[FoCHAT] CHATNews: Notes from Our COX 10 Filmed Mtg

[Melanie Ehrlich]

July 26, 2009
 
Dear CHAT Members,
 
Please Get Ready To Send A Few Emails To Help Road Home Applicants In Distress
 
We are not asking you to do this yet but very soon.
 
 
An Email Received This Week From a Desperate Small-Rental Landlord Waiting For a Road Home Grant and Hearing of CHAT from the COX10 Filming
 
My name is xxx, and I'm writing on behalf of someone who does not have Internet access, but who has been grossly mistreated by the Road Home program. His application is with the Small Rental Property portion of the Road Home. Each time he seems to be making progress toward a closing date, there's a new piece of information that's needed, something needs to be re-sent, or there's a new person taking over the application. 

I watched your videotaped meetings on local cable access... This has been going on for over 2 years, and he may actually lose his house due to the endless delays and excuses from the Road Home staff.
 
 
 
The Latest Filming of a CHAT Meeting Aired For Six Weeks on Public Access TV 
 
Wed., June 10, Noon-1:30 PM; Fri., June 12, Noon-1;30 PM; Sun., June 14, 10:00-11:30; Mon., June 15, 8:00-10:00; Thurs., June 18, 8:00-10:30; Sat., June 20, 11:00-1:00;  Mon., June 22, 12 - 2 PM; Fri., June 26, 8-10 AM; Wed., July 1, 3 PM; Thurs. July2, 2:30 PM; Fri., July 3, 3 PM; Sun., July 5, 9 AM; Mon., July 6, noon; Tues., July 7, 1:30 PM; Wed., July 8, noon; Mon., July 13, 4 PM; Wed., July 15, 3 PM; Thurs., July 16, 3:30 PM; Mon., July 20, 3 PM; Mon., July 27, 3:30 PM
 
 
Here Is Most Of What Was Said At That Filmed Meeting, For Those Without Access To COX 10
 
Today is the May 27, 2009 meeting of the Citizens’ Road Home Action Team (CHAT). We are a grass-roots zero-budget organization.  I am Melanie Ehrlich, Co-Chairman and a scientist. 
 
We are very grateful to COX10, UNO, more than 900 CHAT members & 30 hardcore CHAT members.
 
Big picture: two historic hurricanes in 2005 wreaked historic damage on S. LA
 
Cities, suburbs, and rural areas were flooded. The largest and most famous of these is the NO metro area.                Most of the catastrophic damage was due to known failures of poorly built US Army Corp of Engineers outflow canal levees, which had been concealed from the public.
 
One year later, S. LA hurricane victims who were homeowners were promised relief through the RHP.
 
Those who lost family members, possessions, their home, their neighborhood, and sometimes also their jobs were indeed traumatized.
 
But it is unconscionable that the government promised help in a compensation program but then caused further trauma by its error-filled, callous, and extraordinarily delayed administration.
 
So-called gold letters were issued from the Road Home Program to applicants with the promised grant amount less any additional insurance benefits for structural damage received by the applicant. 
 
A top LRA spokesman said publicly that applicants could show these letters to their bank to get a loan. 
 
NO built a loan program around this promise but that program, initially touted by the Mayor Nagin and Ed Blakely, was quietly discontinued when it became evident that those RH gold letters were useless because:
·                                                                                 there was rampant, unexplained downsizing of grant  amounts and huge delays in payouts.

One RH staffer unfeelingly laughed at an 80-year-old applicant for believing those letters and trying to fix her house assuming that the amount of money in her gold letter was her guaranteed amount. 
 
In Sept. 2006, soon after the RHP began, I organized CHAT and asked Frank Silvestri to co-chair it with me because I could see that there was a major disconnect between the needs of the applicant storm-victims and the rules.
·         Major rules of the Program made no sense and clearly would lead to needless delays
 
I had no idea at that time how the RHP would itself turn into an ordeal for tens of thousands of hurricane victims      from failures of every aspect of running the Program which the State is now rushing to end.  I couldn’t guess what a big help CHAT would be by making the RHP much more accountable. But much more needs to be done to allow many homeowners the opportunity to rebuild their shattered homes and lives.  
 
