UN group examines post-Katrina housing crisis in New Orleans

An United Nations advisory group headed to New Orleans this week on a fact-finding mission to investigate housing issues related to the displacement of residents following Hurricane Katrina. The Advisory Group on Forced Evictions, a group of international housing experts, spent the week meeting with and interviewing New Orleans residents struggling with affordable housing issues. As the Times-Picayune reported, the group talked to "homeless people living in abandoned buildings, former public-housing residents from the demolished 'Big Four' complexes, low-income people struggling with steep post-Katrina rents and Mid-City residents whose houses are in the footprint of a proposed Louisiana State University hospital." The United Nations has shown a special interest in New Orleans since Katrina (this will be the third visit by an international authority in the past three years). The UN has issued several statements on ways the U.S. response to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita violated international human rights law.