Subsidy offered to get residents out of trailers

Scores of St. Tammany Parish residents still living in FEMA trailers were told by federal officials this week that a pilot rent subsidy program is available for them to move into homes and apartments.

But those residents, at meetings in Slidell and Folsom, were also told that they may have to move out of the area due to a local shortage of rental housing units.

"You have to make some real hard decisions," said Carl Jurison, a senior adviser for the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Those hard decisions have to be made as an Aug. 29 parish deadline approaches that will require the more than 1,200 parish residents in FEMA trailers to find another place to live.

Parish President Kevin Davis has announced that on Aug. 30, the parish will resume enforcing zoning and other codes that prohibit travel trailers as homes on private property. Those still in trailers on private property will face citations for code violations and fines up to $500 per day, parish officials have warned.

At Aldersgate United Methodist Church in Slidell Wednesday night, about 150 visibly distraught and nervous residents listened to FEMA and HUD officials explain the pilot program.

"Where is Kevin Davis?" asked Winnie Ordone of Lacombe. "How come he's not here to see what's going on? . . . Come Aug. 29, what am I supposed to do? Start paying fines or move to New York? I don't know."

Ordone, who works for the School Board's Head Start program in Lacombe, said she and her 12-year-old son have lived in a FEMA trailer since Hurricane Katrina destroyed her home in Lacombe in 2005. Ordone said the trailer is on "higher ground" property she bought after the storm. She said she has been trying to save money to buy a mobile home that meets parish codes to put on her property.

"It's not like I've been sitting around for three years doing nothing," Ordone said.

A neighbor on Pontchartrain Drive in Lacombe, Larrisa Young, said the prospect of having to move out of the area is disturbing. "My kids ask me every day, 'Where are we going to go?' " said Young, a custodian at Fontainebleau High School

Young said her rental home was destroyed by Katrina. She now lives in a small FEMA trailer with her three children and a 7-month-old grandchild. The trailer is on family property where she hopes to eventually build or put a home, she said.

"We want to stay here," Young said. "I don't want to uproot my kids and family."

Ordone, Young and others at the meetings in Slidell and Folsom filled out paperwork and huddled individually with FEMA and HUD counselors to sign up for the Disaster Housing Assistance Program.

Under the HUD program, FEMA counselors work with residents to find a rental home or apartment and sign a lease with the landlord. HUD then pays the rent for the Katrina victim.

Jurison said a person only has to be qualified for FEMA assistance to qualify for the subsidy program. The program pays up to the fair market value of the rental property through February 2009, Jurison said. Subsidies for people over 62 or who are disabled can continue under the program, he said.

In March 2009, those who are younger than 62, not disabled and meet low-income requirements will be shifted into regular HUD housing or rent voucher programs, Jurison said. The subsidies will end in March for those who don't qualify for HUD programs.

"So, think beyond March 2009," FEMA adviser Gail Tate told the residents. "Get something you can afford" for when the subsidies are no longer available.

The parish deadline to move out of FEMA trailers does not apply to trailers in mobile home parks. But Tate said by March 2009, FEMA will require all trailer residents to move

Scandalized HUD Chief Got Royal Send Off

How do you say goodbye to a HUD chief who ineptly presided over the worst national housing crisis in recent memory, who made HUD a byword for cronyism, and who resigned under the cloud of a federal criminal investigation?

Last Wednesday, Alphonso Jackson got the send off he deserved, as you can see from the cover of the program for the event obtained by TPMmuckraker. The event, which was held in the main auditorium at HUD, included an overflow crowd of about 1,000 HUD employees, said HUD spokesman Jerry Brown. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was the special guest speaker at the event, Brown said.

Despite the regal appearance of the program, Brown said that the event mainly involved "a slide show and a person who sang the national anthem." It was "pretty much the standard fare when a secretary departs." You can bet that the slide show contained plenty of pictures of Jackson -- and maybe even a painting or two.

