Panel questions law as solution to homeless colony

Councilwoman Shelley Midura on Monday summarized why Mayor Ray Nagin's administration wanted a new public habitation law to move vagrants to a bunkhouse at the New Orleans Mission.

"What you're saying is that we need a way to round them up and get them into the bunk beds. Is that a fair statement?" Midura asked Anthony Faciane, deputy director of neighborhood stabilization for the city's Office of Recovery Development and Administration.

That was fair, he told the council's Housing and Human Needs Committee.

But more than a month after city officials announced an initiative to enact a new law, which outlaws people living in public spaces and replaces one declared unconstitutional more than 20 years ago, the homeless compound under the elevated section of Interstate 10 remains entrenched.

"Is it legal? Has it worked?" Midura asked.

"Has the method worked anywhere?" Councilman James Carter asked.

When told by Faciane that the city couldn't yet afford to house and provide social services to Claiborne Avenue denizens, Carter responded, "So, the ordinance is premature?"

The meeting was punctuated with expressions of impatience about the visible homeless colony, a collection of people and bedrolls just off Canal Street. "What button needs to be pushed -- what needs to happen?" Midura asked Faciane.

Discussion about the public-habitation ordinance gave way to its underlying motive: making the Claiborne Avenue tent city disappear.

In the end, Faciane and Martha Kegel, head of the homeless-services collaborative UNITY of Greater New Orleans, agreed: The colony's days are numbered. Within three months, it'll be gone, said Kegel, who said state funds expected within the next few weeks will help move many of the homeless from under the bridge into government-subsidized apartments.

Moving many of the homeless awaited completion of a city-financed renovation of the dayroom at the New Orleans Mission, Faciane said. Finished Monday, it transformed the shelter from nights-only to a round-the-clock operation. Next week, the mission also will open a family center, for women with children, he said.

What the mission calls its "bunkhouse," an air-conditioned, heated Quonset-style tent erected at the back of its property, can hold 140 men. About 100 more men can sleep on the mission's second floor, but only if the shelter hires a "firewatch," because of its building's current fire hazards. Women stay in a separate house, which has space for eight more, said Ron Gonzales, the shelter's director.

But the Nagin administration insists that the proposed ordinance is intimately connected to the fate of Claiborne Avenue's tent city.

"The public-habitation ordinance is a critical tool that will greatly enhance our ability to address issues of homelessness in New Orleans .¤.¤. such as what is occurring near the intersection of Claiborne Avenue and Canal Street," Nagin said in a statement released during the committee meeting.

In February, Nagin announced a plan to move the camp to the mission. New Orleans would begin enforcing its "habitation laws," he told WWL-TV. "We have beds for these folks and they just don't want to take them. ... So we're going to try to push the issue, if you will," he said.

But in 1986, a federal judge found the city's public-habitation ordinance unconstitutional. It was stricken from municipal code six years ago.

As drafted, this ordinance is different, in several ways. The newly proposed law mandates that no one will be arrested for inhabiting public spaces if all local shelter beds are filled. Neither Faciane nor the city attorney's office lawyers could provide detail about ordinance-described "safe" zones: public places to sleep lawfully on public property.

Still, a long line of citizens spoke against the ordinance. Offering shelter beds in lieu of arrests won't work for those suffering from mental illness, who typically cannot tolerate the crowded, noisy conditions in a shelter, said Kathleen North, a social worker who works with the homeless. "To many mentally ill people, saying, 'You have to go to a shelter,' is like saying to someone in a wheelchair, 'You have to go up those stairs.' "

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."

EJ, St. Charles levees' strength in question

Study shatters faith in levee strength

Substantial work planned in East Jeff

Despite withstanding Hurricane Katrina and being poised to become the area's first levee to reach the vaunted 100-year storm elevation, the East Jefferson lakefront levee might not be adequate and may need to be totally rebuilt or substantially enlarged.

Stunning new data spit out by a complex geotechnical computer model has concluded that lake levees in East Jefferson and St. Charles Parish could be at risk for catastrophic failure.

Though Army Corps of Engineers officials said some experts doubt the accuracy of the new analysis, the agency intends to identify and implement solutions -- which could range from entirely rebuilding the levees to constructing a huge rock jetty in front of them.

"Our new method of analysis has given us (data) that we don't intend to ignore," said Lt. Col. Murray Starkel, deputy commander of the corps' New Orleans District.

Because the corps is under the gun to provide an improved hurricane protection system by 2011, officials said they can't wait for the results of additional studies that might ultimately debunk this new finding of the "Spencer's method" analysis.

"There will come a point at which we go forward with (contracts), even if they produce an overly conservative design," said geotechnical engineer John Grieshaber, technical support chief for the corps' Hurricane Protection Office.

"We will award contracts to meet that 2011 date, and if we find out later that we can do with a less conservative design, we can modify a contract in the field," he said.