State officials and Gov. Jindal know that while many applicants have been helped by the program, they are leaving many others without enough funds to rebuild because of basic inequities in the RHP, which I will list shortly.
 
During this meeting, we will review a small selection of our data about how the RHP functioned. 
 
Most of the information that you will hear about this evening comes from:
·         a sampling of the >1500 responses to detailed online surveys of applicants,
·         hundreds of emails, personal testimony at CHAT meetings, and HTF meetings, 
·         regular weekly conference calls with top RH leaders for 5 months, meetings with RH officials and hundreds of emails to and from them.
 
Much of this material is summarized in our 39-page complaint to the HUD OIG, which was accepted for investigation although the investigation is needlessly being delayed. 
So far 70 citizens have written to key Congressmen to about the delayed HUD IG investigation. Our official complaint is posted at our website as are simple instructions for sending one email that we will forward. 
I would like to ask Barbara Blackwell to read her letter.

 
 
 
 
Here is a breakdown of the types of problems that applicants have with the RHP and that violate HUD’s own rules, standard business practices, and often the  rules of the RHP or the legislation that established it.
 
1. Inadequately publicized or unpublicized rules, contradictory rules, and frequent changes in rules plus intentionally hidden rules and regulations for grant determination. 
 
2. Making the rules so complicated that even a HUD OIG inspector complained that the program is very complex and so is difficult to investigate. 
 
3. Rules that changed during the Program so that applicants’ grants often were lower than those of previous applicants with similar homes, damage to their home, and insurance benefits. 
 
One example of this deals with additional compensation grants, that were supposed to counterbalance low grants due to low land values even though repair or rebuild costs were high.
 
The rules for qualifying for these Additional Compensation Grants, changed several times during the course of the Road Home Program to disqualify many low-income applicants initially told that they qualify. 
96 of respondents to our survey said this affected them out of a total of 326 applicants who responded (29%).
 
 
Another example is the rules for condominiums, trailer homes, camelback houses, and New Orleans-style doubles. Applicants with these types of homes have had major problems with rules enacted later in the program that downsized their grants.
 
4. Frequent refusal to accept documentation from applicants critical to determining the estimated cost of damage or the pre-storm valuation, the major determinants of the grant amount.
 
This is written into the posted RH rules in violation of the original intentions of CDBG & the law that established the RHP http://road2la.org/Docs/policies/Protocols_Estimating_Replacement_Housing_Costs_070908.pdf
Recent versions of RH rules state: the “home evaluator interviews the applicant to collect information about the applicant’s damage. If the applicant offers receipts, contractor proposals, and/or cost estimates for repairs, the home evaluator may note this in the report, but the home evaluator is trained not to accept copies of these documents
 
But the LA law that established the RH program says
It is the State’s policy that participants in the Homeowner Assistance Program deserve a fair and independent estimate of projection of damages from the storm, regardless of cause of damage. . homeowners will be able to appeal the valuation by presenting a valid alternative assessment or other evidence.
 
5.  Refusal of the contractor, ICF Emergency Management Services, with the State’s apparent agreement, to provide written notification to applicants of important changes in determinations of grant amounts, dispute resolution decisions, and reasons for applications being placed on hold or declared “inactive” (sometimes for more than one year).
 
This violated a rule for the program made in Nov., 2007 (#189A) that CHAT had advocated for over a year. 
This violation was also against the advice of a subcontractor who did a review of ICF’s work in Dec. 2007. 
 
6. Mismanagement and excessive waste resulting from document loss & poor communications
 

unusually poor & delayed communications with applicants as documented over & over by applicants

This was confirmed by KPMG Program Review which concluded that “ICF should draft a more detailed communication plans to address communication gaps at all levels of the Program” 
 

frequent loss of documents sent via certified mail or fax by applicants even when sent many times 
o        ICF, First American Title, and HGI (the new replacement for ICF International) often ignored phone calls, faxes, and certified letters from desperate applicants for many months or more than a year,
·         One First American Title employee told me that it was policy to drop calls from applicants and to fallaciously say that no supervisor was present when asked. This is consistent with the difficulties applicants had reaching ICF and the subcontractors for closings.
 
