Yesterday this house on Delachaise “collapsed.”:http://videos.nola.com/times-picayune/2008/07/two_houses_collapse.html

3963 Delachaise

The reason I had a photo of it is that it was on an Imminent Danger of Collapse list.

So while the City had cited it 4 times as a Health threat and then declared it officially in Danger of Collapse it stood for 7 more months. There seems to be a lot of press attention to this issue, even before the collapse. I heard the Mayor on television talking about picking up the pace of demolitions how sad that the City was unable to move forward on a house that was in danger of collapse and eventually took out another house with it.

If there is a property which is indeed in Imminent Danger of Collapse then the City should proceed. But to use the words as recklessly and loosly as they have instills no confidence in the ability to identify and move on these houses and leave the viable ones alone.

Karen Gadbois co-founded The Lens. She now covers New Orleans government issues and writes about land use. With television reporter Lee Zurik she exposed widespread misuse of city recovery funds and led...