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The maximum penalty courts can levy against a landlord is $200, compared to many states where it's twice the amount of the deposit plus damages.

"If you're a landlord you figure nine times out of 10 (the tenants) won't bother to file suit against you if you keep their deposit and the one time they do the horrible draconian penalty that must haunt every landlord's dream is a fine of $200," Nichols said. "Big deal. There are people who have gotten very wealthy keeping people's deposits."

Some landlords assume that given the time and court costs involved fighting for the return of a deposit, most people will chalk it up as a loss and move on with their lives, said attorney Ben Misko who successfully sued HR Properties when it refused to return his deposit shortly after Hurricane Katrina.

"I sent them a letter (requesting the deposit) with our forwarding address but we never got it and they wouldn't return my phone calls," Misko said. "We tried to serve them (with a subpoena) but the address they gave us was bogus."

Misko said he set up a mock meeting with management pretending to want to look at an apartment and used that moment to serve them.

"I'm an attorney and know the law so I was tenacious but most people wouldn't know what to do," Misko said. "I have a ton of friends who say when they pay a security deposit they just assume they won't get it back."

HR Properties did not respond to requests for comment.

Students are the perfect victims for landlords looking to keep deposits, Nichols said. After graduation, many students move out of state and some landlords depend on the fact that few will take time off of work, buy a plane ticket back to Louisiana and pay court costs to fight for a $1,000 deposit.

"There are certain landlords who rent exclusively to students and market to students and some of them take advantage of that fact and refuse to refund any security deposit whatsoever," Nichols said. "Of course, students can be particularly horrible. They can completely destroy a place before they move out. Every landlord can tell you horror stories about that."

Louisiana law states that landlords can't keep a tenant's security deposit to repair normal wear and tear damage but that is a vague statement open to interpretation, said John Radziewicz, an attorney with Crescent City Law who represents several landlords.

"Did you paint the walls? Did you return things to the way they were (when you first rented the apartment)? When tenants move in they make it theirs and returning it back to the landlord's property sometimes costs a lot of money," he said. "That's ultimately why I think tenants are frustrated with the amount of money they get back. I don't think landlords want to take all deposits but they are so scarred by bad tenants, they're not lenient anymore."

Donald Vallee, president of the New Orleans Landlord Association, said the group would oppose any move to increase the penalty for unlawfully withholding a security deposit.

"We have too much government in a lot of these things already," Vallee said. "The rules are the rules and the lease speaks for itself. The problem you have with any type of dispute is whether somebody actually read what they signed. In the end, landlording and renting properties is a business function. We teach landlords how to be fair, treat people as they expect to be treated but do it with a business approach."

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"Making sure people have safe and affordable housing is one of the baseline things you need for a healthy community," said Davida Finger, assistant clinical professor with Loyola University's College of Law. "Decrepit housing doesn't happen in a vacuum."

The New Orleans City Council suspended enforcement of minimum building standards on occupied housing after Katrina to allow people to move back to the city and live in their homes as they rebuilt. The Landrieu administration's proposed ordinance would reinstate those standards and strengthen its enforcement tools, Deputy Mayor Andy Kopplin said.

The proposal, patterned after the city's strategy against unoccupied blight, would allow the city to inspect an occupied house without the permission of the owner, levy fines up to $500 per day for each violation, place liens on a non-compliant property and, if necessary, foreclose, demolish or take the property to a sheriff's sale. Occupied housing will be required to comply with minimum standards: a structurally sound and secure building with plumbing and electricity.

If approved by the Council, the ordinance, co-authored by councilmembers Stacy Head, Kristin Gisleson Palmer and LaToya Cantrell, is expected to go into effect in September.

Enlarge Ted Jackson, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune Amanda Golob, an attorney with Southwest Louisiana Legal Services, works with Macede Jackson and her 7-month-old son Mason to help her with issues with her landlord. (Photo by Ted Jackson, Nola.com | The Times-Picayune) Few rights for renters in Louisiana gallery (6 photos)

"It's a partial court judged by a city employee represented by a city attorney taking testimony from a person working for the city and then there's you," Radziewicz said. "There's no way to beat those people. They're working together and they all have the same goals. The city is trying to circumvent eminent domain. This is one of the reasons we went to war with the English in 1776."

