council.

The grant also financed tutoring and day camps for more than 100 kids.

The money came out of an $800,000 pool of Community Development Block Grant cash given away by the Office of Community Development in 2009 for “youth enhancement services,” according to documents handed out at Monday’s meeting of the council’s Housing and Human Needs committee.

The recipient of the award was Trinity Christian Community, a faith-based center in Hollygrove now embroiled in a separate controversy over a $1 million capital outlay appropriation from the state for a community center in Pensiontown.

Trinity was the only organization to receive money for abstinence education.

When The Lens and our partners at Fox 8 News first reported on the gutted and stagnant strip mall two months ago, developer DMK Acquisitions had taken $162,500 in taxpayer money but had nothing to show for it. Owner and sole employee Kenneth Charity declined to comment, but a city official overseeing the grant said Charity was waiting for a building permit from the city.

Charity wants to add a second story, nearly doubling the size of the building on Paris Avenue at Robert E. Lee Boulevard, which still bears stains from flood waters.

It has stood open to the elements since Katrina, and neighbors are tired of waiting for promised improvements. Further, other city officials see the site as a hazard.

City code enforcement officers held a hearing Tuesday, asking Charity to explain why the building shouldn’t be declared blighted and ordered demolished. Nine concerned and frustrated neighbors were there. A lawyer for the bank that loaned DMK money to buy the property was there to protect its investment. But Charity was not.

Gregory St. Angelo, lead counsel for First National Bank of Commerce successfully requested that the hearing be delayed for two months.

In an interview after the hearing, St. Angelo said the issue likely will be moot by then because he was told by city safety officials that a building permit would be issued shortly, letting Charity begin construction “soon.”

He said he had that promise in writing and offered to send the letter to The Lens, but he has not.

See the Fox 8 story here.

The taxpayer money given to Charity was provided through the city’s frequently criticized Economic Development Fund. The program is overseen by city official Thomas Nash, who said in January that the city was delaying Charity’s progess by holding up the permits.

However, The Lens obtained documents that show Charity was not providing necessary information to process the permits.

The city’s Safety and Permits records details how he was asked twice in June 2009 and once again in December for proof that the building was either above the flood elevation or that the renovation was not a substantial improvement, defined as being worth more than 150 percent of the pre-Katrina value.

Amelie Oriol from the nearby Oak Park Neighborhood Association was at the hearing as well as 8 other concerned residents. While they would prefer to see the retail strip mall returned to commerce, they are also concerned that the development as it stands now is a danger to the community.

Graffiti and makeshift ramps make it clear that it has attracted skateboarders; the existing small upstairs office appears – and smells – lived in.

The strip mall remains open to the elements with the entire interior cladding removed as well as exterior.  The wood framed interior is gutted to the roof. The concerns of the neighbors are made more urgent by the opening of the Greater Gentilly High School nearby.

St. Angelo made repeated assurances that the site would be fenced in and construction would begin “soon.”

His property at 2813-15 Orleans Ave. is to be sold April 15 in an effort to settle his $91,654 debt to U.S. Bank, National Association, plus interest and 25 percent attorney’s fees, according to a legal ad published this week in The Times-Picayune.  U.S. Bank got a court order (.pdf) on Dec. 16 forcing the seizure and sale of the property.

Stewart, who lives in LaPlace, said it was “a legal matter” and declined further comment when contacted by The Lens.

The lawyer handling the case for U.S. Bank, Anne Raymond, of the law firm Jackson & McPherson, L.L.C., did not respond to a request for comment.

A visit to the apparently unoccupied house shows that the property is listed for sale by the Keller Williams agency for $89,000, reduced from $99,000, which was its listed price on Dec. 11, 2009 – five days before the judge ordered the seizure.

It first went on the market on May 14, 2008, under a different realtor, for $103,000, later bumped to $117,000 on Nov. 14 that year. The original mortgage, taken out with First Franklin Financial Corporation, was for $92,700. When he went into default in July, he owed $91,654.38.

