Housing Information as reported by the T-P

The Times Picayune reported today that the Federal Emergency Management Agency will craft a process allowing reimbursements to Road Home applicants who have already elevated their homes -- but warned that such requests face rigorous scrutiny and could be denied.

The FEMA announcement reversed the agency's earlier refusal to consider retroactive elevation payments to "pioneers" who raised their homes to limit or prevent future flood damage, even as state and federal officials haggled over whether such owners should be compensated.

State and federal officials refused to say what percentage of at least 25,000 applicants for Road Home rebuilding grants who began elevation work early might qualify for up to $30,000 in reimbursements. And there was only a vague signal as to how long it might take FEMA to iron out procedures for dispensing the money.

On another note, the Housing Authority of New Orleans agreed Wednesday to apply for $40 million in federal HOPE VI grant money to help transform two public housing developments abandoned since Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005.

HANO will have to compete with cities across the country for the sought-after grants, which were instrumental a decade ago in doing away with two of the city's most deplorably neglected public housing complexes, Desire in the 9th Ward and St. Thomas in the Lower Garden District, and replacing them with homes that resemble mixed-income neighborhoods instead of isolated barracks of poverty.

At its regular board meeting Wednesday, HANO's one-man board of commissioners, Donald Babers, approved the applications for two $20 million grants to defray the costs of turning the vacant C.J. Peete complex in Central City and St. Bernard in the 7th Ward into brand new communities.

Meanwhile, the City Council is poised today to reduce the assessments of about two-thirds of the roughly 5,300 New Orleans property owners who contested new and often drastically higher valuations unveiled by the city's seven assessors this summer.

Frilot LLC, the law firm hired by the council to handle the unprecedented volume of appeals, will recommend that the contested properties be reduced in value by an average of about 23 percent, according to records provided by the company.

The council is expected to take up the appeals in a single motion today. Individual cases will not be heard by the council, whose members said there is no reason for curious property owners to attend the meeting, scheduled for 10 a.m.