2nd Think New Orleans Unconference: New Orleans Redevelopment Authority
This is a second in a series of unconferences produced by Think New Orleans. The topic is the future of the New Orleans Redevelopment Authority.
The New Orleans Redevelopment Authority is facing political and procedural challenges. There are many organizations working to address these challenges. The New Orleans Redevelopment Authority Unconference will create an environment where these organizations can collaborate. They can share their experiences with and concerns about the New Orleans Redevelopment Authority and its mission.
We are hosting a participant driven conference which will strengthen relationships between grassroots organizations and will further the successful collaborations between grassroots organizations and government.
- Where: Grace Episcopal Church, 3700 Canal St, New Orleans, LA
- When: Saturday, January 12th, 2008 from 11:00 am to 5:00 pm.
- Contact: Alan Gutierrez, alan@thinknola.com, (504) 717-1428
Think New Orleans is partnering with Mid-City Neighborhood Organization, Downtown Neighborhood Improvement Association, Trinity Christian Community, CityWorks, Common Knowledge, Citizens’ Road Home, Phoenix New Orleans and CBNO/MAC to produce an unconference format forum to discuss the New Orleans Redevelopment Authority. The Trinity Christian Community has pledged financial support to produce the unconference.
The issues that surround the vast inventory of blighted, adjudicated and Road Home properties are of great concern to many of us involved in the recovery. We are in the midst of a critical public input phase of the future of the New Orleans Redevelopment Authority. We should get together and talk.
- Regsiter for the 2nd Think New Orleans Unconference - Please register to help us accommodate you.
The Unconference Format
The unconference format is a real format that comes out of Silicon Valley, where technical people got tired of going to conferences to sit in audiences and get lectured by marketing types. Why are you telling me about the future of the industry when I’m the one who’s implementing it? Thus, they set out to create a format with more human interaction, less sitting still eyes forward. (And no, it’s not computerized or technical at all.)
The unconference is a structured format, but it allows the participants to set the agenda, not the conference organizers.
So often, we attend public hearings to try and inject our message or ask our questions in those three minutes before the microphone cuts off. As is always the case, the real information is exchanged in hallways before and after. We’re adapting the unconference format to create participant driven civic participation.
- Regsiter for the 2nd Think New Orleans Unconference - Please register to help us accommodate you.
Questions and Comments
If you have any questions about the New Orleans Redevelopment Authority Unconference, please email alan@thinknola.com or call Alan Gutierrez at (504) 717-1428.
You can also leave comments in the comments section of this article.
- Regsiter for the 2nd Think New Orleans Unconference - Please register to help us accommodate you.
Special Thanks
The New Orleans Redevelopment Authority Unconference is produced with the financial support of the Trinity Christian Community.
- Regsiter for the 2nd Think New Orleans Unconference - Please register to help us accommodate you.
Registered Particpants
- Alan Gutierrez / 70119
- Karen Gadbois / 70118
- Becky Houtman / 70115
- Una Anderson / 70130
- Karley Frankic / 70117
- Marshall Truehill Jr / 70119
- Prisca Terven / Weems / 70116
- Doris O’Sullivan / 70119
- William Dwyer / 70115
- Renia Ehrenfeucht / 70130
- Michael Sartisky / 70115
- Carol Dotson / 70118
- Priscilla Warsley-Riley / 70112
- Mia Partlow / 70117
- Shawn Chollette / 70119
- Gill Benedek / 70119
- Laura Tuggle / 70118
- Marty Rowland / 70122
- HMK Amen / 70113
- Laura Paul / 70117
- Harry Hoskins / 70124
- Maureen Hoskins / 70124
- Annie Clark / 70112
- David Wagner / 70117
- Lloyd Smith / 70062
- Anthony P. Wilmore / 70114-8003
- James Norwood / 70001
- Stephen Adduci / 70116
- Eric Valentino / 70124
- Paul and Daisy Tarver / 70119
- Jerry Speir / 70118
- Dipo Mosadomi / 70125
- Tommye Lambert / 70119
- Eli Ackerman / 70115
- Monica Johnson / 70116
- Nancy McPherson / 70825
- Glenn Smith / 70124
- Elder Joseph Roberts, Sr. / 70117
- Audrey Evans / 70119
- Mtumishi St Julien / 70113
- Tina Marquardt / 70124
- Lauren Lastrapes / 70119
- Diana Lewis / 70118
- Konrad King / 70122
- Nathan Rothstein / 70115
- Keith Twitchell / 70119
- Charles Burck / 70130
- Barbara Blackwell / 70122
- David Crais / 70124
- Phil Costa / 70119
- Bobbi Rogers / 70119
- Editha Amacker / 70115
- Leslie Eaton / 75214
- Connie Uddo / 70124
- Jim Coningsby / 70115
- Sarah Lewis / 70124
- Jim Livingston / 70130
- Denise Strauss / 70124
- Dorothy Williams / 70116
- Shirley Laska / 70118
- Edward McGinnis / 70130
- Robert Rosenthall / 70058
- Leigh Checkman / 70130
- A.A. Krishnan / 70118
- Jennifer Weishaupt / 70119
- Andreanecia Morris / 70125
- Rafe Rabalais / 70118
- Michael Robinson / 70113
- Tilman Hardy / 70118
- Robert Cerasoli / 70118
- Nikki Najiola / 70119
- Katherine Cecil / 70116
- Janet Bean / 70118
- Stephen Miles / 70115
- John Mcknight / 70125
- Melissa Schigoda / 70118
- Jamie Hill / 70123
- Regsiter for the 2nd Think New Orleans Unconference - Please register to help us accommodate you.