·                                                      Violating applicants’ privacy by sending  wrong files to applicants who requested copies of their files
§           Davida Finger of Loyola Law Clinic and I complained about this to ICF & LRA officials at a meeting in Nov., 2008, but the violations continued anyway
 
7.  Arbitrary and capricious decisions by ICF, including:
·         apparent deletion of items from applicant files
·         inappropriately and arbitrarily putting active applications in an “inactive” category, 
·         allowing ICF employees to make changes in applicants’ file data without documenting the reason in their database or notifying the applicants
·         deliberately not informing applicants of lowered grant amounts until they came to their grant closing, a policy again that was contrary to RH’s own rules 
·         threats to applicants who did not accept the amount of the grant money that was offered that they would be placed at the “back of the line” 
·         vindictive treatment by ICF for at least a few applicants who publicly criticized the program
 
8. Failure of the contractor to deliver an ombudsman type program required by their contract 
Instead, non-profit advocacy groups have been overwhelmed with requests from applicants for help despite having no access to applicants’ files and having to try to figure out which RH rules are operative at any given time
In addition, the contract specified that ICF was to provide:
·         advice about the implications of choosing the various options under the program,
·         technical assistance from qualified Rebuilding Advisors, 
·         advice about house insurance payments, FEMA payments, outstanding secured loans, liens, etc.,
·         advice about architects, surveyors, contractors and avoiding contractor,
·         best mitigation techniques and how to acquire the necessary services to conduct the appropriate mitigation,
·   and advice about selling the property under RH rules or demolition
 
9. Failure to allow fair appeals for thousands of applicants
·         Exclusion of applicants from appealing mistakes in their grants by restrictive deadlines and rules and chilling effects (threatening that grants were often lowered on appeals or that money given out could be taken back).
·         A mandatory pre-appeals process that was fraudulent. This was called Dispute resolution, that systematically left thousands of applicants in limbo and was criticized in an official audit for this and the lack of documentation.
·         More recently, Dispute Resolution was replaced by a supposed mediation process that was unavailable to or ineffective for many applicants.
·         The appeals process was run by the contractor and often rubber-stamped the contractor’s mistakes (for example, faulty appraisals, estimates of damage, wrong insurance deductions). 
·         The secondary appeals (State appeals) apparently had no written standards for deciding appeals and required a unanimous vote of unnamed state staff for an applicant to win.
            
10.  Wasting taxpayer money by redundant and inferior assessments of damage or house valuation 
·   With additional inferior appraisal values in an applicant’s file, ICF got to choose a low one to make the grant lower than originally promised. The multiple appraisals were usually unnecessary and resulted in more money unnecessarily given to the contractor. 
·   Full LA certified appraisals should have been done in the beginning for all appraisals: an arbitrary rule was made to reject such appraisals if they were more than 20% higher than those done by ICF’s inferior valuation methods. 
·   An ICF staff member, who had been a real estate agent, told us that her corrections of obviously wrong house valuations were ignored by her supervisor. 
 
11. Unfair demands for repayment due to so-called mistakes by ICF
o   This even included denying funds from applicants after closing (so-called pullbacks)
 
12. The LRA and the Office of Community Development (OCD) have failed to follow CDBG guidelines, the Grant Agreement, and HUD regulations by frequently not responding to requests for clarifications of rules, public records requests, and complaints from citizen volunteer groups or nonprofit agencies, and from four Parish Councils that represent most of the applicants
 
Even when there were positive responses to requests from these groups         by Road Home officials, usually the reforms were agreed to theoretically but not put in practice, or subsequent provisions were added that took away benefits for applicants, or the reforms were secretly withdrawn.
 
LRA violated LA law about delays of up to 10 months in responding to my three precisely worded public records requests; the law calls for a response in 3 days. 
 
I had to get a lawyer to file for a hearing before they have produced some of the missing documents. 
 
LRA has thereby managed to hide detailed rules regulations and accountability. 
 
LRA still has not produced a single document about the standards for deciding State Appeals.
 
