A big victory for New Orleans residents

As we reported last night at Reconstruction Watch -- our new website watch-dogging the Gulf rebuilding process -- some 50,000 renters facing evictions from their houses won a big victory last night.

Housing is fast-emerging as one of the lynchpin issues of New Orleans rebuilding -- determining who can and cannot return. Landlords started a wave of mass evictions started earlier this month, claiming that the only notification they needed to give soon-to-be-kicked-out renters was a note tacked to their door.

A high-power team of civil rights lawyers, including Ishmael Muhammad, the Advancement Project, and Reconstruction Watch advisor Bill Quigley, fought back, declaring that since property owners know that displaced renters will never see this notice, it was a violation of due process, and won a settlement that gives renters some reprieve:

It just got a little tougher for landlords to evict tenants in Orleans and Jefferson parishes, from which thousands of people remain displaced because of Hurricane Katrina.

All pending evictions are on hold until landlords send eviction notices to their tenants, according to a settlement struck Tuesday in federal court that ends a lawsuit brought by unions, activists and individual renters. Eviction hearings cannot take place until 45 days after those mailings are postmarked.

"No longer can landlords just rely on tacking notices on doors while the tenants don't know they're getting evicted," said Judith Browne, a lead attorney for the plaintiffs. "It's going to provide fair rules so that people can come and defend themselves and, ultimately, protect their property."

The decision also compels FEMA to provide information that could help officials and landlords find evacuated tenants, an issue they had been dragging their feet on before:

In an added twist, the Federal Emergency Management Agency agreed to supply court clerks, constables and justices of the peace with addresses of evacuees -- a first in litigation since Katrina, Browne said.

"FEMA will have to supply the addresses to the evictions courts in Orleans and Jefferson," Browne said. "They know where they are."

At a time when dozens of fast-moving decisions are being made that will permanently alter the shape of New Orleans and the Gulf, small victories like this -- which buy time and assert the right of residents over development interests -- are big.