Louisiana Land Trust Option 1 Properties

As part of the Road Home program, homeowners were given an option to rebuild instead of turning their property over to the Louisiana Land Trust. Owners of Option 1 properties were given up to $150,000 towards rehabilitation or replacement post Hurricane Katrina in 2005. This paper provides an update to the initial study that was conducted in the Summer 2010 to evaluate the status of Road Home Option 1 properties. The property has an attached covenant that required rehabilitation within 3 years of fund receipt. There have been concerns that these homes have not met this legal requirement and may become future blight or turned into Option 2/3 homes that must be managed then sold by the State. While Louisiana Land Trust administration has used proxies for rehabilation (such as US postal receipt or Electrical usage), an on-the-ground parcel study has not been completed on over the 30,000 properties throughout the City of New Orleans, LA. This paper describes the process to develop a unique dataset prior to site analysis to evaluate a sample of the Option 1 properties citywide. Converting the static property address data and matching this to the City parcel data allowed advanced GIS network analysis to identify the properties then conduct site visits. The result of this study suggests that monitoring reinvestment post disaster can be done with technology but cannot replace direct observation in the community