LRA is still withholding 2 critical letters to or from HUD about appraisals rules that they offered to give to state legislators in the official minutes of a meeting with legislators and Paul Rainwater. 
 
However, today, through my public records request, we finally got documentation for the hidden 35% rule, which I will share via our newsletter. We had been told about this rule by several ICF staff and applicants, whom we considered reliable. Indeed they were! Mindy Milam will tell us a little about this rule later.
 
 
13. Unexplained delays of months or a year in giving applicants appeal money that they won.
 
14. Extreme delays in funding house-elevation even though elevating a house has to precede repair or rebuilding
·         Most RH elevation funding was delayed until almost two years after the program started
·         Only a few hazard mitigation applications for elevation have so far been awarded
·         Arbitrary rules were devised that made it difficult or impossible for applicants to receive such funding 
o   The delays and applicant-unfriendly rules for elevation costs partly due to State policy  and delays has made a mockery of the RHP slogan:  safer, smarter, and stronger
 
We can give only a small fraction of the documentation about these problems during this meeting.
 
On our website http://chatushome.com and in our free CHAT email newsletters, we will continue to provide some of the documentation for rampant rule violations and unfair policies toward applicants instituted by the RHP. 
 
As mentioned earlier, we have a campaign to send letters to four Congressmen about requesting timely consideration of our complaint to the HUD  Inspector General to look into some of these RHP issues.
We welcome more of these letters sent to us at chatlra at yahoo.com for transmission to key federal legislators
 
Here is one of the 70 letters that we have transmitted. This one mentions delays for as much as a year in giving money to applicants that they won after an appeal, a common occurrence.
 
Thursday, May 14, 2009 8:48 PM




Dear Sens. Landrieu, Vitter, and Lieberman and Rep. Olver, 
I would like to take this opportunity to ask that there be a fair investigation of the LA Road Home Program by HUD without delays. I, one of many, am a victim of the Road Home program.  As a resident of St. Bernard parish with 9 feet of water in my home, I was advised by Road Home that I had "insufficient damage" and was not eligible for the program. Almost four years later, I have won my appeal through the State of Louisiana but have not yet gone to closing. The inefficiency and ignorance of this program is a disgrace to our state and to our country. 
Here are some comments from our latest online survey. These are about appeals.
 
Applicant #1. I [thought] I understood the rules but [the rules were] extremely difficult. Many times I wanted to give up. I have never spoken to so many incompetent people  as I have dealt with in the road home program. I had 12 certified mail receipts but they denied my appeal originally because they [said they] did not get feedback from me.
 
#2  I do not know the first thing about making an appeal or how to go about it. 
 
#3 I did appeal but never heard from them.
 
#4  .  I actually thought I appealed but was told I didn’t.
 
#5 Yes, I was told before I went to closing that if I did not go to closing and accept what was offered I'd get nothing, by Mr. G., who said he was hired to get people to go to closing. And at closing I was told there wasn't anything to do but to accept [the award]. The web site is not user friendly for novice computer users, so I was confused. 
 
#6  Although I am a lawyer and a CPA, the rules were incomprehensible and the application of them was arbitrary, capricious, inconsistent and inequitable. At some point, I think I chose my mental health over continued, futile pursuit.
 
CHAT member Mindy  Milam  will share some  documentation about the non-transparency of this program
·         Question 18 from CHAT’s third survey: 
Did you want to appeal but did not because you were confused about the rules? 90 out of 326 respondents (28%) said “yes.” 
 

Lack of access of applicants to the rules, and explanations of these complicated rules

 about 40% of applicants, mostly low and moderate income applicants did  not have internet access to the Program’s website
no letters explaining rules or rule changes were mass mailed to applicants except for those that dealt with elevation grants 
state officials refused to add to that mailing, an important notice of two helpful rule changes 
 
·         A hidden rule 
o       letters were mailed to applicants  who were in appeals because of RH’s determination of their PSV 
o       the letters state that the applicant can choose the highest PSV in their file for grant calculation rather than the one that RH used
o       But unknown to the applicant, an ICF team called the ACT team instead made the choice, by some unspecified procedure, which  of the appraisal values to use if there were 2 values in the applicant’s file that differed by more than 35%
 