And not all landlords have the money to fix every problem, Radziewicz said. Many landlords are elderly people or young professionals who depend on the monthly rent they collect from a single unit to supplement their income.

"It's difficult to ask someone to fix something if they don't have the money," he said.

The city's ability to enforce minimum housing standards doesn't do anything to address some of the more systemic problems negatively impacting tenants' rights, the worst being the short time it takes to evict people, said Amanda Golob, an attorney with Southeast Louisiana Legal Services, the main resource for indigent clients.

The entire eviction process in New Orleans can take as little as two weeks, from the time landlords notify their tenants of their intention to evict to the final court ruling ordering the inhabitants of the property to vacate. At that point the court can give tenants as little as 24 hours to leave, compared to seven days in Atlanta and 10 days in Memphis.

"In lots of places, especially in a tight market, people are given a month or two months if they're evicted to get their belongings together, find a new place and move their family," said David Zisser with the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law in Washington D.C. "In New York people get as much as four months. Giving people a few weeks is frankly absurd. I think you can describe it as cruel."

Lisa Burris, an Atlanta attorney who represents landlords, said she has never heard of people being given as little as 24 hours to leave. "I see the other side where landlords want to get their properties back but that seems very harsh," Burris said.

The threat of eviction, and the speed at which people can be evicted, is enough to keep most tenants in line and prevent them from complaining about poor conditions, Golob said.

Watching someone get evicted can be an awful experience, said Kristi August, chief deputy of the Orleans Parish Constable's Office. If arrangements haven't been made, the landlord or management company will throw the tenants' possessions in garbage bags and dump them on the side of the street.

"If you ever witness an eviction you'll see people walking back and forth outside waiting for the opportunity to grab a big screen TV or rummage through everything," August said.

If the tenants being evicted appear to have a mental disability and nowhere to go, the constable's office will attempt to contact a family member, a church or a housing agency to provide assistance. But not everyone gets help.

"Sometimes we'll get in touch with a family member and they'll say we're done dealing with them and won't help," August said. "I've watched people obviously with some kind of mental problem just walk away from their home dragging a suitcase."

There were 4,312 evictions filed on the east bank of Orleans Parish in 2012 and 856 warrants issued to remove people from their housing units, according to Orleans Civil District Court. There were 4,135 evictions filed in 2011 and 4,416 in 2010.

The process can seem cruel at times but landlords need to make hard choices if a tenant is putting their investment at risk, Radziewicz said.

"It's their business to make money on these properties. If tenants are not doing things properly and the landlord is losing money then they should be out of the property," he said.

Landlords, especially those that own multiple properties, have a built-in advantage when it comes to evictions because they have extensive experience with the legal system and the money to hire lawyers, Golob said.

For low-income tenants who are willing to take their case to court, there are few legal resources available and the ones that do exist are under-resourced, advocates said.

The three attorneys at Southeast Louisiana Legal Services, down from seven a year ago, aren't supposed to handle more than 60 cases at one time but due to understaffing Golob currently has 89 cases and attorney Hardell Ward has more than 100. Their office used to be open to walk-in clients five days a week but budget cuts reduced that to three days.

For tenants who make too much money to qualify for indigent legal help, the cost of hiring a lawyer can be prohibitive, attorney Ben Misko said, and the number of lawyers who specialize in landlord-tenant issues is limited because it's not a profitable business.

"If you're talking about fighting over a $1,000 security deposit and I'm taking the case on contingency because most people can't afford to pay, it's hard to justify all the time and additional costs it takes if I only get $300 in the end," said Misko who initially focused on landlord-tenant law but recently switched to Social Security disability issues.

One of Misko's last housing cases took place in April when he represented Daniel Meson against Josh Bruno, president of Metrowide Apartments, who operates more than 70 multi-family residential and commercial buildings in the greater New Orleans area. Bruno sued Meson, who lived in the Riverview Apartments in Kenner, for $1,895 in damages.

