HANO ex-consultant admits taking bribes
Company paid him $45,000, officials say
Thursday, November 16, 2006
West Bank bureau
A former consultant to the Housing Authority of New Orleans pleaded guilty to bribery, federal officials announced Wednesday.
James Lozano, 54, of Atlanta, pleaded guilty to bribery in connection with the use of federal funds, according to a press release from U.S. Attorney Jim Letten, Special Agent in Charge James Bernazzani of the New Orleans FBI office and Special Agent in Charge Thomas Luke of the Department of Housing and Urban Development's inspector general's office.
Lozano was a HANO consultant for the construction of the Fischer Senior Housing Village in Algiers. Federal officials say Lozano was paid about $45,000 in bribes to influence HANO to pay invoices to a construction company that had been in a dispute with the housing agency.
Lozano faces up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Sentencing is scheduled for Feb. 13.
Activists link homelessness to federal spending priorities:
Mortgage-holders get more aid than poor
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
By Gwen Filosa
Cutbacks in federal affordable-housing programs over the past quarter century caused "massive homelessness" on American streets, according to a report released Tuesday by a California-based advocacy group.
Since 1996, the Department of Housing and Urban Development has spent nothing directly on construction of new public housing while more than 100,000 public housing units have been demolished, sold off or redeveloped during the same time period, the report found.
Instead, HUD has relied on the Hope VI grant program that it administers to transform distressed public housing, such as the St. Thomas and Desire complexes in New Orleans, into mixed-income neighborhoods that invariably deliver fewer subsidized homes.
"The federal government is spending money on housing, but not on developing and preserving affordable housing," according to the study, "Without Housing: Decades of Federal Housing Cutbacks, Massive Homelessness, and Policy Failures," by the Western Regional Advocacy Project (WRAP) in San Francisco.
November 3, 2006
Dear LRA:
This is a challenge to the proposal to count the $200 million to Entergy
towards the requirement that over 50% of CDBG funds benefit low and
moderate income people. We have no objection to the LRA giving $200
million to Entergy, just do not try to count it towards the legal
requirement that at least 50% of the CDBG funds go to low and moderate
income communities. It is unjust and illegal to bail out a large
corporation and the business community with CDBG funds and then say you are
going to count it as helping the working poor and deduct that money from
the funds that are supposed to go to the low and moderate income community.
LRA submitted Amendment 6 on October 25. It proposes to use $200 million
(of the $1.1875 billion allocated for infrastructure under the initial
Action Plan) as grants to Entergy to repair electricity and natural gas
infrastructure in New Orleans . Total estimated costs are $842 million and
estimated insurance reimbursement is $250 million.
Agencies in charge of housing New Orleans' poor prefer not to
October 30, 2006
Sara Gran
Former residents of New Orleans public housing, along with housing activists
and attorneys, have filed a lawsuit against the Housing Authority of New
Orleans and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. They've
sued for former housing project residents' right to return home.
No one thinks the projects are ideal. But rents have nearly doubled in some
parts of New Orleans since the hurricane. It's harder to get housing now,
not easier. And yet it's now, just when they're needed the most, that HANO
and HUD seem to have lost interest in low-income housing entirely.
To hear HANO's side of the story, it's doing the plaintiffs a favor by
locking them out of their homes. In the Oct. 18 Times-Picayune, HANO
described its holdings as "deteriorated, obsolete" housing located in areas