You can see the full program here.

As HUD Chief Quits, a Look at Close Ties

HILTON HEAD, S.C. — Most of the time, the prominent men hovered in different orbits and different cities. Yet for years now, their lives have converged here on this resort island of white beaches and rippling sea.

There was William Hairston, a local builder whose wife is active in Republican circles here. There was Michael R. Hollis, an Atlanta lawyer, entrepreneur and presidential history buff who vacations here.

And there was President Bush’s housing secretary, Alphonso R. Jackson, who golfed and socialized here and led the federal agency that gave hundreds of thousands of dollars in business to friends and acquaintances, including Mr. Hairston and Mr. Hollis.

One such friend, an Atlanta developer, received a $127 million contract last year as part of a joint venture to rebuild a New Orleans public housing project. That developer’s company has paid Mr. Jackson more than $250,000 in fees since Mr. Jackson joined the Bush administration in 2001, for work done before Mr. Jackson joined government, the developer’s lawyer said.

Mr. Jackson, who announced his resignation in March, leaves office on Friday as federal authorities continue to investigate whether he enriched himself and friends with lucrative contracts. The inquiry has also laid bare the connections between Mr. Jackson, who was determined to expand opportunities for minority contractors, and the ambitious men who benefited from those opportunities.

It is the story of a small circle of black businessmen linked by their financial interests in the revitalization of troubled public housing and, in most cases, a shared affinity for conservative politics, and how those connections may have helped force the housing secretary from public life.
In 2003, the year before Mr. Jackson was named secretary, 14 percent — or $134 million — of the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s contracts went to black-owned firms, officials say. By 2007, black-owned businesses were receiving 25 percent of the department’s contracts, or $195.6 million.

Mr. Jackson has proudly promoted such statistics, saying that “a good bottom line with small and minority businesses helps to build a stronger America.”

Indeed, some of Mr. Jackson’s supporters deride the scrutiny of his casual friendships as a racist effort to undermine a prominent black official and several respected black businessmen, noting that no one has been charged with a crime.

Representative James E. Clyburn of South Carolina, the No. 3 Democrat in the House, said he believed the investigation was fueled by officials determined to derail Mr. Jackson’s efforts to expand affirmative action.

“Is there something wrong with trying to make sure African-Americans participate in the contracting program with the American government?” asked Mr. Clyburn, who vacations here regularly and knows Mr. Jackson, Mr. Hairston and Mr. Hollis.

But over time, concerns have grown — first among some housing officials and later among federal investigators — as it became clear several men who interacted with and had business deals with Mr. Jackson became beneficiaries of his efforts to further integrate the contracting corps.

Mr. Hairston, who golfed with Mr. Jackson here, received at least $610,000 in contracts from the New Orleans housing authority, which HUD took over in 2002, for reconstruction work on public housing complexes that were battered by Hurricane Katrina, officials say. (Mr. Hairston did not shy from talking up his personal ties to Mr. Jackson, according to housing officials who worked with him. And Mr. Jackson rebuked department employees who challenged Mr. Hairston’s contracts and authority, the officials said.)

Mr. Hollis, an acquaintance of the housing secretary, owns a law firm that was paid at least $1 million by HUD for running the Virgin Islands housing authority, government contracting records show. (Maynard H. Jackson Jr., the former mayor of Atlanta who died in 2003, introduced Mr. Hollis to Alphonso Jackson more than a decade ago.)

The Atlanta developer, Noel Khalil, who occasionally dined with Mr. Jackson in Atlanta and in Washington, runs Columbia Residential, a development company that received the $127 million contract from the New Orleans housing authority last year as part of a joint venture hired to redevelop the St. Bernard housing project.

Mr. Khalil, who does not vacation on Hilton Head, hired Mr. Jackson as a partner in 1998 for development deals in Texas, before Mr. Jackson joined HUD as deputy secretary in 2001. (The two men met in 1994, also via an introduction from former Mayor Jackson, when Mr. Jackson was running the housing authority in Dallas.)