Over the course of two hours, Misko took apart Bruno's case, forcing him to admit that he did not have any pictures of the alleged damage or receipts documenting the necessary repairs. When Misko asked if Bruno provided his clients with an itemized list of the deductions to justify withholding their security deposit, Bruno said he did but neglected to bring that paperwork to court.

Misko also pointed to a section of Meson's lease that stated tenants were responsible for structural repairs to his unit at their own expense. Bruno said that was a typo and has since been removed from the lease.

Judge Rebecca Olivier with the First Parish Court of Jefferson Parish dismissed Bruno's case without prejudice saying that in her 17 years on the bench she had never seen someone come to court so unprepared.

Bruno said he is appealing the verdict and boasted that he has won every case he ever brought to court, though legal action is always a last resort.

"We evict less than 3 percent of our entire tenant population in a year," Bruno said.

"However, there is always going to be a percentage of the tenant base that ends up in an eviction or legal matter. It has been our experience that, in some instances, the housing advocates and attorneys have been misled by their clients. When we are in the wrong, we acknowledge that and attempt to work with the tenant to resolve the issue. We give all tenants the highest level of respect, trust, and service and expect that they uphold all lease provisions."

But Davis said Bruno's lease is the problem. It defines all fees and fines, some as little as $50, as rent, meaning failure to pay them within 72 hours can result in eviction.

Bruno successfully evicted two of Davis' clients, Denisha Goodrich and Bryant Robertson, from the Forest Park Apartments in Central City in January for, in part, failure to pay a $250 administrative fee Bruno charges tenants when they sign the lease.

"We don't know what an administrative fee is and when they moved in he never asked them to pay it," Davis said. "It's something he made up and it's unconscionable and unfair because it allows him to evict people at any time because of these fees."

Bruno, who rents 8 percent of his properties to low-income Section 8 tenants, defended the $250 charge, saying, "We sometimes deal with a transient population which causes more administrative and maintenance costs."

The problem, Goodrich said, is that Bruno never raised the issue of the administrative fee until five months into the lease when there was a dispute over an electrical bill. The lease stated that Metrowide would pay the first $80 of the bill each month and the tenants were responsible for additional charges. Goodrich said Bruno later told her she was exempted from that particular provision and that she owed the entire amount. When she refused to pay, Goodrich said Bruno tried to kick her out.

Bruno's first eviction attempt, which cited unpaid rent and "dues" but did not mention the disputed electrical bill, was dismissed Jan. 2 for lack of evidence. When Goodrich returned home after the hearing, she said her electrical meter was missing. She filed a report with the police but nothing came of the investigation.

Bruno accused Goodrich of stealing her own meter, charged her $100 for having her utilities turned off and re-filed eviction papers, this time including the non-payment of the $250 administrative fee. Civil District Court Judge Angelique Reed ruled that Goodrich's failure to pay the fee was the equivalent of non-payment of rent and ordered her to vacate the apartment Jan. 29 within 24 hours, Davis said.

Bruno described his experience with Goodrich and Robertson as "one of our worst examples of human behavior we have encountered." He accused them of attempting to break into the washing machine to steal quarters, threatening staff members and reiterated his claim that they stole their own electrical meter.

"I hope and pray that (Goodrich and Robertson) have been given or seek assistance to overcome the vices they have succumbed to that led them to this type of behavior," Bruno said.

Goodrich and Robertson said the idea they would steal their own meter in the middle of January to somehow get back at Bruno when they have a 1-year old daughter is ridiculous.

"I felt like his attitude was, 'OK, you don't want to pay me for the light bill, I'm going to take your meter and your lights,'" Goodrich said. "He thought it was going to run us out so he could say we abandoned the apartment but we didn't leave. I paid January rent and no matter what they were doing to try to get us to leave I wasn't leaving.

"Just think if I didn't have a family I could go to when something like this happens. We would be under the bridge," Goodrich said.

Many of the problems illustrated in the Bruno case could be addressed if Louisiana adopted the Uniform Residential Tenant and Landlord Act, created as model legislation by the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws in 1972, Davis said.