·         The State often uses the federal government as cover for not making the rules fairer. 
v   A law was passed by the State legislature in May 2008 that said applicants should always get the highest house valuation in their file. 
v   Applicants are supposed to get the highest valuation in their file when they appeal their house valuation, so this made sense. 
v   HUD officials stated many times that the rules for the RHP are almost completely up to the State, so long as no HUD guideline is violated.
o  Nonetheless, the Louisiana Recovery Authority, LRA, insisted that implementation of this law required HUD to approve an LRA Action Plan Amendment.
o  HUD rejected this Amendment  but gave a reason in the decision letter that had nothing to do with the Amendment
o  In contrast, when the Jindal administration reversed policy and used HUD money for elevation grants instead of available FEMA money, thereby shrinking the pot of funds for grants by almost $1 billion, no Action Plan Amendment was even offered. 
 
CHAT member Steve Donahue played a major role in getting FEMA approval of funding RH applicants for elevation of their homes. Nonetheless, he is still awaiting getting his HMGP elevation money and house elevator money. Steve will briefly discuss transparency in the RHP.
 
More transparency in the program was promised as of Jan. 1, 2008. 
 
A document that we got by a public records request stated that refusing to give written documentation to homeowners about grant amounts and application status “adversely affected  applicants.”
 
This new rule, #189A (made  after months of advocacy by CHAT) stated that within 5 business days after verbal communication, applicants should get the following information:
 
1) The exact amount of the grant award, elevation funding, and any Affordable Compensation Grant :
 
2)  An applicant’s Dispute Resolution status and outcomes which will serve to reconcile verbal inconsistencies and
conflicting information reported to homeowners by Road Home advisors.
 
3) The current status of the application accompanied by an easy to understand/non-technical explanation of
missing information still requiring verification including but not limited to ownership and occupancy, title search, pre-storm value determination and Estimated Cost of Damages
 
Application of these fair rules was largely ignored by ICF. Our complaints to top state officials about  ICF not following Rule #189A were also ignored.
 
 
Ken Ehrlich, will discuss the issue of the Road Home Program’s excessive distrust of applicants.
 
>From the initiation of the program we were told by a high official at a Louisiana Speaks meeting that  the program would be set up so that “Not one dollar, not one penny of Road Home money would go to fraud.”  
 
·                              So policies were initiated that were based upon such distrust of applicants that the program was mired in inefficiency thus preventing timely distribution of the money.
·                              Meanwhile,  the contractor wasted taxpayer money on unnecessary procedures, supposedly to prevent fraud, some of which are outlined above. 
 
The great distrust of applicants continues.
An unpaid spokesperson for the LRA  recently told Melanie, in answer to a request for the RH program to reopen appeals for unfairly treated applicants that “he doubted the recent claims of many applicants about mistakes in their grant calculation”. 
 
Here is CHAT’s answer to those doubts.  

The high rate of applicants winning appeals and the average additional grant money awarded proves that there are very large numbers of applicants with mistakes that need to be fixed. 
7024 of applicants (46%) who had a chance to appeal won their appeal received average additional funding awarded of >$27,000. 
o   This is also an example that some of the contractor staff sincerely tried to help applicants.
o   However, it is of concern that in the last year consistently 15%  fewer applicants won appeals than in 2007. 
 
>From CHAT’s third survey there is abundant evidence about ICF keeping applicants out of this appeals process. The applicants’ survey responses are reinforced by conclusions from the Louisiana Legislative Auditor that we have in our HUD complaint posted at our website.
 
An applicant taking survey wrote on 08/07/2008  I WAS IN RESOLUTION FOR 2 YEARS AND STATE APPEALS FOR ALMOST ONE YEAR.
 
Another applicant told us on 08/07/2008 that he began complaining about his award amount in November 2006 and was in Dispute Resolution limbo for 7 months when he got Rep. Lorusso to intervene on his behalf. 
 
Yet another applicant on 08/18/2008 wrote I submitted written appeal letters on May 2, 2007, November 24, 2007 and June 21, 2008. These appeals are still outstanding. 5 "Pal’s {“Personal Assistance Liasons”} have been assigned with no positive results. Most disappear after a few days or hours.
 