From 2001 to 2007, Columbia Residential paid Mr. Jackson over $250,000 in developer fees on three housing complexes for work that he completed before he entered government, said Mr. Khalil’s lawyer, Buddy Parker.

Mr. Jackson listed only one payment — of $35,000 — from Columbia Residential in the financial disclosure forms he filed for 2001 to 2006. Investigators have been looking into whether Mr. Jackson steered contracts to Mr. Khalil to ensure that Mr. Khalil could make those payments.
Mr. Jackson declined to comment on his ties to the three men, citing the ongoing investigation. Mr. Hairston did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Pressuring subordinates to award contracts to specific firms could be a crime, according to government officials briefed on the inquiry. The officials said investigators were also trying to determine if Mr. Jackson received payments in exchange for any help he gave friends. But the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said investigators had not found evidence of such an arrangement.

Mr. Hollis and Mr. Khalil denied that they asked for or were offered any special treatment because they were friendly with Mr. Jackson. They say they believe federal investigators know that their contracts were legitimate.

Mr. Parker said he had turned over documents and spoken with investigators. He said a Justice Department official told him that his client was considered a witness in the investigation.

“When you pay money that’s clearly traceable to a sitting secretary of the cabinet,” Mr. Parker said, “it’s not a shocking idea that you’re going to be investigated.”

“But the fact is that he has nothing to hide,” he said. “I feel comfortable in saying that they’ve checked our facts out.”

Mr. Hollis said federal investigators had not contacted him about his contracts to manage the Virgin Islands housing authority, which extended from February 2006 to May 2007. The authorities have subpoenaed records from Smith Real Estate Services, an Atlanta firm that retained him as a special adviser for a Virgin Islands contract with the department in 2004.
Pamela Smith, president of Smith Real Estate Services, declined to comment. Her lawyer, Ralph Caccia, said she cooperated fully with the authorities.

But Mr. Hollis said he had improved the troubled Virgin Islands housing authority, imposing financial accountability, rehabbing 300 public housing units, negotiating for efficient and cost-effective water service and removing hundreds of abandoned cars from the properties, among other steps.

Carmen Valenti, a HUD official who oversaw Mr. Hollis’s work, called him “dedicated, very conscientious and really hard-working.” Mr. Valenti said Mr. Hollis’s contract required several approvals and was extended several times by HUD officials.

“I’m very proud of what we did,” Mr. Hollis said. “We pulled together a team that improved the housing conditions for nearly 15 percent of the people who live in the Virgin Islands, as well as the working conditions of nearly 300 public housing employees.”

“When our engagement started, V.I.H.A. was a highly troubled agency,” he said, referring to the Virgin Islands agency. “When our engagement was over, V.I.H.A. was a much stronger agency and poised for economic recovery.”

Senior Democrats in Congress, who urged Mr. Jackson to resign, say the deals smell of cronyism. Mr. Parker said there was nothing nefarious in the fact that several of the businessmen were acquainted with each other.

“There are a substantial number of successful African-Americans who know each other through business and politics,” Mr. Parker said. “That’s how Noel Khalil knows Michael Hollis and Alphonso Jackson.”

Some African-Americans here bristle at the notion that Mr. Jackson’s casual friendships with the black professionals who flock to this resort town have become part of a federal investigation.

“You get an African-American in a position where he can help black folks, and people just don’t like it,” said Larry Holman, president of the Beaufort County Black Chamber of Commerce, who knows Mr. Jackson and Mr. Hairston.

“It’s unfortunate,” Mr. Holman said. “We have a lot of respect for Secretary Jackson here.”
Property records show that Mr. Jackson bought a house in an exclusive gated community here in 2004. Since then, local residents in this town of 33,000 people have watched his comings and goings with interest.