On the property today, a 2010 Census bag hangs from a doorknob. In the mailbox is a flier from the campaign of failed mayoral candidate John Georges.

Stewart made the news recently when the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club accepted an $800,000 placard check from Mayor Ray Nagin on Lundi Gras, an award from the city’s federally financed Urban Development Action Grant. That amount has since been reduced to $400,000 and identified as a loan, not an outright grant.

When asked about the terms of this award by The Times-Picayune, Stewart replied, “I only know it’s UDAG, and the specifics I don’t have. … We know the acronym, and we know where we applied.”

Whether a grant or loan, the award may have a bearing on the groups unusual non-profit status, which requires it to generate at least 65 percent of its revenue from membership dues.

An ordinance to approve making the loan is pending before City Council, which could consider it as soon as March 25.

Just today, for instance, leaders of religious orders representing some 59,000 Catholic nuns sent out a letter in support of healthcare reform, asserting that “despite false claims to the contrary, the Senate bill will not provide taxpayer funding for elective abortions.”

Many Catholic Democrats in the House of Representatives have been similarly reluctant to support the Senate bill because its language is not as explicit as that in an earlier version of the bill.

That is, until now.

Over the past 24 hours, two anti-abortion Catholic Democrats in the House have concluded that the bill, which could be voted on as early as Saturday, includes sufficiently restrictive language.

Rep. Tom Perriello, D-Virginia, released a statement yesterday that detailed his research into the abortion provisions contained in the healthcare reform bill and his finding that the bill indeed “prevents federal taxpayer dollars from funding abortions.”

Like Cao, Rep. James Oberstar, D-Minn., was part of a group of about a dozen Congress members holding out on voting for the bill behind the leadership of Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich. Since talks between Stupak and the White House broke down last week, the Stupak coalition is beginning to independently evaluate the bill’s provisions.  Yesterday, Oberstar told reporters from Roll Call, who called him “one of the staunchest anti-abortion-rights Democrats in the House,” that he believed that the language of the bill to be consistent with the Hyde amendment, which has prohibited federal funding of abortion through appropriations bills since 1976.

Today, the Catholic magazine Commonweal published a lengthy and persuasive editorial urging the passage of the President’s healthcare reform bill from an anti-abortion perspective. (h/t: Andrew Sullivan, himself an independent small-c conservative Catholic)

One needs a good reason to oppose a bill that would cover 30 million uninsured Americans and greatly improve insurance for those who already have it. If the Senate bill did clearly authorize the federal government to pay for elective abortions, prolife Americans might have such a reason. To conclude the bill does this, however, requires one to believe that every ambiguity—every possible complication the bill doesn’t explicitly address—is a ploy by prochoice politicians to sneak abortion funding into the system. President Barack Obama and his party’s leadership have promised the bill won’t be used in this way. Their critics instruct us to presume that they’re lying.

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[C]ritics point out that the bill departs from the Hyde Amendment’s ban on federal support for any health plan that covers elective abortion. They insist this is the only conceivable way for the government to subsidize insurance without paying for abortion. This is false, as the Senate bill itself clearly demonstrates. Under the bill, anyone who buys a plan that covers elective abortion would have to pay a separate, unsubsidized premium for that coverage. Such premiums would be segregated from premiums for all other services in a special account, which would have to cover the full cost of elective abortions and couldn’t receive a penny from the government. In other words, the bill would preserve the Hyde Amendment’s principle without applying its method.

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If one wants to claim that no politician who’s really opposed to abortion can support the Senate bill, it’s not enough to show that the bill’s provisions are inferior to the House’s Stupak Amendment; one must also argue that the Senate bill is inferior to the status quo. The government is already subsidizing group plans that cover elective abortion by means of tax breaks for businesses that offer them. Millions of Americans must now choose between accepting such a plan and going without good health insurance; the only other option, a decent individual plan, is now just too expensive for them. The Senate bill would give such people the wherewithal to buy insurance that doesn’t cover elective abortion, which means that, in addition to its many other benefits, it would save millions of Americans from having to choose between their conscience and their health.

