New Orleans Residents to Lose Their Homes!!!!!

I receive an email from one of my blog readers. This is worst than pouring salt in an open wound. Everyone goes on and on about how they feel about the devastation that Hurricane Katrina had on the area. Now we know it was mostly talk.

My reader heard this on a radio program found the article and sent it to me.

I heard on the radio this morning from a rep of www.acorn.org (they're helping the citizens to rebuild thru donations) that if the citizens donate rebuild or have a plan of action to rebuild by the 31st, they will lose their properties to the city. The red cross, the gov't, and the other large gov't groups who've been collecting funds for the rebuilding haven't came off the funds yet as promised and not only that over half of the people haven't even heard of this yet..the man said their waiting list is about 1000 people long now but as long as their on it, they'll be pardoned..but for everyone else who didn't hear the broadcast or don't know, they'll be out of luck.

This is the article infomation:
New Orleans considers taking homes through legal tool
By Scott Gold, Los Angeles Times October 23, 2005
NEW ORLEANS -- Officials and community advocates are quietly planting the seeds for an enterprising program that could give the government temporary control over thousands of privately owned homes decimated by Hurricane Katrina.

An increasing number of Louisiana housing authorities believe the proposal, which is based on an arcane legal concept called ''usufruct," could be a key to determining whether New Orleans will once again be a seminal American city or will stagnate with a population, like it has now, equal to that of Duluth, Minn., and Fort Smith, Ark.

''You are not going to rebuild New Orleans unless you are able to get government access to private property," he said yesterday. ''If government does not solve that problem, everything else is just talk. It is foolish to believe otherwise."

Usufruct is a centuries-old legal concept that gives a person the right to use and profit from property that belongs to someone else. In Louisiana -- with its unusual legal system founded on Napoleonic code rather than English common law -- usufruct can apply to private property rights. It is sometimes used here to give a husband or wife control over property after his or her spouse dies. In layman's terms, proponents of the housing program want to give that control to the government.

Authorities would locate scattered homeowners to determine whether they have the means or the inclination to rebuild. There are believed to be at least 100,000 homes in New Orleans that are damaged to the point that they are not currently habitable. If the owner is not planning to return anytime soon, local officials would strike a deal. The owner would sign over controlling rights of the property -- but not the title -- to the government. In most cases, that would likely be the city of New Orleans, but the program would apply statewide and could involve numerous municipal or parish governments.

Through contracts targeting hundreds of properties at once, the government would then pay to make the home habitable again, while assuming, in most cases, mortgage payments for the owner.The home would then be rented out, first to displaced ''essential workers" such as teachers, police officers, firefighters, and their families, then to the public. Rents would probably be subsidized, and checks would be written to the government agency that signed the deal or to a company hired to manage the money.

The owner would be allowed to return after an agreed-upon period of time, provided he or she can repay the government for repairs made to the home. If, at that point, the owner does not want to return or cannot pay for the fixes, the government would have the right sell it. If the house were sold, the government and the owner could share in both profits and losses.

Now if any of you have rental property then you know how hard it is to get a person out of your property. Even if the person hasn't paid the their rent for months!!!!

This looks like a sneaky backdoor way to legally take someones property!!!!