The act requires that landlords meet minimum housing standards, prohibits leases that force tenants to waive their legal rights or imposes onerous fines, and includes stiff penalties for landlords who unlawfully refuse to return security deposits. The act also specifically prohibits retaliatory action against tenants such as turning off their utilities if they file a complaint against the landlord.

Bruno's lease with Goodrich required that tenants pay $10,000 in "liquidated damages" if they failed to uphold its terms and fined them up to $500 for offenses that included working on automobiles on the premises, hanging sheets or towels on their windows and for "annoying sounds, smells and lights." The lease also required tenants to waive their right under Louisiana law to a five-day notice prior to a demand to vacate.

The Uniform Residential Tenant and Landlord Act, which has been adopted by 21 states including Mississippi, Alabama and Oklahoma, is being revised to meet modern standards. The new draft that is expected to be completed and sent to the states for possible adoption in 2014 includes several provisions that would significantly change Louisiana law.

Landlords who illegally withhold a security deposit would be fined twice the amount of the deposit plus attorney fees, compared to a $200 fine in Louisiana.

If landlords fail to make needed repairs that threaten the health of the tenant, the revised act allows tenants to withhold rent or terminate their lease and recover damages.

In Louisiana, if landlords fail to make needed repairs, tenants can pay to fix the problem themselves after giving their landlord the proper notice and then withhold the amount of the repairs from their rent. The entire process can be cost-prohibitive to low-income people, take up to three months and at the end, tenants can still be evicted for non-payment of rent if a judge rules that the repairs were not vital to their well-being, said Ward, the legal services attorney.

Part of the problem is that Louisiana is the only state that bases its landlord-tenant laws on property law as opposed to contract law, said Ben Orzeske, legislative counsel with the Uniform Law Commission based in Chicago.

In Louisiana, if landlords don't fulfill their end of the lease, tenants can take them to court but are still obligated to pay rent because property rights trump the authority of a contract, Orzeske said. Under contract law, if landlords don't live up to their legal responsibilities, the courts consider that a breach of the lease, or contract, and therefore the tenant is no longer required to pay rent.

Louisiana has resisted adopting the Residential Landlord and Tenant Act largely, Davis said, because many legislators are themselves property owners and have little sympathy for renters. And unlike landlords, tenants don't have lobbyists or statewide associations fighting for their rights because most tenants can't afford to pay for them.

The same holds true in Texas where, as in Louisiana, tenants rights are virtually non-existent, said Robert Doggett, legal counsel at Texas Rio Grande Legal Aid.

"Tenants are perceived not to vote and not to give to judicial campaigns so they don't have much power," he said. 'They are not seen as a constituency that needs to be given much attention to. Some legislators might remember what it was like to rent when they were in college but they forget about it quickly and only remember how much money they get form the landlords who live in their district."

Another possible solution would be to set up a court that deals specifically with landlord-tenant disputes and has a team of lawyers on hand to provide legal assistance like the Housing Court in New York, Radziewicz said. But it's not something New Orleans is in a position to take on.

"It's very well-funded, which I don't think we can get in Louisiana," Radziewicz said. "And it's very well organized, which I don't think we're prepared for. It's something we'd really need to work at."

The majority of landlord and tenant relationships, however, are respectful and most disputes can be solved without legal action, Radziewicz said. But in New Orleans, like in most cities, bad landlords will always exist because people need somewhere to live.

"We all know bad restaurants. They stay open forever because people continue to go there. That's the same situation with bad landlords," Radziewicz said. "Bad landlords happen because people continue to rent from them. You hear these horror stories about people who really hate their landlord but then they also say, 'But I live in downtown New Orleans.'"

Original Source

It's been a hard life, he said, one that has taught him to help people who find themselves at rock bottom.

"I'm a poor boy. I've been poor all my life and anybody poor I'm gonna help them," said Morgan, 81. "That's my job. I'm assistant pastor at my church. I'm taught to help the poor."

