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News & Events
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May 11, 2010
Stone Pigman Special Counsel Jennifer Bechet Contributes to Mayor Landrieu’s Task Force on Blight
NEW ORLEANS (May 11, 2010) – Stone Pigman special counsel Jennifer Borum Bechet has completed service on New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu’s Task Force on Blight, one of 14 special transition task forces the newly installed mayor convened prior to his inauguration to bring citizens and civic leaders together to address the city’s most pressing issues.
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, so much of New Orleans housing stock was decimated and abandoned as to render parts of the city uninhabitable, or subject to squatters and a spike in crime. In examining the effects of neglected buildings on local neighborhoods, the Mayor-elect created a working group to focus specifically on blight conditions, apart from a separate task force on city housing. The blight task force issued its formal recommendations to the Mayor and City Counsel this past week.
A commercial litigator and former federal prosecutor who served in the U.S. Attorney’s office in New York, Ms. Bechet landed her role on the task force through a serendipitous meeting with Mayor Landrieu during previous Mardi Gras festivities.
“We evidently staked out the same spot to watch the parades and got to talking – Mayor Elect Landrieu was interested in my background as a former prosecutor and also my previous volunteer work with Big Brothers Big Sisters,” said Ms. Bechet, who moved to the New Orleans area with her husband in 2006. In addition to having worked in one of the largest prosecutor’s offices in the country, Ms. Bechet had previously served as an editor on the Harvard Law Review alongside President Barack Obama.
Although she was raised in Virginia, Ms. Bechet has an additional tie to New Orleans – her husband, Leon, who also practices law in the city, is grand nephew to legendary New Orleans jazz saxophonist and composer Sidney Bechet.
“I was honored when the Mayor Elect invited me to join his task force – although I am not an expert on housing blight, as a former prosecutor, I certainly have seen its effects on urban crime,” she added. “I knew it would be an important initiative for the city as well as an invaluable learning experience for me personally.” Ms. Bechet was one of several dozen committee members serving under co-chairs David Marcello, who directs the Public Law Center at Tulane and Loyola Law Schools, along with Ellen Lee of the Greater New Orleans Foundation.
“It was eye-opening to understand how blight weighs down neighborhoods already affected by Katrina, as well as the economic downturn and general neglect,” she added. “There is so often a nexus between neighborhood decay and crime, or between degradation of buildings and the lack of fair code enforcement. I have high hopes that our recommendations for blight eradication will have a constructive effect on New Orleans as a place to work or call home.”
According to the task force, New Orleans has more than 60,000 blighted buildings, a condition that hinders economic growth and erodes quality of life. Much of the problem of abandoned buildings comes from a decline in the city’s population in the past several years, from 600,000 to the current 350,000. Some absentee landlords have misused funds appropriated for refurbishment, shirking their legal responsibility to maintain their property. Lack of strong code enforcement regarding blight also contributes to the problem.
“Especially since Katrina, deteriorating housing stock has been an enormous problem in New Orleans, second only to crime, though of course the two are intertwined” Ms. Bechet said. “Blight directly contributes to criminal activity, as it does to other conditions that drag neighborhoods down, such as squatters, drug sales and vermin in buildings. Our city can take a strong step toward long-term recovery if we can start to reverse the trend in blighted buildings.”
The task force’s report to the Mayor recommends a number of short and long-term solutions, including:
sensible code enforcement, designed to reach most or all of the blighted structures within three years;
more frequent auctions, to get blighted properties into the hands of people who can rehabilitate them;
greater coordination between the city and the New Orleans Redevelopment Authority;
relying on neighborhood associations and volunteers to assist in documenting and combating blight;
working with homeless advocate groups to help people sheltering in blighted buildings; and,
establishing objective benchmarks for turning around blighted areas.
Ms. Bechet has notable experience with civic issues. In 2004, she was Big Sister of the Year in recognition of her outstanding volunteer work with the Big Brothers/Big Sisters organization in Virginia. In addition, Stone Pigman’s longtime support of the Vera Institute’s work to improve the fairness and efficiency of New Orleans' criminal justice system garnered the firm Special Recognition last fall in New York, which was accepted by Ms. Bechet, who has been deeply involved in our efforts with the Institute.
A mother of young twins, Ms. Bechet is a member of the adjunct faculty at Tulane Law School, where she currently teaches a course in negotiation and mediation advocacy.
Congratulations to Jennifer Bechet on her outstanding service to the city of New Orleans.
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