Here’s an interesting little article I saw yesterday in the Clarion-Ledger about a lawsuit against the South Delta Regional Housing Authority: http://www.clarionledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2009907240344. As you might recall from Shame of the South Delta Regional Housing Authority”, the SDRHA demolished the National Register-listed Finlay House in Greenville a couple of weeks ago, and claimed that in fact, there were no federal funds used to do it and therefore they didn’t have to follow federal preservation laws.

I don’t have any opinion about the actual lawsuit, which involves rent increases, but this little quote by Beth Orlansky of the Mississippi Center for Justice made me raise my eyebrows:

South Delta is a public housing authority and must comply with certain state and federal laws before implementing rate increases, and they simply did not do that in this case. [emphasis mine]

There’s that pesky little “public housing authority” again–if they are “public” then they also fall under the federal Section 106 laws, and if they are “public” they can’t then say that the money for acquiring and the demolishing the Finlay House was somehow separate and not public. Presumably the people who filed this lawsuit have done more research than I have into how exactly the SDRHA is structured and they’ve concluded apparently that SDRHA is a public entity.

Categories: Demolition/Abandonment, Greenville, Historic Preservation, National Register, Preservation Law/Local Commissions