Mr. Jackson hobnobs with local businessmen, golfs, dines with friends and chats with neighbors who live alongside his vacation home, a cream-colored colonial with columns. He socialized with Mr. Hairston, who had been looking for work beyond South Carolina after his stucco business withered in the face of competition from Hispanic-owned companies here, according to people who know Mr. Hairston.

And he would occasionally bump into Mr. Hollis at parties or gatherings hosted by mutual friends.

Clifford Bush, a local lawyer, said Mr. Jackson made a point of mingling with black businessmen, even stopping by an event organized by the county’s black chamber of commerce.

As a prominent black conservative, Mr. Jackson certainly stood out. Mr. Hairston and Mr. Khalil also share an affinity for the Republican Party. Mr. Hairston’s wife, Starletta, is running for a seat in the South Carolina House, on the Republican ticket.

Mr. Hollis said he still admired Mr. Jackson, despite the housing secretary’s troubles, because he climbed out of poverty to become a lawyer and a member of President Bush’s cabinet. “He pulled himself up by his bootstraps,” he said.

Mr. Khalil said through his lawyer that he “regrets the circumstances that Alphonso Jackson finds himself in.”

As for Mr. Jackson, he is planning on “a few months of rest and relaxation” after stepping down from office, said a HUD spokesman, Stephen C. O’Halloran.

Mr. O’Halloran said Mr. Jackson planned to continue vacationing here in Hilton Head.

Lawsuits surprise some trailer users

42 are sued as parish launches 1st wave of cases

If Thursday was moving day, no one told Craig Furden.

He has been living in a FEMA travel trailer at 713 Causeway Blvd. in the Shrewsbury community since Hurricane Katrina. Despite monthly visits from a federal inspector, he said he had no idea his address appeared in one of 42 fresh lawsuits against owners of property that still harbor the mobile box dwellings.

"Mine's on the list?" Furden said. "They didn't tell me nothing."

Jefferson Parish filed the suits Thursday to start the final push to rid unincorporated areas of what some officials have dubbed persistent eyesores. Though all the properties identified in the initial round of suits are located in East Jefferson, code enforcement officers have targeted as many as 600 trailers parishwide, including 421 in West Jefferson. More suits are planned.

The parish has long banned trailers in many of its zoning districts. But after Katrina-related flooding damaged thousands of houses in August 2005, the Parish Council suspended the law.

In March 2007, the ban was reinstated, and Parish President Aaron Broussard's administration began pressuring residents to leave the trailers and move into houses. The deadline was March 1.

Though some trailers remain, authorities have excised almost 17,000 of them since the summer of 2006. Andrew Thomas, a spokesman for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said it removes more than 50 trailers each week from Jefferson Parish and its six municipalities.

Eliminating the final trailers could prove a Byzantine process. Code enforcers must find them, some of which are hidden behind high backyard fences. Property owners must be located through title searches. FEMA administrators must be consulted. Then legal action can kick in.

Residents do have options, Deputy Chief Administrative Officer Bert Smith said. With the help of FEMA administrators, parish attorneys will weed out property owners who have applied for home repair money -- but are still waiting for it -- from FEMA or the National Flood Insurance Program, he said. For instance, Assistant Parish Attorney Matthew Friedman cut eight potential lawsuits from Thursday's batch after conferring with federal authorities, Smith said.

Trailer residents with questions are encouraged to contact FEMA or the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Smith warned that once a lawsuit is filed, court costs will begin to accrue. It will be a judge's decision whether to charge a defendant with the fees.

The suit filings could become a weekly habit for Friedman, Smith said. "How many he'll file next, and when that will be, depends on how complicated the lawsuits will be."

Complicated could define Furden's situation
His trailer has a cozy look that transcends a temporary shelter. Potted flowers in full bloom hang in baskets from an attached awning. A glass terrarium is on display by the front stairs. Padded chairs invite visitors to sit a while.

