Where Will People Live?

Author(s): Alan Mallach (Senior Fellow)

In 2016, the New Orleans Redevelopment Authority (NORA) retained the Center for Community Progress to assess rental housing conditions in the city of New Orleans. In this repot, we assess the extent to which there is a shortage of rental housing affordable to the city’s lower income households, identify barriers to addressing that shortage, and strategies to address it.

Vacancy rates have gone down while rents have risen sharply in New Orleans since 2012. The rental vacancy rate fell below 8% in 2013 for the first time since Hurricane Katrina, while rents have increased by 20-25%.

We identify key strategies the City can use to increase land and building availability, such as subsidies to develop rental housing, access to affordable housing for small-scale development, improved regulation of existing rentals, and an overall strategy to link these tools.