Here is a comment from an applicant on 08/22/2008. On March 12, 2007 I began calling Road Home to start the resolutions process. This was a nightmare. I spoke to so many people and later was never assigned a "PAL", although I was told I would have one.
 
 
a.         In the same survey 71% of 188 applicants in Dispute Resolution told us that they have not been able to find out what happened to their dispute and 66 of these applicants were told they lost but only over the phone.  
 
b.          From CHAT’s second survey, 66% of 317 applicants in Dispute Resolution told us that they have received no response to their dispute for 6 months or more.
 
 
Melanie
Many applicants have been kept out of appeals or never had a fair appeal because the rules were stacked against them to make it easy for them to miss a deadline or because they were given no information or the wrong information about how to appeal or because their appeal letter was lost by ICF.  
 
Even for those were finally able to initiate an appeal, most did not have a copy of their file so that they could know just what mistakes were made. 
 
If applicants were appealing obviously wrong estimates of damage, advisors told them that they probably would not win. 

The mistaken damage estimate often went back to the same ICF staffer who wrote the report. Those files from the House Evaluation Team were kept in a separate database that even the applicant’s housing advisor could not see.   
·   One 80 year-old lady had to get her son to hire a structural engineer so that she could win a state appeal that her 1-story house with 8 ft of water for weeks had >51% damage
 
A new promise to reopen appeals by LRA disappeared right after it was announced on the LRA website and was alluded to by an article in the Time-Picayune.
 
The LRA posted this on its Web site: "For many months we have heard of people who . . . were never able to exercise their right to appeal because their case was stuck in the 'resolutions' process, which ended earlier this year." 
 
The phone number to call was to LRA personnel. I called them as a test and they knew nothing about the promise of extending the deadline for appeals. When I told Paul Rainwater that after a Senate subcommittee hearing in DC last week where we both testified, he said, “I can’t respond to that if you don’t give me their names.” So the distrust continues.
 
The reversal of the promise to reopen appeals was stated in an LRA email to an applicant that "Unfortunately, there are no exceptions to the 30-day rule, as Mr. Rainwater did not say he was opening appeals to applicants who have gone pass (sic) the deadline." 
 
And recently in a letter to the editor of the Times-Picayune, Mr Rainwater wrote that the appeals business left for the program are the appeals currently in progress, in other words, no new appeals.
 
The only independent and fair level of appeals was a third-tier appeal conducted by administrative law judges. This level of appeals was summarily discontinued in Nov. 2007. The head of the agency for administrative law judges told me that she was never given an explanation for the sudden termination.
 
 
The Right of Judicial Review 
  
The State denies aggrieved victims any right of judicial review. The Louisiana Administrative Procedures Act allows aggrieved persons the right of review of final agency decisions, in certain circumstances, but the RHP and State Attorney General are fighting applicants who seek such reviews in court. 
  
In several court cases, lawyers for the state have argued that the money was given to the State of Louisiana and not to the applicants and that the state is under no obligation to be fair or accountable for CDBG funds which provide the money for Road Home grants. According to the state attorney general's office, the state can do whatever it wants because the Road Home Program is a “giveaway program.”  The program may be unjust, inequitable and violate its own rules and no court has the power to correct it. 
  
The appeals system started with ICF reviewing its own mistakes which was a conflict of interest. 
  
We have not been able to get the rules for deciding these appeals despite numerous requests. 
  
With no known or published standards for reviewing decisions, the State ran a second-tier appeal. In the early stages the reversal rate was substantial and many people were helped. As time went along, applicants usually lost these and often they were given no reasons. 
  
After that, the State of Louisiana says applicants have no right of review in court. 
  
A decision in a case filed under the Administrative Procedures Act last week in Baton Rouge (Dandridge v LA Div of Administration, Office of Community Development) overruled the state's exceptions of no cause of action, agreeing with the plaintiffs that there is a right of judicial review.  The state will certainly appeal.  If the decision stands on appeal, it is hoped this remedy will become available to others who were denied this right and were victims of a bad decision that the state did not correct.  It is also hoped that this and other cases will help open the door to establishing other rights of judicial review for RHP mistakes and ICF negligence. 
  