LATE UPDATE:

Now, Rep. Dale Kildee, D-Mich., a huge opponent of abortion and a loyal ally of Stupak, has come out with a statement on the abortion issue.

For those who know me, I have always respected and cherished the sanctity of human life. I spent six years studying to be a priest and was willing to devote my life to God. I came to Congress two years after the Hyde amendment became law. And I have spent the last 34 years casting votes to protect the lives of the unborn. I have stood up to many in my party to defend the right to life and have made no apologies for doing so. I now find myself disagreeing with some of the people and groups I have spent a lifetime working with. I have listened carefully to both sides, sought counsel from my priest, advice from family, friends and constituents, and I have read the Senate abortion language more than a dozen times.

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I am convinced that the Senate language maintains the Hyde amendment, which states that no federal money can be used for abortion.

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There is nothing more pro-life than protecting the lives of 31 million Americans. Voting for this bill in no way diminishes my pro-life voting record or undermines my beliefs. I am a staunch pro-life member of Congress — both for the born and the unborn.

If it remains true that Cao is leaning against the healthcare reform bill, it would appear as though he is becoming increasingly isolated from like-minded Catholics, who are now, in significant numbers, breaking in support of healthcare reform.

The House now is preparing to vote on a final package, a composite of the Senate version with some modifications sought by the House of Representatives and the White House. The Stupak bloc again is threatening to vote no because of their belief that the abortion restriction it too weak.

Negotiations between the Democratic leadership and Stupak broke down late last week, forcing members of his small but important coalition to act on their own.

Congressman Cao, as of today, is instructing staff to say that he will not vote for healthcare reform, unless the abortion language is stronger.

Cao’s office did not return calls for comment.

Last week, staffers indicated that Cao is following the interpretation U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, who Monday reiterated their opposition to the bill.

“The bishops were left disappointed and puzzled to learn that the basis for any vote on health care will be the Senate bill passed on Christmas Eve… It expands federal funding and the role of the federal government in the provision of abortion procedures. In so doing, it forces all of us to become involved in an act that profoundly violates the conscience of many, the deliberate destruction of unwanted members of the human family still waiting to be born.”

But other Catholic groups dispute that reading of the bill.

For instance, the National Catholic Reporter published a letter this weekend sent to Congress from 25 evangelical and Catholic leaders, an anti-abortion group called Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good. In it, they detail a series of safeguards against the federal funding in the bill.

After citing the specific provisions in the bill, they conclude:

We are now at a critical moment in the history of our country. More than 30 million Americans may finally gain access to a health care system that is affordable — providing families, children and seniors with fundamental care that is essential to human dignity. We respectfully ask that you make an informed decision about this legislation based on careful deliberation guided by facts.

Similarly, the Catholic Health Association split with the bishops to urge passage of the  healthcare legislation.

Many Democrats have insisted that the Hyde amendment, which has barred the federal funding of abortion since it was passed in 1976, would apply to the healthcare bill. Still, Congressional leaders have worked to add language, including the Stupak amendment, to apply restrictions more explicitly.

Both the House bill, now by the wayside, and the Senate bill under consideration  seek to maintain the ban on federally funded abortions.

The difference, then, is one of semantics. According to Washington and Lee law professor Timothy S. Jost, the House and Senate bills are “essentially equivalent,” but he points to four areas where the two versions seem to be at odds.

The first is that in the House bill, people who accept tax subsidies to help purchase insurance would have to buy a supplemental policy without any public assistance to add abortion coverage. Under the Senate version, individuals would only have to pay a separate premium to add abortion coverage to the policy they purchase using subsidies. In the other three areas, Jost argues that the Senate version of the healthcare bill is more restrictive on abortion than the House bill. The Senate bill lets states bar any policies that cover abortions from being sold in insurance exchanges, regardless of whether or not federal subsidies are used. The Senate bill also prohibits plans from advertising abortion coverage, which  the House bill does not, and provides $250 million in teen pregnancy counseling, which the House bill does not.