When Katrina evicted Furden and his then-wife from a house they rented in Metairie, they moved into the trailer on Causeway. Their landlords, David and Angela Celentano, rented Furden the lot, which houses a large warehouse that once doubled as a flea market.

Furden and his wife divorced a year ago, and he kept the trailer. As a renter, however, he was unsure what effect the new lawsuit would have on him.

"They really shouldn't be bothering me," he said.

A call to a New Orleans address listed for the Celentanos went unanswered Thursday.

Louis Kabel's family also could find themselves immersed in a head-scratcher of a situation. His brother-in-law, John Sternberger, owns the property at 3801 Bauvais St. in Metairie, the target of another parish trailer suit. The Kabels live in the house.

A FEMA inspector examined the abandoned trailer in the front yard Monday, Kabel said, but no one has come to cart it away. Nonetheless, Kabel said he understood the Broussard administration's abhorrence toward the trailers.

"It's been plenty of time," Kabel said. "People should be settled in now."

Losing Our Will

wonder what the answers would be if each American asked himself or herself the question: “How is the war in Iraq helping me?”

While the U.S. government continues to pour precious human treasure and vast financial resources into this ugly war without end, it is all but ignoring deeply entrenched problems that are weakening the country here at home.

On the same day that President Bush was announcing an indefinite suspension of troop withdrawals from Iraq, the New York Times columnist David Leonhardt was telling us a sad story about how the middle class has fared during the Bush years.

The economic boom so highly touted by the president and his supporters “was, for most Americans,” said Mr. Leonhardt, “nothing of the sort.” Despite the sustained expansion of the past few years, the middle class — for the first time on record — failed to grow with the economy.

And now, of course, we’re sinking into a nasty recession.

The U.S., once the greatest can-do country on the planet, now can’t seem to do anything right. The great middle class has maxed out its credit cards and drained dangerous amounts of equity from family homes. No one can seem to figure out how to generate the growth in good-paying jobs that is the only legitimate way of putting strapped families back on their feet.

The nation’s infrastructure is aging and in many places decrepit. Rebuilding it would be an important source of job creation, but nothing on the scale that is needed is in sight. To get a sense of how important an issue this is, consider New Orleans.

The historian Douglas Brinkley, who lives in New Orleans, has written: “What people didn’t yet fully comprehend was that the overall disaster, the sinking of New Orleans, was a man-made debacle, resulting from poorly designed levees and floodwalls.”

We could have saved the victims of the Hurricane Katrina catastrophe, but we didn’t. And now, more than 2 ½ years after the tragedy, we are still unable to lift the stricken city off its knees.

Other nations can provide health care for everyone. The United States cannot. In an era in which a college degree is becoming a prerequisite for a middle-class quality of life, we are having big trouble getting our kids through high school. And despite being the wealthiest of all nations, nearly 10 percent of Americans are resorting to food stamps to maintain an adequate diet, and 4 in every 10 American children are growing up in families that are poor or near-poor.

The U.S. seems almost paralyzed, mesmerized by Iraq and unable to generate the energy or the will to handle the myriad problems festering at home. The war will eventually cost a staggering $3 trillion or more, according to the Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz. When he was asked on “Democracy Now!” about who is profiting from the war, he said the two big gainers were the oil companies and the defense contractors.

This is the pathetic state of affairs in the U.S. as we approach the end of the first decade of the 21st century. Whatever happened to the dynamic country that flexed its muscles after World War II and gave us the G.I. Bill, the Marshall Plan, the United Nations (in a quest for peace, not war), the interstate highway system, the civil rights movement, the women’s movement, the finest higher education system the world has known, and a standard of living that was the envy of all?

America’s commanding general in Iraq, David Petraeus, and our ambassador to Baghdad, Ryan Crocker, went up to Capitol Hill this week but were unable to give any real answers as to when the U.S. might be able to disengage, or when a corner might be turned, or when a faint, flickering hopeful light might be glimpsed at the end of the long, horrific Iraqi tunnel.