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[...] Details at Think NOLA. [...]
This is also the message board for the unconference. Please leave questions of comments here.
If you have an idea for what you’d like to cover on the agenda, this is where you comment.
[...] New Orleans Redevelopment Authority Unconference Tagged [...]
I am available to help. I am a sensitive preservationist and want to see all of our historic structures, important to the historic fabric of our great city, restored and re-occupied. I am available at any time:
(1) to explain how the FHA and Fannie Mae rehab loans work and small things community groups can do using the FHA 203(k) rehab loan to both attract homeownership and redevelopment to their areas.
(2) to teach potential and current residents of areas the various options available to help decide how they will return and restore.
(3) to teach all memebers of neighborhood groups the key points of financing options so each and every member is an ambassador, with knowledge of real finance answers, to talk up their neighborhoods and the value of renovating/restoring there.
(4) to assist, as a volunteer, any neighborhood association or community development corporation, with the housing finance portion of their redevelopment/revitalization plan.
I will be in attendance at the conference to have this knowledge available for planning purposes.
I hold a Masters in Urban and Regional Planning/Real Estate Development and Finance from UNO. My undergraduate from Loyola is International Business and Finance. Se habla espanol.
I also sit on the Housing Crisis Committee, a group of seasoned professionals “on the street” daily handling inquiries and financing for borrowers. We are also working on additional programs, other than the standard Bond and HOME funds, to assist people in returning home, buying their first home, but primarily to get our neighborhoods restored.
David Wagner
Renovation Lending Specialist
cell (504) 473-1539
office (504) 838-3703
Considering the insane difficulties we are already having about demolitions ~ the wrong houses being torn down while so many others which need to be eliminated are left standing ~ I feel fairly sure that the same problems will occur, in much, much greater numbers, once NORA is given authority over all the homes bought out by LRA/Road Home.
Road Home sellers will be letting their homes go for many different reasons. Certainly, some of the properties being sold to the public will be badly flood-damaged, but many other structures in perfectly good shape (or, at least, in potentially recoverable shape) will fall into NORA’s hands simply because the former owners have decided to stay in their newfound locations because of schools, jobs, etc. ~ not because there is anything irreperably wrong with the houses.
There needs to be a procedure whereby any proposed demolition is announced to some specific NEIGHBORHOOD group in a position to know somehting about the property’s desirability and salvagibility. There should not be a spot anywhere on the map of the city that is not “assigned” to some watchdog entity, and the more local the better.
If the Road Home process had been conducted with a greater degree of competence, of course, a larger number of award recipients would have been able and willing to return home. After two and a half years, however, many folks will have put down roots elsewhere and find it impossible to return. This means that a relatively large number of homes that are NOT damaged beyond redemption will be put into play, and there will be many such cases arising within a short period of time, making it increasingly difficult to do the right thing in every case. Sad but true.
At last weeks HCDRC there were homes up for demolition ownded by the RHC.
Karen, do we know (indeed, CAN we know) whether those homes were passed along from the RHC to HCDRC by NORA, or if they were assigned directly, without review by NORA?
At some time in the recent (post-K) past, there was talk that all RHC buyouts in Orleans Parish were to be assigned to NORA. As I understood it, this was the reason that NORA was “reinvented,” that is, built up and restaffed with new leadership and a larger number of members.
If that earlier talk of NORA’s involvement was no more than a suggestion that is not now being followed, it may no longer make sense to focus too exclusively upon NORA.
If our attention needs to be spread too widely, there is less hope of preventing unjust demolitions or of promoting desireable ones. Unless, of course, more of us do more work.
They were passed into review without the knowledge of Nora. That is one of the many screw ups at the City level.