Many other anti-abortion Democrats have found the language in the Senate bill to be adequate. Today, Virginia Democrat Tom Perriello, who is still on the fence on the final bill, released a statement with his conclusion that there can be no federally funded abortions under the legislation being considered

“I have plenty of serious problems with the Senate bill and, until I see the final language, I cannot take a position on final passage. But the existing language on abortion in the current Senate bill meets the pledge I made to ensure no federal funding for abortion in this health care bill.”

Cao’s deference to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops for their interpretation is troubling. It both undermines his claim of independent-mindedness and raises questions over whether Cao would split with the Catholic church on any issue, including hard-line views against the rights of homosexuals and the use of contraception.

To his credit, Cao has been consistent in his rhetoric as he’s considered the merits of healthcare legislation – he’s always pointed to the abortion issue as foremost on his mind – but now, because of his deference to the U.S. Conference of Bishops, he has painted himself into a corner. If he votes for the healthcare bill after having not received any additional concessions on his pet issue, the ultimatum he has put forth over the last several weeks will have been a lie. If he votes against healthcare reform, he’ll have flip-flopped on the coverage expansion he supported just a few months ago – and his defiance the majority of his district will have sealed the coffin on his political career.

While many political observers can compellingly argue that there is no path to re-election for Cao, his opposition to the Obama administration’s signature issue definitively slams the door on much of the liberal crossover support that secured Cao’s unlikely election in the first place.

Politics aside, it seems indefensible to this non-Catholic to base such an important vote on what seems to me to be a very minor discrepancy between two bills that both seek to prevent the funding of abortion. Given a recent estimate that a lack of insurance contributes to 45,000 American deaths annually, voting for a healthcare reform bill that will expand coverage to tens of millions of Americans is the only pro-life position to take.

Meanwhile, The Advocate in Baton Rouge has an absolutely must-read investigation into the until-now suppressed claims of racism and brutality by out-of-state police who helped support the Baton Rouge Police Department in the days immediately after Katrina.

One trooper said Baton Rouge officers referred to black people as “animals” that needed to be beaten down. Troopers also reported that officers said they were under orders to make life rough for New Orleans evacuees so they would leave town.

State Police in New Mexico and Michigan cited a pattern of violence and discrimination when they pulled their troopers out of Baton Rouge after just two days of helping local police deal with an influx of hurricane evacuees in September 2005.

The Baton Rouge Police Department investigated the allegations but refused to publicly release documents related to the Internal Affairs probe after it was concluded. The Advocate sued in July 2006, seeking the documents under the state public records law, and in May 2009 the state Supreme Court ruled for the newspaper.

Yikes, I wonder how BRPD’s reaction to the report might smooth this over.

Baton Rouge Police Chief Jeff LeDuff defends his department’s performance after Katrina, noting that the city was full of evacuees and rife with stories of looting and shooting in New Orleans.

“We had a charge to hold the line and balance this city and keep it from being overrun and looted and fired upon,” he said.

Ah, the ol’ “Hurricane evacuees and flood victims were a bunch of craven criminals” defense.

The NOPD and BRPD aren’t the only organizations to treat the greatest humanitarian disaster in modern U.S. history as if it were a prison uprising.

Baton Rouge Mayor Kip Holden’s reaction to the allegations about his police department:

“I was not going to let Baton Rouge be overrun by some people from New Orleans who were hell-bent on committing crimes,” he said in an interview last week.

He said his message to those “thugs who are robbing, raping and looting in New Orleans” was that he would provide them shelter, but “it will not be at the Red Cross — it’s going to be in jail.”

“If there’s a blame to be placed on aggressive enforcement, blame it on me,” he added.

