According to the Jamaica Plain Gazette, Leonard Samia is director of a management company that is trying to force victims of Hurricane Katrina to vacate their homes at the Louisburg Square Apartments in Gretna, Louisiana, upriver from New Orleans.

Lawyers for The Common Ground Collective maintain that tenants of the 180-unit apartment complex are being told to leave in order that the owners may get federal funds for the hurricane fixup and then charge higher rents. Samia's management company won a court case against the tenants who failed to pay rent.

The Common Ground Collective is a hurricane relief group established by Malik Rahim and other New Orleans Greens.

During the storm, some Gretna residents tried to prevent Katrina evacuees from crossing a bridge to safety in their neighborhood. As real estate developers see opportunity in the dramatic rise of property values, mass human rights violations have returned to Gretna, the location of the Louisburg apartment complex.

Landlords are now claiming damage from the hurricane to properties in order to get FEMA funding.

In the aftermath of the hurricane, tenants in the flood-damaged areas are facing mass evictions. Witnesses describe streets piled with family belongings and forklifts carrying belongings from dwellings.

Louisiana law permits landlords to remove personal property from abandoned dwellings. Louisburg apartment tenants wrote Samia in protest demanding their right to stay in the livable apartments, and to be relocated should their unit need repair. A harassment campaign began immediately with threats and antics from local police. Samia's LJS management has already lodged construction workers and contractors in the units emptied.

Almost twenty years ago, City Life/Vida Urbana in Jamaica Plain placed a wanted poster with Leonard Samia's picture on billboards. They have been staging protests on behalf of tenants at his Boston properties ever since. One Samia tenant in Jamaica Plain has won an eviction court case, with the help of City Life.

The Boston City Council passed a resolution censuring Samia for mistreatment of these and other tenants by refusing to negotiate and continuing to evict.

On December 20, tenants organizations rallied outside his properties in Jamaica Plain protesting the evictions, singing Christmas carols—"Leonard the Greedy Landlord" and "Feliz Navidad, Prospero año y avaricia."

About 150 people picketed the Fordham Court apartment buildings, speaking out against the landlord. Members of the Boston section of Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) carried banners in solidarity with the tenants as exploited workers.

Boston City Councilor Felix Arroyo delivered a letter to the Samia offices in Brighton, decrying the Louisiana evictions.