Almost four years ago, residents of homes built by the Make It Right Foundation, a futuristic post-Hurricane Katrina housing development founded by Brad Pitt, sued the Hollywood superstar and his associates for defective design and building practices, breach of contract, and fraud.
Late Tuesday, attorneys for the Make It Right Foundation and the affected residents told Orleans Parish Civil District Court that they had agreed on a settlement meant to make all residents of the development whole.
Make It Right will pay owners of the homes it built in the Lower 9th Ward $20.5 million, according to court documents. Though only six homeowners are named in the lawsuit against Make It Right, the class-action lawsuit settlement applies to all of the homeowners unless they choose to opt out.
Category: Make It Right
Brad Pitt’s Make It Right Foundation sues its former executive director
The legal saga embroiling the Make It Right Foundation, the Brad Pitt-founded housing nonprofit formed in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, is entering what could be a messy new chapter.
As first reported by Doug MacCash for The Times–Picayune | The New Orleans Advocate, the embattled foundation has sued former executive director Tom Darden III and other erstwhile top officials in New Orleans Civil District Court. The suit alleges that Darden and others misled fellow foundation leaders, Pitt included, and partook in widespread project mismanagement from 2007 through 2016. Per the suit, Darden and other former executives should be held responsible for any damages imposed by the court stemming from lawsuits over the “faulty construction or shoddy design” of Make It Right-built homes.
Brad Pitt, others can be sued over faulty New Orleans homes, judge rules
NEW ORLEANS — A judge has denied actor Brad Pitt’s request to be taken off a lawsuit that says his Make it Right Foundation built shabby homes in the New Orleans area that was hit hardest by Hurricane Katrina.
Pitt and other foundation directors asked the court to remove them from the lawsuit, saying they weren’t personally responsible for the construction.
Judge Rachael Johnson denied the request last week.
Two homeowners filed the suit. Their attorney, Ron Austin, says the homes built by the foundation in the Lower Ninth Ward have infrastructural issues and residents have reported being sick.
The allegations: Brad Pitt’s foundation is accused of building shoddy homes in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina
Austin says Pitt and the board of the foundation, which Pitt formed in 2007 after raising $42 million, have known about the problems since at least 2009 but have failed to fix them despite mounting complaints.
“We want to make Brad Pitt make it right,” Austin told USA TODAY. “He can’t leave these people helpless.”
Austin said the “tragedy” is that Pitt’s effort to help the flooded Lower Ninth after Katrina showed his “heart was in the right place” but his foundation has been “almost an epic failure.”
More than 100 green Make It Right houses were built in 2008. The foundation sued the principal architect last year saying his designs were defective.
Pitt’s rep declined to comment to USA TODAY on the recent development.
Lawsuit against Brad Pitt’s Make It Right sent back to Orleans Parish court
A federal judge has sent the ongoing cluster of lawsuits surrounding Brad Pitt’s Make It Right development in New Orleans back to state court.
The ruling May 15 moved the lawsuits against three former officers of the Make It Right Foundation back to Orleans Parish Civil District Court, according to a court document. The former Make It Right officials are accused of building substandard houses.
In the years after Hurricane Katrina, Make It Right built 109 experimental modernist homes in New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward to replace those lost to flooding. Spearheaded by actor Brad Pitt, the altruistic nonprofit enterprise sold the houses to former residents of the area at affordable prices. The rebuilt neighborhood became a post-K tourist attraction.
Brad Pitt’s Make It Right venture turns 10, triumphant but troubled
The daring post-K recovery project produced 109 homes in the Lower 9th Ward, including one that neighbors say has become an abandoned, moldy eyesore.
But on Sept. 7, 2018, roughly ten years after the project began, two Lower Ninth Ward residents sued Make It Right, accusing Pitt and several officers of the company of building houses that are flawed and deteriorating rapidly. As a proposed class action, the suit is intended to represent everyone who bought a Make it Right house.
Pitt is responsible for charity’s defective New Orleans homes, residents say in court filing
Attorneys for two New Orleans residents who sued Brad Pitt’s Make It Right Foundation for allegedly selling them poorly constructed homes are asking a federal judge to deny Pitt’s request to be removed from the suit.
The lawsuit, filed in September and now being heard in the Eastern Louisiana U.S. District Court, alleges that Make It Right, a charity formed by Pitt in 2007 to help Lower Ninth Ward residents return after Hurricane Katrina, built “defective” homes that leaked, were filled with mold and fell apart. In their suit, the two residents, Lloyd Francis and Jennifer Decuir, accuse Pitt and Make It Right of unfair trade practices, breach of contract and fraud.
Pitt’s attorneys have denied the allegations, though they admit that there are problems with the homes, which they blame on the project’s architect in a separate lawsuit and which they said will take $20 million to fix.
In November, Pitt’s attorneys filed a motion requesting the residents’ claims against Pitt be dismissed and his name removed from the lawsuit. The attorneys argued that even if the claims were credible, Pitt wasn’t to blame for the construction and should not “simply be lumped together with other defendants and held liable for alleged conduct in which he is not even alleged to have participated.”
Neither Pitt’s attorneys nor Make It Right returned requests for comment. Attorneys for the Lower Ninth Ward homeowners declined to comment.