Excuse me for not having much respect for Holden’s conditional willingness to take the fall for the brutality and racism of his police department. Not only should he refuse to stand behind officers who shook down hurricane evacuees, he should refuse to stand behind the discredited rationale for ordering ‘aggressive enforcement.’

The stories of rampant rape and murder in the wake of the flood were proven wildly exaggerated, if not entirely false.

The Baton Rouge crew is at least being forthright in its defense of itself, at least LeDuff and Holden haven’t walked away from that rationale – the unsupportable belief that evacuees were primed to pillage their bucolic paradise.

The same cannot be said for others. Elsewhere, the defense of police terror or the defense of ignoring police terror is not so explicitly explained. It wasn’t the outright lie that flood victims were insane brutes; the situation was more of an indefinable chaos.

Jeffrey from Library Chronicles has an essential post today about The Times-Picayune’s recent editorial outrage over new confirmations about police terror during the Katrina crisis. He points to Gordon Russell’s recent examination, as part of a new partnership between The Times-Picayune and ProPublica, of a potential police shooting that he happened upon while reporting after Katrina.

These events transpired in September of 2005 but Russell is only telling us about them in December 2009. His account appeared in the paper as part of the T-P’s “Law and Disorder” series on police misconduct after the flood which itself was put together in a cooperative effort with PBS’ Frontline and Pro Publica. To me, this looks suspiciously like no one at the T-P thought it was okay to print any of this stuff until it was clear that there might me interest from outside media. If Frontline didn’t want to do the story, would the T-P have just kept quiet?

Jeffrey emphasizes Russell’s own explanation for failing to pursue the story, “chalking it up to the fog of Katrina.”

It really does seem like the great hope of a lot of people was that time alone could make it all go away.

It’s not just the police murder stories that The Times-Picayune, until now, failed to expose. They also showed very little interest in probing the deaths at Memorial Hospital, recently the subject of a huge New York Times Magazine and ProPublica partnership.

That isn’t to simply pile on The Times-Picayune; they don’t make up the quotes.

Recently re-elected coroner Frank Minyard, after re-examining autopsy reports as a result of that investigation, declined to classify one of the deaths as a homicide. Without getting into the particulars of whether or not his decision was right or wrong, his explanation typifies the desire to “move on.”

I feel this is the way to go, just to put Memorial hospital to rest.

I’m sorry, but did Jack Nicholson die and make Minyard general? Does Minyard, by cutting off investigation, think he is protecting the public? Or is he transferring his own inability to handle the truth onto the public?

I suspect that some Times-Picayune higher-ups have at times felt similarly to Minyard, felt that exploring instances in which those who directly or indirectly represent the state – law enforcement personnel, medical professionals, elected officials – did not prioritize helping people in their time of need would make ‘recovery’ more difficult and that these kinds of allegations and instances needed to be cordoned off into separate context.

But the deaths at Memorial, the scores of shootings of civilians by police, the turning away of evacuees by Gretna police on the Crescent City Connection, the pattern and practice of racism toward African American evacuees by Baton Rouge police cannot be classified in the separate realm of the brain reserved to suppress traumatic memories. The bodies of victims are not buried in separate graveyards. Their families have not vanished.

There is no separate legal system.

The decision – whether it was conscious or unconscious – to not continuously and vigorously pursue allegations of racism and brutality during the disaster did not spare this city from any divisiveness.

The only people spared from anything were the perpetrators that have been spared from punishment and the victims who have been spared from seeing justice served.

Still, I hesitate to assign so much blame to any one institution or individual for the belated publicity.

The clamor for truth and justice from the public has been lacking too. Many New Orleanians wanted to “move on” more than they wanted justice for their neighbors.  Or people became comfortable in ambivalence or cynicism. Maybe people had to cope that way.

I don’t know. I can’t know. I wasn’t here.

But I will not absolve myself.

At times, I have felt as though the breadth of the allegations made justice – at least the courthouse kind –  an impractical pursuit.

That is cynicism at its worst.

I was wrong.

