[tylerdurden]

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I think, however, that the city will be redeveloped. Various plans have been floated, all of which have as the end result people losing their property which will then be made available cheaply to well-connected developers.

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Of course. Plunderers have been licking their chops since the first reports of levee breaches.

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First some "housing activists" came up with the idea of usufruct in which the owner retains title to the property but the city repairs it and rents it out to whomever for however long, at the end of which time the property owner must buy back his own property or lose title to it.

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Wow. I haven't heard this yet. Very, very clever, in an evil genius sort of way.

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Other ideas include allowing the free market to determine what gets rebuilt where. After a period of time (both one year and three years have been mentioned), the powers that be will determine which neighborhoods have come back enough to be viable (the powers that be get to decide what constitutes enough). Those neighborhoods will be supported with services. Those deemed not to have come back enough will be abandoned and the property seized (even the property that has been repaired).

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This is the "free market" idea?

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This latter idea comes from the likes of the big developer Joe Canizaro who, no doubt, already has his eye on what he wants when the land is seized and sold cheap.

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FWIW, and not really pertinent to this conversation, I happened to drive by Canizaro's house last week. His house definitely had flooding (judging from the other houses on Northline), but he's already had everything completely restored.

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Under these circumstances, whether an owner does or doesn't repair his property, he runs a real risk of losing it. I own what was once a nice 11-room, 2400 sq ft house one block from the London Avenue Canal smackdab in the middle of the two breaches. I am not putting a cent into my property under the current circumstances, thereby causing a problem for any of my neighbors who do want to rebuild. Given the location of my neighborhood, I can see Canizaro or someone like him getting control of the whole subdivision cheap and redeveloping it as high-rise condos and retail space aimed at the university personnel and the people who work at the tech center, since neither of those entities suffered major damage.

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You're basically in the same boat as my father-in-law. His house is on Leon C. Simon west of the London Ave. canal, right where it merges with Robert E. Lee. Technically, his house is 2 feet above sea level, but he got about 3 feet of water in the house. Federal flood insurance isn't enough to cover his structural damage plus contents, since it's capped (his total payout is pretty close to enough to cover restoration of the structure, so he's basically out for the value of the contents). He had been planning on total renovation. Now that he's finished gutting the downstairs down to the studs, he's decided to not do anything and just move out of town. He hasn't yet decided if he's going to sell the house now as-is, or wait and see what happens. On top of that, he's probably going to relocate his law practice from downtown to the northshore.

He is, like you, concerned about how his actions are going to affect his neighbors. He's got a lot of freedom to do what he wants since he owns the house free and clear, but people with mortgages are in a tough spot.

His sister-in-law lives about two blocks behind him (closer to the lake) and she had some water in the yard, but not in the house. She may ultimately be in worse shape (if land values bottom out), since she won't get *any* insurance settlement.