New Orleans’ signature affordable housing policy has failed to produce what it promised — and now the city’s incoming mayor faces a harder, more fundamental question: how to encourage developers to build housing at all.
A city-commissioned report released late last year concluded that a law requiring developers in parts of the city to set aside units at below-market rents should be scrapped. The City Planning Commission endorsed that recommendation shortly afterward, marking a quiet but decisive retreat from a policy once seen as a cornerstone of the city’s affordability strategy.
The conclusion puts the issue squarely before Mayor-elect Helena Moreno as she prepares to take office: whether New Orleans should continue trying to mandate affordability in a weak housing market or rethink its approach to development more broadly in a city struggling with population loss, high construction costs and a chronic shortage of feasible projects…