Bidders fill the auditorium at Xavier University and strain to hear or be heard during an auction of state-owned properties Saturday morning. (Robert Morris, UptownMessenger.com)
An auction of nearly 100 state-owned houses around the city drew so many people to a Xavier University auditorium Saturday morning that the fire marshal raised concerns about capacity, prompting organizers to ask observers to leave and make room for actual bidders.
The hundreds of people at the auction represented a wide divergence of opinions on the Road Home process, however, from those thrilled to be getting the homes restored and back onto the market to others who questioned how they arrived on the auction block to begin with.
For Ron Jouandot II and his father, Ronnie, Saturday’s auction was literally a dream come true. They won the bid on the first property up for auction, a little blue Uptown cottage at 5511 Story Street in the Upper Rickerville neighborhood. Bidding opened at $1,000 and quickly escalated to the $120,000 price that the Jouandots paid.
The home will require a complete renovation, the Jouandots said, a process that will probably take about nine weeks before the house can go back to market.
“That was my number one draft pick,” Ron Jouandot said happily, noting that he and his father have restored about three dozen homes over the last five years. “We’re local, and it’s just always been a dream to get in to it.”
Even the foyer outside the auditorium was packed with auction attendees trying to hear the bidding.
Jason Riggs, an Irish Channel resident who coordinates his neighborhood’s anti-blight efforts, said he attended the auction primarly as a “fact-finding” experience, hoping to get a sense of how the process worked in action. The crowds in the auditorium were so large that, half an hour into the auction, he was still crammed in a foyer before the room’s rear doors – just like other attendees, some of whom were there to bid but unable to participate.
“Everyone should have an exact equal chance and their money should be what’s doing the talking,” Riggs said. “Obviously, the space could be bigger, but how can you forecast what the crowd’s going to be?”
The massive turn-out Saturday morning is a strong argument against the city’s current zeal for property demolition, said Bradley J. Vogel of the New Orleans field office of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Often, property owners seeking to demolish historic properties tell city boards that no one wants to buy and restore the old homes they own, Vogel said, a claim that will be harder to make in future demolition hearings.
“Seeing this kind of market for these properties is amazing,” Vogel said. “This is a perfect counterpoint to that. Why are we demolishing? Why aren’t we getting them to market and into people’s hands as best we can?”
Chuck Mills (left) holds a sign that reads "We need our homes" as part of a protest outside the auction's front doors.
Outside the auditorium, a group of protesters took a dimmer view of the auction, carrying signs that read slogans like “We need our homes – don’t sell.” The state undervalued the damage to the homes and gave homeowners insufficient money for repairs, forcing them to sell because they couldn’t afford to renovate, said Viola Washington of the Road Home Research Team.
“Don’t buy stolen properties. Don’t buy poor people’s homes,” Washington said. “There would be no reason for this auction if they had not taken these people’s houses.”
The Road Home process shut out the homeowners who needed help the most, added Chuck Mills, an activist from Algiers.
“The best way to understand the system is to look at the results, and who this system served the best,” Mills said. “The result of this system is that a disparate number of poor blacks have their homes at this auction, and a lot of people who are well-meaning are perpetuating this unfairness.”
This cottage at 5511 Story Street in the Upper Rickerville neighborhood was the first to sell at the auction, going for $120,000 to a father and son who plan to renovate and sell it.
In the Upper Rickerville neighborhood, however, news that the little blue house on Story Street had been sold and would soon be renovated was welcome, especially since the new owners, the Jouandots, had previously restored a house in the 2700 block of Octavia to good result. The Story Street house, sitting on a block profiled for its charm just last week, has its doors and windows boarded up against trespassing teenagers, and has been vacant since Hurricane Katrina, said neighbor Erin Kavanagh.
The home’s original owners, stymied by the uncertainties of the Road Home system, tried to sell it themselves, but could not find a buyer, Kavanagh said. They gave up, sold it to Road Home, and moved to the Riverbend. The Kavanaghs later had friends who became interested in the house, but the mere proces of inquiring about the home’s status from Road Home was so labyrinthine that they gave up, Kavanagh said.
“It was just one of those lost little houses in the Road Home. You couldn’t buy it if you wanted,” Kavanagh said. “It was just one of those houses that fell through the cracks.”
Road Home auction at Xavier University, April 2, 2011 from Robert Morris on Vimeo.
Contact Robert Morris at rmorris@NolaMessenger.com, or post your comment below.
Sucks that some people can’t afford to fix up their houses or sell them. But it’s good that some of these houses will make it back into circulation.
The story of the people who sold their house to Road Home, then a friedd wanted to buy it sounds a lil fishy to me. Snooze you lose, sorry.
The most annoying part is that they couldn’t work in everyone to bid. But I think it displays that people want to buy here, just not at the ridiculous prices property horders down here want to sell at.
This was my first time going to an auction and do not think I will do it again. I was able to stand in the doorway while many others were stuck outside still trying to get in the building. I pre-registered online but the crowd was too large for the building. Plenty of people were yelling and threating to call the fire marshal. The auction should not have started with so much chaos.
I was only there to bid on one house which was 5511 Story Street. I was interested in buying the home as a first time homeowner. When I saw the amount of contractors there purchasing homes to flip I knew I was going to be out bided. I could not bid up to $120,000 for an uninspected home. The drive by inspection I did before the auction told me the house needed a complete renovation. As a first time homeowner I was not confortable buying something that expensive and not know how much it would cost me to renovate.