900+ flood damaged properties earmarked for demolition in restarted demolition programme.
It is news that will gladden the heart of at least one pink-clad, New Orleans-based demolition lady. Two years after the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) quit paying to demolish New Orleans homes and businesses damaged by Hurricane Katrina, the agency has agreed to restart the program, with more than 900 properties already on the teardown list.
Aides to Mayor Mitch Landrieu said this week that they’ve convinced the Federal Emergency Management Agency that the additional dilapidated properties should be razed at the agency’s expense because they are located near the more than 1,600 buildings that FEMA paid to tear down between December 2007 and March 2009.
A FEMA spokeswoman confirmed that the agency has agreed to finance the demolition of at least 910 properties that were deemed eligible for the program years ago.
“They remain eligible as a result of a recent reassessment performed by FEMA” that found the properties unoccupied and posing health and safety hazards, spokeswoman Paddy Buratto said in an email message.
City officials also plan to seek FEMA reimbursement for some of the 806 properties that the city has demolished using federal block grants, said Jeff Hebert, Landrieu’s blight czar.
“If those are covered, the city gets those dollars back to apply to other projects,” Chief Administrative Officer Andy Kopplin said. “We are going to get as aggressive as we can be.”
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