A U.S. appeals court panel in Washington, D.C., has granted fair housing advocates an injunction barring the state of Louisiana from redistributing unused Road Home funds toward other programs.
The decision puts a crimp in plans by several state legislators to redirect about $148 million left in the largest housing recovery aid program in U.S. history as it winds down after four years and more than $8 billion in grants.
The ruling stems from a lawsuit by the Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, in which the groups claimed the Road Home's policy of calculating grants for rebuilding storm-damaged homes based on their pre-storm value, rather than on the actual cost of reconstruction, discriminated against black homeowners.