Inside his Urquhart Street property are the people Morgan says he is helping, at least 15 of them renting single rooms for as much as $100 per week. Many of the tenants, like Jimmy Wordworth and Frank Riverbottom, said they were homeless before they found Morgan's place. Despite the lack of electricity, heat, working bathrooms, and the building's dilapidated condition, anything is better than living on the streets, they say.

The two-story house, valued at $53,700 by the Orleans Parish assessor's office, is just off Press Street near the railroad tracks in an economically depressed section of the 9th Ward. Morgan owns several properties in the area, all in a similarly rundown state. He operates these rooming houses in much the same fashion, renting single rooms, typically by the week, to people who are on the edge of homelessness, some suffering from mental and physical disabilities.

"I got people that didn't have nowhere to stay," Morgan said. "They were under the bridge, sleeping in cars and I let them have a place. I know the word (of God). I just don't talk the word. I do the word."

Enlarge Ted Jackson, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune ‘Welcome to life in the Big Easy,’ jokes Frank Riverbottom, who organizes his few possessions into piles and stacks in his tiny room that he rents for $300 a month at 2816 Urquhart St. in New Orleans. (Photo by Ted Jackson, Nola.com | The Times-Picayune) Is a bad landlord better than no landlord at all? gallery (28 photos)

"He's a slumlord. He's a true, honest-to-God slumlord," said Chuck Manis, who rents a single room with his wife, Elizabeth, for $400 a month at a building Morgan owns at 2112 Burgundy St. "I'm ready to go back out on the streets instead of living here. I don't know how he keeps the place open."

The two-story Burgundy property is in a middle-class community three blocks from Esplanade Avenue. It is connected to two other Morgan properties, a vacant lot and a ramshackle one-story building where he also rents rooms by the week.

Manis sat in his tiny first-floor room and pointed to the swarms of German cockroaches that covered every surface. The smell of mold was suffocating. He said he hesitated to go public with his concerns, scared that he would be evicted, but it's gotten so bad that he is afraid for the safety of his family. When someone takes a shower upstairs, water pours into the downstairs bathroom, Manis said. "It's like a rain storm in there. That roof is eventually going to collapse and their bathroom is going to be down in our bathroom and that's what I'm afraid of. My wife might be in there."

During Hurricane Isaac, the ceiling collapsed in an upstairs unit occupied by Anna Hawk and Daniel de la Rosa as rainwater poured through massive holes in the roof. It took two months for Morgan to address the problem, Hawk said. When he finally did, the solution was to give the couple a single piece of drywall and tell them to repair the damage themselves.

"We tried to fix it but there was so much asbestos up there it was caving in like you wouldn't believe," she said.

Hawk was hospitalized that December with severe respiratory problems. The doctors told her she had spots on her lungs which Hawk said she fears were caused by the mold and asbestos in the building.

Despite the terrible conditions in the Burgundy Street property, it's even worse at Urquhart Street, said Manis, who lived in the 9th Ward house several years ago until a fire shorted out the electrical system.

Electricity is now provided through a series of extension cords that snake through the darkened hallways and into individual rooms. Surge protectors bursting with multi-colored wires dangle out of broken windows leading to an outside power source, possibly a neighboring building.

Riverbottom said the communal toilets and showers don't work, so he bathes in a neighbor's house and goes to the bathroom in a nearby Burger King. There is no air-conditioning or heat.

Mike Miller, a licensed clinical social worker with Unity of Greater New Orleans, first discovered the property several months ago when a former tenant called seeking safer housing. Miller was horrified by what he found: The floors, walls and ceilings were pocked with large holes, there was no lighting in the hallways, the front door wasn't secured, the exits weren't marked and he suspected people were cooking in their rooms with hot plates and over open flames.

"Pretty much every housing code was compromised or in violation," said Miller who pointed out that the Urquhart property is six blocks from where an abandoned building burned down in 2011, taking the lives of eight young squatters. "Just the stuff that screams 'tragic fire' is the best way to say it."

Morgan waved off concerns about the condition of the house; he said he is in the process of renovating the property and that he has never been cited by the city for building code violations. However, the Urquhart property has been deemed legally blighted five times in judgments dating to 1994, according to the city's blight status website.

