re: 47 homicides and counting in BR

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You admit you were a kid then so I don’t fault you for being wrong

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Perhaps if there had been a plan in the first place, Gardere would not have ended up the way it has. But in the blow-and-go years of the late 1970s and early 1980s, a lot of people in Louisiana were rich—at least by Louisiana standards—and real estate was an attractive investment for doctors and other professionals with more disposable income than they knew what to do with. A couple of developers are primarily credited, or blamed, for throwing up the inexpensive fourplexes that still define the landscape on and around Gardere Lane. They hoped to capitalize on growth from the Gulf South Research Institute, which was supposed to lure high-tech firms to Louisiana, and also to take advantage of the increasing number of LSU students who were moving off campus and looking beyond Tigerland for affordable housing.

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The Reagan Tax Reform Act of 1986 changed all that. Among other things, it did away with blanket rules of depreciation, making write-offs available only to so-called qualified real estate professionals. About the same time, the price of oil plummeted, dealing a direct blow to the Louisiana economy. Then, the stock market crashed, followed by the savings and loan crisis. “All of these properties people built to get the depreciation had to make money because they could no longer get the depreciation,” says local developer and real estate attorney Ed Kramer. “Then the economy collapsed and everything failed.” Almost overnight, the shoddy fourplexes were worthless. Some went back to failed lenders and, later, the Resolution Trust Corporation. Eventually, most ended up as either federally subsidized Section 8 housing or as slum property, owned by out-of-state investors who swooped in looking for deals. The LSU students moved out, replaced by low-income residents, many of whom brought with them the social ills that breed crime and drugs. Gardere never recovered.

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