Design standards updated

The computer-generated data, which blindsided even those engineers overseeing planned improvements to the region's hurricane protection system, are the result of applying more conservative design standards adopted since Katrina.

Key to that corps effort to ratchet up reliability, complex computer software was specially adapted over the past year that enabled the Spencer's analysis to identify any type of failure that could possibly occur in tricky south Louisiana soils.

As recently as January, engineers overseeing planned improvements to the East Jefferson lakefront predicted that it would be the first to attain the new elevations needed to help provide a stepped-up 100-year level of storm surge protection by 2011.

But the very next month, the Spencer's software began unspooling the news that it had identified a failure potential not detected by previous computer analyses in the Lake Pontchartrain levees of East Jefferson and St. Charles Parish.

"No, we absolutely did not expect this result," Rich Varuso, geotechnical chief for the district's engineering division, said of the geometry-based calculations that resulted.

Improving stability

In response to the Spencer findings, a team of consulting engineers already are analyzing methods of providing additional stability in the two areas that have been red-flagged.

In both cases, the deficiency stems from the size of geosynthetic materials -- heavy-duty fabrics, often made of polyester or polypropylene -- that were buried beneath the levees and berms to help stop levees from moving and failing.

Because the materials were used primarily in East Jefferson and St. Charles Parish, corps officials said the dilemma appears limited to the two parishes.

Spencer's analysis concluded that the geosynthetic material currently in place is about 20 feet too short to prevent the kind of "rotational failure" that the stuff is designed to prevent.

The previous analysis, called Method of Planes, or MOP, did not identify such a failure potential, Varuso said.

Varuso and Starkel say no earthen hurricane protection levee has ever suffered a rotational failure, which generally occurs when levee movement creates a crack near the crown and total collapse follows.

Experts disagree

Varuso said geotechnical engineers who have reviewed Spencer's geometry-based calculations at the lakefront disagree on whether they are valid findings or a fluke created by reconfigured software.

"Some experienced engineers in this field say there's no way that this (kind of failure) can happen under these circumstances, that physics won't allow it .¤.¤. and other experienced engineers feel that it could happen," he said.

Varuso said the new findings already have been passed along to other corps districts and some academicians for their opinions, and additional in-depth analyses and testing are being planned. Those findings will then be peer-reviewed by experts outside the agency.

But for now, Varuso and others said the corps can't wait for those results to endorse or debunk the findings.

"We're going to consider that it's legitimate, valid, until our own studies show otherwise unless they show otherwise," Varuso said.

Corps decision-makers said they will take no chances: If the calculations turn out to have been wrong, Starkel said, the corps's path of prudence will result in an overdesigned protection system for the two parishes.

"Is this really an issue we need to be concerned with, or is it an anomaly?" asked Starkel. "We're going to err on the side of caution and proceed with our evaluation of designs to address it. .¤.¤. We're being uber-conservative."

Although levees and floodwalls throughout the region are being reassessed using Spencer's method, it is the geosynthetic fabrics located mainly in East Jefferson and St. Charles that threw up the red flag.

"I don't think it's going to be a major factor anywhere else, but we'll have to see when the (complete analysis) is finished," Starkel said.

Each of the options being evaluated would alter the face of the lakefront in varying degrees, just as each will have varying effects on the environment and the neighborhoods that nestle up to the levees.

"We well understand the impact that expanding the footprint of the levees will have on humans and the environment," Starkel said. "Our goal has always been to design more robust levees in the same footprint if at all possible."

Starkel said all the alternatives will be publicly aired in a variety of venues once the geotechnical team finishes its analysis, possibly in June.

The options also will be included in Independent Environmental Reports, due out later this year, that will identify the corps' preferred method of addressing the stability issue.

Options to fortify the levees in East Jefferson and St. Charles include degrading the existing levees to bury and anchor wider lengths of the heavy-duty geosynthetic fabric, then rebuilding the levees. During hurricane season, no more than 300 feet of levee would be degraded at any one time.

Another option is ignoring the use of geosynthetic fabric and instead enlarging the levees and berm.

In East Jefferson only, additional options include building a large rock breakwater on the wave berm or even replacing the earthen levees with a floodwall.

Length of construction is particularly dicey against the backdrop of providing a higher level of protection by 2011.

"I would suggest to you that is a sacred date, and there will be protection by then," Grieshaber said.

Starkel said it's too soon to estimate additional costs, but said the corps hopes to mine any extra money needed from the contingency and escalation dollars built into the 100-year budget.

Ironically, the use of geosynthetic fabric was a concept pioneered in the New Orleans district, Varuso said, as a way of strengthening levees in highly developed, urban areas where right of way is at a premium.

"If we follow that (Spencer's) analysis, we're talking about drastic changes in EJ," Grieshaber concluded. "Maybe we'll end up getting information that allows us to tweak things so that the solution won't be as drastic as those (now) being considered.

"But at the end of the day, there will have to be some type of change out there, and we're not just going to add more (dirt) to the top of the levee," he said. "That won't do it."