After the city declares properties to be blighted, the owners have 30 days to bring them into compliance. If they don't the city can take control of the properties and sell them at a sheriff's sale.

Morgan's argument that he is helping people in need falls apart when the conditions of the building pose a threat to the tenants and the surrounding community, Miller said.

"Housing should be an asset. It shouldn't be a liability," Miller said. "That's absolutely something the community needs to be aware of and I think we have a responsibility as a city to come together and address that."

After Hurricane Katrina, the City Council suspended the enforcement of building codes on occupied housing to allow people to move back to New Orleans and live in their storm-damaged homes as they rebuilt. The city took action if it was notified of a building deemed to be an immediate public safety or health threat, but it stopped enforcing minimum housing standards, said deputy mayor Andy Kopplin.

During the first three years of his administration, Mayor Mitch Landrieu made the elimination of unoccupied blight a priority, taking advantage of a new ordinance passed after the storm that strengthened existing enforcement tools. And those efforts have met some success; a recent study released by the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center showed that blighted properties have been reduced by approximately 8,000 out of 47,000 since 2010.

Kopplin said their focus on blight was in response to public demand but housing advocates said it shouldn't have come at the expense of people living in substandard housing.

"If the neighbor of a vacant property calls code enforcement, the city will send someone out, issue violations and go through the process to dispose that property," said David Zisser with the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law in Washington D.C. "But if a property is occupied by renters, families with kids, people with disabilities, elderly people, low-income people, the city basically won't do anything. It shouldn't be a zero sum game."

The Landrieu administration has heard similar criticisms from the public, Kopplin said, and in response it introduced a new ordinance in March that would reinstate and strengthen the city's ability to crack down on substandard occupied housing.

The idea behind the new proposal is to take those same enforcement tools used to crack down on blight and apply them to occupied properties, Kopplin said.

The new rules would allow the city to inspect a house without the permission of the owner, levy fines up to $500 per day for each violation, place liens on a non-compliant property and, if necessary, foreclose, demolish or take the property to a sheriff's sale. Occupied housing will be required to comply with minimum standards, such as providing a structurally sound and secure building with plumbing and electricity.

The ordinance, co-authored by councilmembers Stacy Head, Kristin Gisleson Palmer and LaToya Cantrell, is expected to go into effect in September, pending council approval.

"With stronger tools, stronger enforcement and real consequences, everyone behaves better because they don't want to be the guy slapped with a bunch of liens and fines or get their property taken from them," Kopplin said. "If people think they can get away with something, they will push the envelope if they're bad actors."

Housing advocates applaud the city's renewed focus on occupied housing but worry that it could have unintended consequences. A citywide crackdown potentially resulting in the closure of properties like Morgan's could lead to mass evictions and the creation of a new population of homeless people, Zisser said.

Pura Bascos, director of code enforcement, said the city will work with the city's Interagency Council on Homelessness to assist people who might not have anywhere to go if their home is deemed unfit for habitation. But that concern will not dictate the city's enforcement policy, Kopplin said.

"If we determine something is dangerous, we have to take appropriate action. (Bascos) has not been charged with saying, 'Don't be too hard on folks because we have a housing shortage,'" Kopplin said. "I would argue that if she is doing her job properly, the market will normalize itself and landlords will fix their properties."

Rising from his humble upbringing in Natchez, Morgan now lives in a tidy two-story home at 1503 Industry St., near the intersection of St. Bernard and Paris avenues, on a quarter-acre plot of land. Surrounding Morgan's garage and driveway where a white Cadillac is parked, is a newly constructed, 7-foot-tall wooden fence.

Morgan's tenants at Burgundy Street said they wished he would spend a fraction of what the fence cost to improve their living conditions. When de la Rosa pressed his foot down on the second-floor balcony, his boot sunk through a mash of rotting wood, some of which broke away in chunks and fell to the sidewalk below.