A country that used to act like Babe Ruth now swings like a minor-leaguer. The all-American can-do philosophy has been smothered by the hapless can’t-do performances of the people who have been in charge for the past several years. It’s both tragic and embarrassing.

The war in Iraq stands like a boulder in the road, blocking progress on so many other important issues that are crucial to our viability as a society. We’ve seen this before. Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, which included the war on poverty, was crippled by the war in Vietnam.

On the evening of April 4, 1967, one year to the day before he was assassinated, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. went into Riverside Church in Manhattan and said of the war in Vietnam: “This madness must cease.”

Forty-one years later, we can still hear the echo of Dr. King’s call. The only sane response is: “Amen.”

Contaminated homes denied funds

It was one thing for Leatrice Roberts to find out that the government had sold her a townhome built on top of a waste dump. But it was mindboggling to learn, at age 74, that the Road Home can't buy her out because the land is contaminated.

"You talk to this one at Road Home, you talk to that one, nobody can tell you if she'll get her money," said Roberts' daughter Patricia, who now lives in Lakeview with her disabled mother and serves as her caretaker.

The state's $10.3 billion Road Home program pays homeowners up to $150,000 to rebuild their homes or to buy them out and transfer the land to a New Orleans redevelopment authority. Financing for the program comes from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which currently runs HANO -- the same agency that decades ago built the Press Park complex where the Robertses' storm-damaged townhome is located.

In the past two weeks, state officials informed homeowners such as Leatrice Roberts who lived atop the old Agriculture Street landfill before Hurricane Katrina hit that their Road Home applications had been placed on hold indefinitely because they live on a Superfund cleanup site. The EPA in 1994 added the 9th Ward enclave to its Superfund list, but said the area could be made safe with mitigation steps such as the replacement of topsoil.

On Thursday, state spokeswoman Christina Stephens said state agencies were working with local leaders and the EPA to come up with a policy for using HUD financing to buy the properties on the Superfund site.

HUD said its money can't be used to purchase contaminated land, but that it would work with the state to come up with a solution.

Federal subsidies

Homeowners in the neighborhood argue that they are entitled to compensation when it was HANO and the city of New Orleans, backed by federal subsidies, that built the homes on an old city dump, placed public housing tenants there and sold the homes to poor residents in a rent-to-own initiative. The neighborhood included a subdivision development called Gordon Plaza.

HUD spokesman Brian Sullivan said the federal housing agency sympathizes, but doesn't consider itself a party to the dispute.

"We appreciate the fact that it must be a maddening situation for these homeowners," he said.

Late Thursday, Stephens said the state decided to put applications from former residents of the landfill neighborhood back into the Road Home pipeline. Blending elements of two Road Home options, the property owners would have their grants calculated based on a regular rebuilding grant, but they also would be allowed to use the money to relocate. She said the state was still working out details of the policy, including who would assume ownership of the properties.

"We can't keep these people in a holding pattern forever," Stephens said.

The land's hidden legacy

The Robertses believe they were the second family to move into the HANO Press Park complex when it opened in 1970. When HANO showed the widowed Leatrice Roberts the property, she recalls that nobody told her it was on top of the old 95-acre landfill, a city dump from 1909 to 1958 that briefly reopened after Hurricane Betsy in 1965.

Everyone in the neighborhood knew Roberts' Montegut Street townhome by the heavy door with "Roberts" in a gold-painted iron design in the middle. After Hurricane Katrina flooded the townhome and destroyed the roof, someone took that door.

Leatrice Roberts now uses a wheelchair because of heart problems, diabetes, high blood pressure and a blood clot in her lungs. She's been waiting for Road Home to buy her out since her first appointment in November 2006, and using her Social Security checks to pay $1,500 in monthly rent.

