Homes out of reach in New Orleans

NEW ORLEANS, Jan. 27 (UPI) -- Although thousands of people are looking for a place to live in New Orleans, thousands of houses remain vacant or for sale in the city, it was reported Sunday.

More than 8,800 houses are for sale in the New Orleans metropolitan area, which is almost as many as were sold in the last 12 months, one of the city's leading real estate brokerage firms reported, The New York Times said.

High insurance costs and a beleaguered home mortgage market are blamed for sluggish home sales in New Orleans.

Thousands more damaged houses are being bought by the State of Louisiana through its Road Home program, which compensates homeowners for their losses in the devastating 2005 hurricanes, The Times reported.

But as the state readies those properties for sale, roughly 27,500 families, mostly from New Orleans, are still living in government-issued travel trailers across the state, waiting for their homes to be repaired or for some kind of affordable housing to become available.

"At the very low end of the income strata, we do have a shortage of housing," said Ivan Miestchovich, director of the Center for Economic Development and Real Estate at the University of New Orleans.