Louisiana Parish Wants to Dispose of State-Owned Katrina Properties

A St. Bernard Parish commission is debating what to do with about 2,000 parish properties sold to the state by victims of Hurricane Katrina.

The Times-Picayune reports that a panel overseeing the properties will discuss what to do with the vacant lots at meetings this week.

Parish President Dave Peralta says the parish should use the lots “to rejuvenate neighborhoods, increase property values and improve overall quality of life.”

About 4,500 lots in the parish were sold to the Road Home program after Katrina. The Louisiana Land Trust in turn sold about half of those lots to neighboring property owners in what was dubbed the Lot Next Door program.

The first meeting about the remaining properties will take place in the Parish Council Chambers Wednesday at 3 p.m.

The parish is looking at disposing of the remaining properties through the Lot Next Door program, private development or turning the land into public space.

The parish plan estimates that about 1,300 LLT properties will be sold for private redevelopment and the remainder either maintained by the parish or used for public, recreational, environmental or ecotourism purposes. The parish council determined it might harm the local real estate market to put all the properties up for sale at once.

St. Bernard has about 40,000 residents, about 41 percent less than its pre-hurricane population of 67,000, according to recent U.S. census estimates.

Arabi and Chalmette have more than half of the remaining 2,000 LLT lots.

Council Chairman Guy McInnis said the disposition plan likely will include a mix of individual sales, auctions and bundled property sales, and that the commission also will discuss the pace of sales and the percentage and size of bundles.

“This is going to be the first time we are selling lots where people can actually build homes,” McInnis said.

Parish officials say they have received more than 80 inquiries about LLT properties for small-scale redevelopment and a number of developers have expressed interest in acquiring LLT properties for large-scale redevelopment.