JANE PLACE FIGHTS MOUNTING HOUSING CRISIS
By Scott A.
$100 late rent fees. Evictions without warning. Refusing to fix collapsed ceilings.
 These are merely a few of the myriad abuses New Orleans DSA member Breonne D. has seen in her time as an organizer with Jane Place Neighborhood Sustainability Initiative.
For over 10 years, Jane Place has fought the deluge of gentrification, rent hikes, and landlord abuse in one of the most hostile regulatory environments in the nation. Their goal: decommodification of housing. Their method: community land trusts and expanded housing rights.
A New Theory of Housing
Jane Place began in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. A group of activists, artists and agitators sought to influence the city’s development to make it a more just and inclusive place. Recovery planning had begun to privilege homeowners over renters in a classist and racist trajectory, Breonne said.
The Jane Place Initiative aimed to give refuge to families pushed out by opportunistic capitalists. It assembled a land portfolio to build a power base allowing Mid-City residents — mostly renters — to remain amid a push by the powerful to transform the neighborhood into a majority-homeowner area.
This land forms the basis for Jane Place’s community land trust, Breonne said. Jane Place develops property and rents it at affordable rates to lower-income families.
In the long run, Jane Place hopes to sell property to residents at affordable rates and retain ownership of the land the property resides. Then, the trust can protect the neighborhood in a number of ways, including placing restrictions on property sales, prioritizing low-income families as renters, and capping rental increase levels.
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