The opinions expressed here are his own.Freebase Rate this definition: 0.0 / 0 votesīeat the Traffic is a California, USA, based traffic information company founded in 2001 by former CEO Andre Gueziec, and now operated by Pelmorex Media US, Inc. And now it’s time to shift policy to reflect the good news.īrad Vogel, a resident of New Orleans and a graduate of Tulane Law School, works as a fellow with the National Trust for Historic Preservation. There’s a market for vacant properties in Orleans Parish. On Saturday it was, and Thursday’s BlightStat meeting, the first since the auction, provided NORA officials with a chance to talk about that success. Normally, when blighted property is involved, the arrival of the fire marshal is not a good thing. A rehabilitated property eliminates blight, but it also retains greater value than yet another vacant lot. These are important markers in the blight fight, ones with more positive implications than demolition. This could be done in part by looking at renovation building permits. While the city is slowly moving some adjudicated properties toward sale, that question reveals a lingering emphasis on demolition as a quick fix.Īlong with demolitions and potential sheriff sales, the city should be tracking the number of blighted or vacant buildings being brought back up to code, the buildings that are being renovated. The Lens and The Times-Picayune plugged the event before it took place, but from what I’ve found, The Uptown Messenger provided the only follow-up story prior to this column.Īt the city’s bi-weekly BlightStat meetings, there have been a number of questions lately about why demolition targets aren’t being met. Inexplicably, no major media outlets reported on the aftermath of Saturday’s auction. Indeed, let’s urge the Mayor to hold a press conference beforehand to get the word out far and wide. The city should also take a page from Saturday’s auction and heavily advertise all sheriff’s sales to ensure that taxpayers recoup blight-fighting costs. The money saved by avoiding demolition – several thousand dollars per house – should be used, not only to secure a building that’s a threat to the neighborhood, but also to cover the cost of running the property through necessary legal processes. Should focus on acquiring and selling more public-nuisance properties whose owners have gone AWOL. The shotgun at 832 North Dupre Street brought $31,000. Third, getting new owners to take on properties helps to strengthen the tax base and permits new owners to build equity.įinally, bringing properties back online, a condition that can be imposed in an auction bill of sale, helps to make neighborhoods safer by eliminating crime dens. Second, streetscapes and neighborhood fabric are kept intact cleared lots are often as blighting as damaged structures, and small, shotgun-style lots are not likely to be redeveloped quickly, if ever. But intensifying demand means that selling them to rehabbers should be the city’s option of choice.įirst, the city’s heritage of historic architecture stands to be preserved and rehabilitated, enhancing the character and distinctiveness of old neighborhoods. Sure, some properties are so far gone that they must be bulldozed and carted off to landfills. The auction’s success shows that the ground is shifting in several ways. An auction list of sales prices provided by NORA offers fuller evidence of the potential of this market-based solution. This property at 3100 Cleveland Avenue sold for $54,000.Ī strong market for vacant properties – especially those with historic character in historic neighborhoods (one property on Ursulines Avenue went for over $175,000) – means that efforts to fight blight should move away from the current demolition-heavy approach and beef up the city’s nascent effort to unload properties through sheriff’s sales.
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