By Ariella Cohen, The Lens staff writer | After weeks of heated debate over the future of Charles J. Colton Middle School on St. Claude Avenue, city and state elected officials are asking that Louisiana Superintendent of Education Paul Pastorek put a six-month hold on the discussion and conduct a fresh “community process” moderated by […]
Author Archives: Ariella Cohen
Posted inGovernment & Politics
Federal award or not, Iberville redevelopment to move forward on tax-credit financing
By Ariella Cohen, The Lens staff writer | A $651 million redevelopment of the Iberville public-housing complex will be paid for with loans from the state, government-backed bonds and money from selling low-income housing tax credits, Housing Authority of New Orleans plans show. First submitted to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in […]
Posted inGovernment & Politics
Inside the quirky world of special funds: Landrieu team vows closer scrutiny
By Ariella Cohen, The Lens staff writer | The New Orleans Police Department raised $70,975 and spent $107,778 registering sex offenders last year. During that same period, the parking garages at Harrah’s Casino took in $19.8 million while the New Orleans Building Corporation raised no money at all. These are just a few of the […]
Posted inEnvironment, Government & Politics, Investigations
Toxic acid poses an unnecessary health risk to more than a million in the Greater New Orleans region
Despite the availability of a safer alternative, three New Orleans area refineries continue to rely on a lethal compound, as do two others in Louisiana.
Posted inGovernment & Politics, Land Use
Recovery projects are progressing, but half are not yet under construction
By Ariella Cohen, The Lens staff writer | In the nine months since Mayor Mitch Landrieu’s administration took over City Hall, long-delayed capital projects have made steady, if slow, progress. Even so, don’t expect to see too many cranes in the sky just yet. More than half of 210 planned projects remain in pre-construction phases. […]
Posted inEnvironment, Land Use
Despite 8 deaths in abandoned warehouse, city has done little new to fight vagrancy
By Ariella Cohen, The Lens staff writer | Six weeks after eight young people were killed by a fire in the fallow 9th Ward warehouse where they were living, the city has not taken new substantive action to reduce vagrancy or shut down unsafe squats. “We just don’t have the manpower,” the city’s newly appointed […]
Posted inLand Use, Schools
Ghost schools haunt New Orleans neighborhoods
Five years after the Orleans Parish School Board shut down dozens of hurricane-damaged public schools, New Orleans residents continue to live alongside the wreckage.
Posted inLand Use
New HANO site lets Section 8 residents, landlords better find and manage apartments
This map shows, by ZIP code, how many Section vouchers are in use across the city. By Ariella Cohen, The Lens staff writer | Three months after The Lens reported that Section 8 units managed by the Housing Authority of New Orleans remain primarily clustered in the poor neighborhoods the program intends to deconcentrate, HANO […]
Posted inGovernment & Politics, Land Use
Director struggles to recover seed money owed her for blight-to-gardens program
Story updated, One week after this story ran, the city cut the vendor a check. By Ariella Cohen, The Lens staff writer | With her worn straw hat and tiny home office, 33-year-old landscape architect Abby Feldman is an unlikely benefactor for the city of New Orleans. Yet she has become essentially that over the […]
Posted inSchools
Independent schoolhouse authority proposed
By Ariella Cohen, The Lens staff writer Recovery School District Superintendent Paul Vallas is talking up a plan to transfer control of Orleans Parish School Board facilities to a new authority that would build all the city’s public schools, whether operated by the school board, the state-run RSD or a charter board. Speaking Tuesday on […]