The property deed of Roberts, for many years a subsidized renter at Press Park, shows she purchased her townhome from HANO on Nov. 4, 1991, three years before the EPA found dangerous levels of lead in the ground and declared the area a Superfund site. A few years after that, Roberts and her other daughter, Gail Wells, were diagnosed with cancer, they said. Roberts lost a kidney and Wells had ovarian cancer, but both say they are now cancer-free.

During the same year that the site was added to the Superfund list, school officials shut down Moton Elementary School, across Abundance Street from the row of townhomes, citing fears of the health effects of buried waste. But local and federal officials at the time turned aside residents' pleas for a buyout of their homes.

Post-storm contamination

After Hurricane Katrina, when the EPA tested the ground in New Orleans and gave the city a clean bill of health, there was one glaring exception: In the old Ag Street landfill area, yards had 50 times the normal level of the cancer-causing petroleum byproduct benzo(a)pyrene.

Nevertheless, FEMA trailers were supplied for properties in the area. Road Home officially initially said the program would provide rebuilding grants, but not buyouts, in the area. And HANO told homeowners they could move back into their homes, even though a judge had called the neighborhood unfit for people.

Roberts is among hundreds of former Press Park and Gordon Plaza residents waiting for HANO and the city to pay a class-action judgment, in a suit sparked by pre-Katrina contamination issues. It took 13 years to win the lawsuit in Civil District Court, where Judge Nadine Ramsey declared the neighborhood "unreasonably dangerous" and "uninhabitable." She ordered HANO, the city and their insurers to pay fair-market value, plus amounts ranging from $4,000 to $50,000 for emotional distress, depending on how long a resident lived at the site before contamination was found in 1993.

On Jan. 30, the state's 4th Circuit Court of Appeals largely upheld Ramsey's ruling, although it cut the emotional distress awards in half. On Thursday, HANO appealed to the Louisiana Supreme Court and other defendants are expected to also press appeals, said plaintiffs' attorney Suzette Peychaud Bagneris.

Bagneris said she has asked the Road Home for more than a year to offer buyouts to the Ag Street landfill homeowners, just as the program has done for those affected by the Murphy Oil spill that occurred during Hurricane Katrina in St. Bernard Parish.

"Our requests fell upon deaf ears," Bagneris said.

Stephens said the Murphy Oil spill is not limited by federal rules governing Superfund sites. The Murphy Oil spill has its own section in Road Home policies. Until the state's decision Thursday, there had been no policy for Superfund sites.

Nagin OKs demolition of Lafitte housing complex

The light-brown bricks of the Lafitte public housing complex will soon be rubble.

Mayor Ray Nagin signed its demolition permit Monday, allowing the destruction of all but 196 units, which are being preserved temporarily for returning public-housing residents.

Shortly after the City Council voted in December to demolish the "Big Four" public housing developments, the mayor signed three of the four permits. Since then backhoes and dumptrucks have been working steadily to pull down and haul away apartment buildings at the B.W. Cooper, C.J. Peete and St. Bernard complexes.

But the mayor kept his pen from Lafitte's demolition permit, saying that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development hadn't handed over what he and the City Council had requested. Specifically, as a condition of demolition the mayor and council wanted to see the redevelopers' financing plans, master-development agreements signed by all resident councils, documentation that the Housing Authority of New Orleans had provided enough affordable housing for returning public-housing residents, and an expansion of HANO's current one-man board to include local representation and input.

The mayor had always maintained that he would authorize the Lafitte demolition when HUD provided the necessary paperwork.

Still, preservationists and public-housing advocates held out hope that Lafitte's demolition was being reconsidered. They argued that Lafitte was better designed and maintained than the other complexes being razed and that it was an integral part of the culturally rich 6th Ward.

Those hopes were dashed Monday afternoon after the mayor said that he and council members were "comfortable" that HUD was honoring its wishes.

"We're really disappointed," said Walter Gallas head of the New Orleans field office for the National Trust for Historic Preservation. "We believe that the city, HUD, and HANO are making a big mistake."

