[StBernard] St. Bernard Parish Council delays decision on rental permit applications

[Westley Annis]

St. Bernard Parish Council delays decision on rental permit applications
By Chris Kirkham, The Times-Picayune 
October 21, 2009, 1:05AM
After months of escalating complaints from St. Bernard homeowners about the
number of single-family homes being converted to rentals, the Parish Council
on Tuesday deferred consideration of more than 70 rental permit
applications.

The council tabled the permits with the hope of ironing out the tangled
bureaucratic process -- several parish entities are involved -- that has
developed for rental applications.

The rental issue has become a thorny one in St. Bernard, with many longtime
homeowners frustrated to see their single-family neighborhoods flipped into
rental zones by out-of-state investors or former homeowners unable to sell
their properties. The Parish Council is operating under an ordinance that
would cap rentals at 20 percent of the housing market in each political
district across the parish.

Councilman Wayne Landry said Tuesday he is uncomfortable approving droves of
rental permits without knowing whether certain neighborhoods already have
exceeded the limit set in the ordinance.

"I'm not sure where we are, and I'm uncomfortable making votes not knowing
if we're at that saturation point," Landry said. "I don't want to take any
steps to devalue property in the parish."

Landry said if the administration finds that too many rental permits have
already been issued, the delay would not punish property owners who already
applied to convert homes to rentals.

One property owner, Nancy Bain of Sioux Falls, S.D., complained that people
applying for rental permits should have been informed earlier that the
parish might be maxed out. She said she bought four houses after Hurricane
Katrina with the intent of rehabbing them and selling them. Market
conditions, however, have forced her to rent them out.

"We're all somewhat stuck here, but in the meantime it only seems fair to me
that if you were at a 20 percent margin, and that was your rule, you should
have known about that prior to forcing me to spend $400 or some amount of my
dollars to apply for this," Bain said. "I followed all your rules, all your
laws. . . . I'm just asking that you consider the fact that here's a very
small opportunity for you to bring some of your people home."

Bain's comments touched off a pointed reaction from council members and
Parish President Craig Taffaro.

"You made a conscious business decision to come down here and pick up
property very cheap so you could capitalize on it," Landry said. "You did
not come down here to help our recovery."

After Bain said, "I didn't realize the hatred down here," Taffaro retorted:
"There's not hatred here. The next time a community experiences what we
experienced, we will certainly be there to help, but I'm not going to be one
to go find a way to take advantage of that situation. How dare someone come
in here and say there's a hatred of people who come into this community."

The current rental ordinance is the latest version of an ordinance that was
struck down last year by U.S. District Judge Ginger Berrigan. The original
version, passed in 2006, would have required council permission for a
homeowner to rent to anyone who was not a "blood relative."

The council removed the blood relative clause, and the current version
survived a separate federal court case last year. The new version requires
all single-family homeowners who did not rent out properties before Katrina
to apply for a rental permit.

U.S. District Judge Sarah Vance ruled a year ago that the new rental
ordinance was a "rational and permissible" way to control land use planning.

Landry said he prefers that the administration take over the rental permit
process, preventing the current situation where permits go through a
monthlong process between the parish's Office of Community Development,
Planning Commission and eventually the Parish Council.