"Homeowners, renters, residents of public housing—everyone whose lives were turned upside down by Katrina are anxious to return home and should have the opportunity to do so. Creating affordable housing in service-rich, communities of opportunity is the key step in helping them to do so.”—Kalima Rose, Director of the Louisiana Initiative
The Louisiana Team is located at:
1515 Poydras Street, Suite 105, New Orleans LA 70112
Telephone: (504) 524-8185, ext. 24
Fax: (504) 525-8242
Kalima Rose, director of the Louisiana initiative, manages local New Orleans and Louisiana statewide affordable housing and regional equity initiatives. She applies her wealth of expertise in helping communities achieve policies that finance affordable housing; change land use policy to better support housing developments that creates communities of opportunities; and advance fair housing practices. Rose coordinates our redevelopment work, collaborating with state officials, community organizations, national institutions, and faith leaders to shape equitable rebuilding policy for New Orleans and Louisiana. Her leadership was instrumental in the development of the Louisiana Housing Alliance—a coalition of 45 local, state, and national organizations advancing affordable and equitable housing policy at the parish, state, and federal levels. Rose also leads our collaboration with the Louisiana Recovery Development Foundation (LDRF) to build the capacity among community-based organizations in Louisiana to advocate for fair and equitable housing policies. She was commissioned by the LDRF—for its first annual commemorative event: Hurricanes Rita and Katrina: Remembrance, Recognition, Recovery—to highlight strategies for affordable housing policies in the paper, Restoring Housing in Louisiana: New Actors Emerge to Ensure More Equitable Development (pdf). PolicyLink, lead by Rose, recently entered into a formal partnership with the local government in New Orleans, advising the key agency responsible for setting direction for policy development—Office of Planning and Development (OPD)—and bringing national expertise to the strategic development of its sister agency, the New Orleans Redevelopment Authority.
Kay Fernandez, senior program associate, works with Kalima Rose and the Louisiana team to collaborate with state and local officials, community based organizations, and faith leaders to shape equitable rebuilding policies. She assisted in the translation of the Ten Points to Guide Rebuilding, a set of guidelines to help ensure that equity across race and class lines remains at the core of all Gulf Coast rebuilding activities, into legislative and administrative policy proposals for the state. Fernandez was also instrumental in creating a set of equitable development strategies, based on a number of principles—from ensuring that all residents who want to return can return to communities of opportunity and fairly distributing the amenities and infrastructure investments that make all communities livable to ensuring the health and safety of all communities and a responsible resettlement or relocation for displaced New Orleans residents. This set of strategies continues to be referenced by policymakers, advocates, and anyone interested in creating communities where all can participate and prosper.
Dominique Duval-Diop, senior program associate, brings her invaluable experience as former director of Long-Term Planning for the Louisiana Recovery Authority (LRA) and as the former Policy and Reporting Manager of the Office of Community Development (OCD) to our ongoing recovery efforts and redevelopment initiatives. Duval-Diop coordinates with state partners, including the Louisiana Housing Finance Authority and LRA, to promote regional and local planning and development that ensures all communities, especially those in communities of color and low-income communities, can participate in and benefit from economic growth and activity. Duval-Diop’s background in mapping, spatial analysis, and economics informs our research and advocacy work on infrastructure investment, and lends guidance to investment decisions at state and local levels. Furthermore, her experience in examining the causes of poverty and the impact of poverty reduction policies within the Mississippi Delta and the Gulf Coast informs strategies for the city's housing programs. She coordinates with key recovery agencies in the City of New Orleans including the New Orleans Office of Recovery. Lastly, Duval-Diop will provide research and data analysis to M. von Nkosi, the Louisiana Disaster Recovery Foundation-PolicyLink Senior Advisor for Equitable Development.
Annie Clark, research associate, conducts data and mapping analysis to inform team strategies on affordable housing and equitable development. Clark worked with the team and partners to inform the tracking and analysis of development trends in New Orleans, and led the effort to map those trends. Her efforts resulted in a series of maps that analyzed losses of low cost rental housing, and she is continuing to monitor the plans for both new and rehabilitation of residential units in the city, keeping an eye on affordability. Among them were two maps showing the number and distribution of affordable housing units pre-Katrina according to the type of housing subsidy used (e.g. project based Section 8, HANO properties, and Low Income Housing Tax Credits). The maps show that most subsidized units Pre-Katrina were located in high poverty areas with a high population of African Americans, and that these areas sustained high losses of affordable housing Post-Katrina. View maps by African-American Population (pdf) or Population below Poverty Line (pdf). (See Rebuilding New Orleans for more information on our mapping analysis.) Clark’s research informs City Council testimonies on affordable housing in New Orleans, and is referenced by advocates, legislators, and other researchers in the field.
In There's no Road Home for Renters, Clark highlights the under-the-radar fact that 80% of the nearly $9 billion Road Home allocations are for homeowners, leaving renters—mostly poor and/or of color—facing huge obstacles for returning to the Big Easy.
M. von Nkosi, LDRF-PolicyLink senior advisor for equitable development, a loaned executive who supports the development of equitable development policies and practices within the Office of Planning and Development; serves as a liaison of OPD to other agencies to help develop joint policies and practices to foster equitable development; and helps translate appropriate city plans into policy and practice to advance affordable housing opportunities and other related issues, including environmental justice, economic development, and workforce development. Nkosi brings his many years of expertise in architecture, urban design, and environmental design to the Louisiana team. Before joining LDRF-PolicyLink, Nkosi directed the Atlanta Neighborhood Development Partnership, Inc. (ANDP) Mixed Income Communities Initiative (MICI), a comprehensive program designed to increase the number of viable mixed income housing developments in the 10-county metro Atlanta region. His 2004 report, “Making the Case (MTC) for Mixed Income and Mixed Use Communities: An Executive Summary” (http://www.andpi.org/mici.htm)—carried out in partnership with a number of entities, including the Atlanta Regional Commission, PolicyLink, the Center for Neighborhood Technology in Chicago, Greater Atlanta Home Builders, and Atlanta’s Urban Land Institute—presents key findings on the relationship between job centers and housing affordability, and lays out strategies to ensure that people live in neighborhoods of opportunity with access to good jobs and reliable transportation.