When it comes to racism, practicality is not something one fights for. Justice is.

I should have done more to fight for it and spent less time speculating about its unlikelihood.

Just a couple weeks ago, affordable-housing proponents had little hope that developments to replace the public-housing complexes torn down after the levee failures would materialize.

A damning federal assessment of the Housing Authority of New Orleans stated that, “Two of HANO’s Big Four the former Lafitte and B.W. Cooper projects mixed-income deals are in jeopardy. Lafitte and B.W. Cooper risk not moving forward as planned if Congress does not pass a Placed-in-Service extender bill in the immediate future.”

Such a move would give developers more time to close their deals and get their developments off the ground with the help of low income housing tax credits, which are due to expire at the end of this year. The U.S. Senate did just that as it passed the American Workers, State, and Business Relief Act, a $130 billion dollar bill known nationally for extending unemployment benefits. Locally it’s likely to be known for its provision to not only give Gulf states the much needed extension of the placed-in-service dates, but also lets the state exchange its tax credits for cash through the federal stimulus program.

“Without this bill, the critical housing reconstruction projects that are under way would be shut down,” said Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La, who helped secure the measure in the bill.

Sen. David Vitter, R-La., did his part to secure the tax-credit exchange – considered a long shot by many.

“Allowing disaster housing credits to be exchanged, along with the two-year extension in the placed-in-service deadline, will allow much needed housing developments to move forward,” Vitter said in a press release.

Many housing advocates and elected officials had been pushing for the extension, which seemed like the most likely option open to Congress. However, the extension would have meant little if developers were not able to cash in their low-income housing tax credits. The tax credits waned and depreciated during the financial market crisis leaving the fate of developments such as the former Lafitte and B.W. projects looking futureless.

When the stimulus was passed, it allowed for low-income housing tax credits to be exchanged for cash due to the financial crisis. But in a discretionary move by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, Gulf Opportunity Zone low-income housing tax credits were excluded. While a bipartisan Louisiana delegation – at both state and federal levels – pushed for the exchange, Geithner wouldn’t budge, leaving a legislative fix as the last recourse.

The Senate provisions still need to go through the House, and ultimately need President Barack Obama’s approval.

The state, particularly the Louisiana Housing Finance Agency, which administers the GO Zone tax credits, is optimistic.

“We are very pleased with this vote from the Senate,” said agency President Milton Bailey. “Louisiana and the other Gulf States were dealt dual blows: first by the hurricanes of 2005, and then by the recent economic crisis. The GO Zone tax credits are an integral part of the Gulf’s rebuilding efforts, but the landscape has changed since they were first instituted in 2006. We are very grateful that these needed changes were made so that we can continue our rebuilding efforts.”

Read Lens other coverage of this issue:

“Louisiana hit hard, but not among ‘hardest hit’” http://thelensnola.org/archives/3932

“Forgiveness as policy” http://thelensnola.org/archives/3560

“Judge sympathetic, but dismisses complaint about housing money shifted to port”  http://thelensnola.org/archives/3460

“Lens Transcript: Louisiana Housing Chief Milton Bailey” http://thelensnola.org/archives/2958

“BGR President: ‘Inaccurate’ to say too much affordable housing” http://thelensnola.org/archives/3055

It was likewise probably not too surprising when the residents who came out Thursday night for a task force meeting at the Superdome suggested that the new police chief should make officers leave their squad car to walk their beats and absolutely demand basic courtesy from officers toward residents.

Even assertions by speakers that should, in a civil society, be more bombast than literal, such as those indicating the police department was guilty of “terror,” as Malcolm Suber indicated or “rotten to its core,” as ACLU director Marjorie Esman asserted, represented the sad consensus opinion of most attendees. The equating of policing to terrorizing raised not an eyebrow from task force members.

It should have. Or at least in an ideal world.  That such simple ideas, which speak as much to human decency as a competent police force, had to be reiterated by residents speaks to the depths of the ditch in which the NOPD currently finds itself.