New Orleans Seeks Key to Revival : Louisiana: Thousands of derelict homes stand vacant, dilapidated and tax delinquent. City hopes to sell them.

One of America’s unique cities is falling down--literally.

At least one in five houses in New Orleans is abandoned, a vacancy rate believed to be the worst in the nation. The old Creole cottages, the Victorian mansions, the shotgun shacks, all slowly collapsing because of lack of maintenance.

To save what is left of New Orleans, a group of community activists is asking the city to do something radical: Sell thousands of houses to the poor for a few thousand dollars each in back taxes. For those who cannot afford the back taxes, let them pay in installments. And the rest? Give the houses away, they say, because almost anything is better than a vacant home.

“Unless we do something, and do something soon, we’re going to be left with a shell of a city,” said Oliver Thomas, a New Orleans City Council member and head of a council housing committee who supports getting New Orleans’ poorer citizens into the abandoned houses. “Either we get rid of these houses or this city isn’t going to make it.”

Over the years, New Orleans, like many troubled cities, has received millions of dollars in federal housing grants. Federally guaranteed loan money has poured in. Nonprofit groups have struggled to renovate houses. But the blight has grown ever worse.

An estimated 37,000 homes, in a city of fewer than 450,000 residents, sit vacant. Some residents claim they can almost hear the termites.

What the bugs and the humidity do not get, the crack dealers and vandals do. The empty houses are stripped of their ornate woodwork, copper plumbing, cast-iron bathtubs and even their roofs. Then they become stop-and-go drug dens or dangerous playgrounds for children.

The middle class--black and white--has been fleeing New Orleans for more than a decade. For them, the funky romance of the Crescent City faded long ago. They are simply abandoning their properties, neither willing nor able to be landlords or taxpayers.

The spirit of New Orleans has been weighed down by the oil bust and a faltering economy, a spree of murders and almost unparalleled police corruption, with police officers themselves charged with running drug rackets, committing holdups and ordering executions. But the vacant houses, row upon row, spread throughout New Orleans in rich neighborhoods and poor, seem the most starkly visible and desolate sign of decay.

What many low-income residents here want is to own a house, even an abandoned one. But until now, getting one has proved to be almost impossible.

Jacquelyn Withrow has had her eye on 2228 Laparose St. for almost three years. A few months ago, she and her husband put their own padlocks on the place, and Jacquelyn Withrow placed three religious cards, depicting her patron saints, over the front door. They cut the grass and hauled away trash. Inside the house, the walls are covered with lewd graffiti, the floors strewn with residue from a crack party. The house was the site of a recent rape.

But the floors and walls and foundation are solid. With some work, it could be a nice home.

“We felt if we could find something we could afford, and that we could renovate, we could make something of it,” Withrow said. “We want the feeling of having something of our own.”

Withrow, a nurse’s aide, and her husband, a warehouse worker, pay $250 a month to rent what she calls “a rat trap.” They do not have enough money, they say, to buy a $25,000 house. They have few savings. Instead, Withrow offers this: “We could take this little old house and clean it up and improve the neighborhood. That’s something.”

Technically, 2228 Laparose St. is owned by someone, somewhere, but its original owner died, and then so did his son, according to a search of records by the community activist group ACORN, the organization that has been pushing the city to do something about the vacant properties.

Of the estimated 37,000 abandoned housing units, there are at least 6,500 “adjudicated” properties, including the one Withrow wants.

An adjudicated property is one where the original owners have abandoned the house, stopped paying taxes and left it vacant. The city has posted notices and sought a response from the owners, and failed to get one. Most of the abandoned houses in New Orleans are candidates for such a process.

An adjudicated property is possessed--though not technically owned--by the city. And for decades, that was the rub. In all the years City Hall has been trying to clean up its abandoned housing stock, it has never been able to sell a single adjudicated house. It was against the law.

Louisiana takes very seriously the rights of property owners, even those who abandon their houses and stop paying taxes. But this year, the Louisiana Legislature, at the urging of a New Orleans state senator, finally passed a bill allowing municipalities to unload such properties. A constitutional amendment also is in the offing; it would allow cities to give away properties.

The New Orleans City Council then passed two ordinances that instructed the city to come up with a plan to sell the houses. No plan has been offered. One stumbling block is this: The state will not allow New Orleans to accept partial back taxes. It must be all or nothing. So families who want to “buy” a city-possessed, abandoned house must have the $3,000 or more to pay in taxes.

Vincent Sylvain, the mayor’s new housing assistant, said he understands the frustration. He hopes to sell 500 adjudicated houses over the next year, and thousands more the following year.

Sylvain said the city is looking for ways to allow people to move into the houses and pay off the back taxes in installments. But he wants a bank or a nonprofit enterprise to carry the debt, not City Hall, which does not want to get into the housing market as either lender or landlord.

“We have to face facts. New Orleans is a poor city. Those people who left are long gone and they’re not coming back,” said Beth Butler, an organizer for ACORN.

“What the city cannot confront, cannot admit to itself, is that to save our neighborhoods we’re going to have to do something really big and really different,” Butler said. “We’re going to have to give poor people a chance to own a home. Not one or two houses to a couple of folks. But thousands and thousands of them.”

New Orleans Mayor Marc Morial has listed the city’s abandoned housing as one of his top priorities.

Councilman Thomas said he believes the new, progressive mayor and his advisers are convinced the city can lure the fleeing middle class back to New Orleans. But Thomas has his doubts, and so do many residents.