HUD Secretary Draws Strong Criticism at Hearing

WASHINGTON — Several Democratic senators sharply criticized the secretary of housing and urban development on Wednesday, warning that accusations of wrongdoing threatened to undermine his leadership.

The Justice Department and the housing department’s inspector general are investigating whether the secretary, Alphonso R. Jackson, improperly steered hundreds of thousands of dollars in government contracts to friends in New Orleans and the Virgin Islands.

On Wednesday, Democratic lawmakers also raised concerns about accusations that Mr. Jackson threatened to withdraw federal aid from the director of the Philadelphia Housing Authority after he refused to turn over a $2 million property to a politically connected developer.

The lawmakers pointed to an e-mail exchange in January 2007 between two senior HUD officials who discussed making the Philadelphia housing chief, Carl R. Greene, unhappy by taking away his federal aid.

Mr. Jackson, who appeared before the Senate banking committee on Wednesday, said he could not discuss the e-mail messages because they were linked to a lawsuit filed against HUD by Mr. Greene. Last year Mr. Jackson denied complaints of favoritism, telling senators, “I do not interfere with any contract that is given in HUD, period.”

Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut and chairman of the banking committee, told Mr. Jackson on Wednesday that he remained “deeply troubled” by the reports of impropriety.

Senator Bob Casey, Democrat of Pennsylvania, said controversy had been “swirling around your stewardship of this department for far too long.”

“This kind of stuff undermines public confidence in our officials,” Mr. Casey said of the e-mail messages, which were first published by The Washington Post.

In the messages dated Jan. 12, 2007, Orlando J. Cabrera and Kim Kendrick, two assistant secretaries at HUD, discussed Mr. Greene.

“Would you like me to make his life less happy? If so, how?” wrote Mr. Cabrera, who has since left the department.

Ms. Kendrick responded with a smiley face.
“Take away all of his federal dollars?” she asked.
Mr. Cabrera wrote back: “Let me look into that possibility.”

In February, Jerry Brown, a HUD spokesman, denied that Mr. Jackson had attacked Mr. Greene for refusing to turn over a parcel of land to Kenny Gamble, the soul songwriter and producer. Mr. Brown said Philadelphia stood to lose millions of dollars in financing because the city had failed to meet the requirements of a decade-old housing plan.

“There was no retaliation,” Mr. Brown said. “These two things had nothing whatsoever to do with each other.”

Mr. Greene denied that his department had failed to meet a federal requirement that 5 percent of its public housing be made accessible for the disabled. He described HUD’s decision to withhold aid as “a vendetta because I would not participate in a corrupt scheme.”

Concerns about favoritism in the distribution of HUD contracts first arose in April 2006 after a speech by Mr. Jackson. The secretary had said he canceled a contract for a company after its president told him that he did not like President Bush. Mr. Jackson later said he had made the story up.

Federal officials are investigating whether Mr. Jackson steered work at the Virgin Islands housing authority and rebuilding work in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina to friends. HUD officials have declined to comment on those matters because they are under investigation.

At the hearing on Wednesday, Mr. Jackson said the judge overseeing the lawsuit filed by Mr. Greene had asked the parties not to discuss that case. “I just do not feel at ease discussing this, given the judge’s request,” he said.

Two Republican senators, Mel Martinez of Florida and Wayne Allard of Colorado, said they understood Mr. Jackson’s reluctance to discuss the matter.

Mr. Martinez, a former HUD secretary who brought Mr. Jackson to the department as his deputy, described his successor as a diligent and honest man caught between his desire to respect the judge and the senators.

“You’re in an untenable position here,” Mr. Martinez said. “I know you’re a good man, and I know you’re trying hard to do a good job.”

Some senators dismissed the notion that the judge had barred Mr. Jackson from speaking.
Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, said his staff had researched the matter and found that there was no such order. Mr. Specter, who tried to mediate the dispute between HUD and the Philadelphia housing authority, said he would ask Mr. Jackson about the issue in a hearing on Thursday.