The interior conditions, they say, are just as dangerous. Hawk pointed to a rusted heater attached to the wall and said, "We tried to light this up this winter and gas was all over the place. Oh Lord, I thought we were all going to burn to death," she said. "I go to sleep every night wondering if I'm going to make it through the night, but at the same time we can't afford another place. We're stuck between a rock and a hard place."

De la Rosa works construction, while Hawk hasn't been able to work since she was hospitalized in December, so their options are limited. Manis has been physically crippled since he had a brain aneurysm several years ago, and his wife, Elizabeth, suffers from mental and physical disabilities. They are surviving on Social Security and say they can't afford to pay prevailing rents in New Orleans. Morgan offered them their only option; he didn't ask for a lease, a deposit, any identification or a credit check. They gave him $400 in cash and moved in.

People like Morgan are capitalizing on a specific niche, Miller said -- the need for affordable housing among a population whose only real alternative is sleeping on the streets or squatting. Morgan provides them with a cheap place to live where they won't be hassled if they are suffering from mental problems or struggling with substance abuse. They generally don't hold Morgan accountable for the deplorable condition of his properties by notifying the city because they don't have any other living options and few ties to the community, Miller said.

Morgan recently sold his properties on Burgundy Street for $362,000 to Burgundy Frenchmen LLC, a company owned in part by Hicham Khodr who also owns Byblos, Salu, Mahony's Po Boy Shop and operates the Camellia Grill on South Carrollton Avenue. The buildings have a combined value of more than $800,000, according to the assessor's office.

Khodr said he sent the residents letters last week notifying them that they would have to move out in the coming weeks. He plans to renovate the properties into "elegant" apartments with a restaurant on the ground floor.

"It's hard to kick them out but the building is falling apart," Khodr said. "I don't know how anybody could live there. It's terrible."

Several months ago, Unity received a call about a young couple with two children, a 4-year-old and a 6-month-old, who were staying at a house Morgan owns at 1836 Clouet St.; like his other buildings, it was in shambles and chopped up into a series of single rooms that rented by the week, said Unity outreach worker Travers Kurr. Extension cords, connected to an outside source, ran through the hallways, plywood boards were nailed to the windows, and the patchwork roof sagged to the point of collapse.

"They had one room maybe 10 feet by 6 feet with a twin bed," Kurr said. "If something happened like a fire or some sort of tragic event, they didn't have anywhere to go but that one little room. They were kind of shut in, so it was dangerous for these guys and it was probably dangerous for most of the people in the house."

The father told Unity he was working two jobs, trying to save enough money to move his family to a better place. Until then, they had no choice but to stay at Clouet. Miller and Kurr put the family up in an emergency shelter while they tried to find a more permanent solution, but the family returned to the house the next day. Miller said they had no choice but to call child protective services.

"In a case like this it was awfully clear this was not healthy," Miller said. "It was not healthy for the continued growth and well-being of the kids or any of the residents living there. As a social worker, that's one of the harder things to do, questioning someone's parental rights. That's one you never want to do, but in a case like this, it was absolutely appropriate. The conditions were that horrendous."

Morgan denied that there were children living at his Clouet Street property and said he is renovating that building along with the house on Urquhart Street. The Department of Safety and Permits confirmed that Morgan has construction permits but said he listed the Urquhart Street property as a single-family dwelling instead of its real use as a multi-unit apartment building.

When asked about the claims of his tenants at Burgundy Street that he is a slumlord and that the conditions of his properties are unsafe, Morgan said, "It might not be what they wanted it to be but I got rid of it so it's not my problem anymore. If they didn't like what I was doing they could have moved out."

Standing on the small porch on Urquhart Street, Morgan mused about the deteriorating state of the world. He spoke of the pointlessness of material possessions, the importance of family and the battle between good and evil that has taken over the city he has called home since 1947.

"We got a lot of Christ in us and we got a lot of devil in us and what happens when the devil rise up in you, you don't know what you're going to do. You're going do whatever he says," Morgan said. "Anywhere people are at, you're going to run into a problem. If someone don't like what you're doing or how you look, some of them will kill you and eat you. This world is in a terrible shape."

And with that, Morgan said he had to get back to work, fixing up his property.

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