{"id":14110,"date":"2023-03-02T20:36:55","date_gmt":"2023-03-02T20:36:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/realtorparty.realtor\/?p=14110"},"modified":"2025-07-31T18:15:48","modified_gmt":"2025-07-31T18:15:48","slug":"santa-fe-realtors-promote-diverse-housing-options-in-housing-strapped-region-2-3-2-2-3-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-3-3-2-3-2-2-2-2-2-2-4-2-4-2-2-3-2-4-2-2-3-2-2-2-2-3-3-2-2-3-2-2-2-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/realtorparty.realtor\/homepage\/success-story\/nomar-landuse0323","title":{"rendered":"With a Land Use Initiative and Advocacy Everywhere, New Orleans Metropolitan Association of Realtors\u00ae Minimize Impact of New Rental Regulations"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Faced with the prospect of two restrictive new rental\u00a0regulations, the New Orleans\u00a0Metropolitan Association of REALTORS\u00ae<\/sup> (NOMAR) first tried to reason with the City Council.\u00a0 When that failed, they turned to the REALTOR\u00ae<\/sup> Party for assistance: a Land Use Initiative analysis and a Call For Action convinced the lawmakers, through legislative reasoning and powerful public persuasion, to pass a mitigated version of the regulations that the REALTORS\u00ae<\/sup> found acceptable.<\/p>\n

Kelli Walker Starrett, NOMAR\u2019s CEO, explains that the association has been opposing rent registration ordinances for years.\u00a0 In 2016, they challenged a similar proposal by asking questions raised by a REALTOR\u00ae<\/sup> Party Land Use Initiative, which the Council couldn\u2019t answer \u2013 so the ordinance was shelved.\u00a0 When the issue resurfaced in 2022, a tenant advocacy group whose tactics rely on sensationalized media attention had pushed the Council to instate two fee-based ordinances, a rental registration and a mandatory inspection ordinance called \u2018Healthy Homes.\u2019 \u00a0Says Starrett, \u201cThey painted the New Orleans rental industry as being in the midst of an epidemic of squalor, but that\u2019s just not the reality.\u00a0 Still, the Council largely bought into it, some of them only because they didn\u2019t want to be on the record opposing rental improvement; meanwhile, our new Mayor had been the Councilmember who\u2019d pressed for rental ordinances all those years ago.\u00a0 The fact is,\u201d she continues, \u201cregulations like these have been imposed in cities across the country, and we have yet to see positive results from them anywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n

NOMAR tapped into the Land Use Initiative resource offered by the REALTOR\u00ae<\/sup> Party, and the analysis that came back was plenty strong, referring to various aspects of the draft ordinance as \u201carbitrary,\u201d \u201cnonsensical,\u201d and possibly \u201cvulnerable to challenge under the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.\u201d\u00a0 Armed with this report, the REALTORS\u00ae<\/sup> used Advocacy Everywhere<\/a> to put out both a member- and public-facing Call For Action, explaining that the proposed regulations would exacerbate the City’s affordable housing shortage and would not have the desired outcome of holding slumlords accountable.\u00a0 In an amusing twist, reports Starrett, \u201cA City Councilmember who couldn\u2019t openly oppose the rental regulations, but who\u2019d seen a CFA in action before, called and advised us to launch one, even knowing the consequences would undoubtedly affect the Council, himself included.\u00a0 The Councilmember stated, \u2018I know you have the tools in your toolbelt; use them!\u2019\u00a0 And we did!\u201d\u00a0 The membership\u2019s response was strong and swift.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, Starrett harnessed the expertise of the many NOMAR members involved in the rental market, convening several \u2018stakeholder groups\u2019 of seasoned property managers who helped craft compromises to minimize the effects of the proposed requirements.\u00a0 At the end of the day, the City Council adopted a no-cost registration and inspections only when a property is reported as having a suspected violation.\u00a0 \u201cOur CFA had enough of an impact that the Council heavily watered down the original ordinance so that it really isn\u2019t effective at all and will be a very minimal burden on property owners,\u201d says Starrett. \u00a0\u201cWe\u2019re grateful for the support from the REALTOR\u00ae<\/sup> Party that helped us achieve this much.\u201d<\/p>\n

To learn more about how the New Orleans Metropolitan Association of REALTORS\u00ae<\/sup> is protecting renters and property owners alike from excessive regulation, contact CEO Kelli Walker Starrett at kelli@nomar.org<\/a> or 504.274.0701.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Under pressure from a sensationalizing tenants\u2019 rights organization, the New Orleans City Council proposed mandatory new fee-based registration and inspection regulations.\u00a0 The REALTORS\u00ae knew these would not help the affordable housing shortage; a Land Use Initiative analysis suggested that aspects of the proposal might even run afoul of current policy.\u00a0 Their opposition effectively de-clawed the new ordinances. \u00a0","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":14223,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,33,296],"tags":[355,501,434,421],"class_list":["post-14110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-about-us","category-success-stories","category-success-story","tag-land-use","tag-land-use-initiative","tag-louisiana","tag-new-orleans"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/realtorparty.realtor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/realtorparty.realtor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/realtorparty.realtor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/realtorparty.realtor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/realtorparty.realtor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14110"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/realtorparty.realtor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14110\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23538,"href":"https:\/\/realtorparty.realtor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14110\/revisions\/23538"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/realtorparty.realtor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/realtorparty.realtor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/realtorparty.realtor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/realtorparty.realtor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}