This was one serious crane. With the power of a few levers and pulleys, the crane plucked a 41,000-pound modular housing unit from the ground Aug. 7 and carefully deposited it on a raised wooden platform prepared a few days earlier to accept it.
In a matter of minutes --- like an oversized tower of Lego pieces --- another New Orleans family was on the road home.
As president of Providence Community Housing, a Catholic-run post-Katrina housing initiative, Jim Kelly anticipates sights such as this over the months ahead will produce a commodity that has been in short supply since last August --- hope.
Providence was among 22 nonprofit and private developers that won approval Aug. 1 to rehabilitate about 2,000 blighted properties that have been seized by the city of New Orleans because their owners have failed to pay taxes.
Providence applied for and was conditionally awarded 196 properties in all. Those property owners have been mailed letters giving them 60 days to redeem the properties by paying back taxes and liens, but it is unlikely many will do so because the lots have lain dormant for years.
Some are vacant lots and some are houses that are in such bad condition they probably will be demolished to allow a complete rebuild with fast-track modular construction, Kelly said.
"I don't believe the healing process can truly begin until we put people back into their own homes or their new homes or apartments," said Kelly, who is also CEO of Catholic Charities in the Archdiocese of New Orleans.
"Pre-Katrina, we were in the business of hope," he said. "Post-Katrina, our business has taken on a much greater scale and a greater sense of urgency. We need small victories. It's about small victories and it's about hope."
The modular houses set into place on two side-by-side lots Aug. 7 were actually placed on property owned by St. Peter Claver/Ujamaa Community Development Corporation, which had acquired the lots from the city within the last year. "But this is a wonderful example of what will happen with the 196 properties," Kelly told the Clarion Herald, newspaper of the New Orleans Archdiocese.
To get this first project rolling, mayoral candidate Rob Couhig and partners Sam LeBlanc and David Loeb, through their company, Traditional New Orleans Homes, purchased the modular units, and Providence bought the homes from them with financing from Chase Bank and Fannie Mae. The home design has been approved by the Preservation Resource Center.
"This is a pilot project," Kelly said. "We're all trying to figure out how we're going to make this happen. But everyone's donating a lot of time."
A modular house construction factory, Palm Harbor Homes in Austin, Texas, built the two three-bedroom, two-bathroom, 1,350-square-foot homes, and they were transported in two sections. Within two weeks, the homes will have full electrical and water hookups, and they should be ready to be occupied. They will sell for about $100,000, Kelly said.
Another Ujamaa lot around the corner and closer to St. Peter Claver Church will receive its modular house in the near future.
"It's very good quality," Kelly said. "They do schools and even mansions this way. Right now because of the cost of materials and the scarcity of labor in New Orleans, the price break is about equal (to regular construction). But you can get these homes done quicker, because, in New Orleans, how do you find labor?"
Providence, a nonprofit corporation, hopes to restore, rebuild or develop 7,000 housing units --- both single-family homes and apartments --- over the next five years. It is concentrating first on two neighborhoods that it considers "important to the rebirth of the city," Kelly said.
"We're not only thinking about housing in those areas, but we'll also try to do business development, health care, education and other activities," he said. "We've got a whole lot of things we're trying to do, and we'll see which ones take off."
The city plans to offer 4,000 blighted properties to nonprofit developers in November, and Providence will apply for some of those as well, Kelly said, because housing is the community's most pressing need.
"I'm gravely concerned about the mental health of our citizens," he said. "It's been a phenomenally traumatic year. Catholic Charities, the church and everybody else is doing everything they can to provide counseling, case management, support and pastoral care, but until we put people back in a home of their own, we can't begin to heal." ---CNS |