 
Barbara will read a letter sent to me last week by a woman with whom I have spoken by phone.
 
 
RE: Senate Subcommittee Hearing on Road Home Program 05/20/09
 
Dear Dr. Ehrlich:
 
I too am requesting that an investigation be conducted by HUD/OIG concerning ICF International and the Road Home Program.  
 
I was Compliance agent for the New Orleans office of The Road Home Program’s Small Rental Property Repair Program.  During one visit to the corporate office in Baton Rouge, I along with others, witnessed thousands of applications and requested documents recklessly thrown over the floor. This explained why applicants were being asked to provide duplicative documents four, five and often six times before being assisted.  The longer corporate office stalled the applications, the longer they could extend their jobs, salaries, and admin funds.  By the end of September of 2007, not one landlord received any assistance from the program, although we opened our doors earlier that same year.  
 
I personally provided thousands of pages of suspicious documents to federal authorities from June of 2007 through September of 2007.   
 
As ICF is no new comer to lawsuits, there are numerous federal cases pending against them in court.  An Investigator with the U.S. Department of Labor cited them for “mislabeling” 225 lower employees as supervisors so that those employees would not receive over-time pay, a violation of the Fair Standards Labor Act.  (http://www.2theadvocate.com/news/30877434.html?index=1&c=y)
                                                                                                                                 
                                                                                                                                 
ICF’s 2008 own financial report indicates that their core business revenue was “…up 61.6 percent from the previous year of 2007 due to revenue it had received from obtaining the Road Home contract.”  http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS208284+11-Mar-2009+BW20090311  
 
The citizens’ spirit has been irrevocably damaged but our faith has not been defeated.
 
 
 
 
Melanie   
 
·      I always look for independent confirmation of claims of abuses in the RHP.
 
·      I have it for the phrase about application papers scattered all over the floor of an ICF office.
 
 
·      A businessman, who gave us pro bono help in 2007, told me that he had occasion to be in several ICF offices for the homeowner program. He was shocked, he told me, to see applicant papers all over the floor and an extremely disorganized system of electronic filing of applicant documents.
 
Our Stalled HUD OIG complaint about the Road Home Program that was accepted for investigation
 
 The complaint is entitled “Waste, Mismanagement & Abuse Complaint- LA Road Home Program” was filed on Feb. 2, 2009 and accepted for investigation on February 19, 2009. It will be posted at our website http://chatushome.com
 
A HUD inspector was supposed to start the investigation on Apr. 2 by meeting with me. Suddenly, the meeting was cancelled, and I was told that the investigation would be postponed for 6 months. 
 
Our 39-page complaint to the HUD Office of the Inspector General should be put back on the fast track instead of delayed for 6 months, after which almost all the money will probably be spent. 
 
Our allegations of serious mismanagement, waste and abuse, and evidence of contractor fraud should be evaluated fairly, notwithstanding HUD’s involvement in oversight of the Program and the addition of a former Road Home contractor to HUD’s Disaster Recovery staff.  
 
 
We want to end by showing that, for some applicants, the rebuilding process is either on hold or has not begun.  
The photos are from our neighborhood in Gentilly, New Orleans, a lovely, vibrant and diverse neighborhood before Aug. 29, 2005.
The photos show houses heavily flooded in the Army Corp of Engineers’ Katrina flood. These homes are all stalled in their repair, probably because of RH problems.
 
I would like to first ask Laura LeBon, one of the original 8 CHAT members, to read her letter and several others urging that there be a prompt and fair investigation of our complaint to the HUD OIG
 
Laura LeBon 
Dear Sens. Landrieu, Vitter, and Lieberman and Rep. Olver, 
 I am writing to you today to explain the importance of the complaint that the Citizens’ Road Home Action Team (CHAT) sent to the HUD Office of the Inspector General (HUD OIG).  CHAT’s complaint illustrates the importance of an immediate and fair investigation of the Louisiana Road Home Program.   As of yet, all of HUD’s investigations have concentrated on grant overpayments, a far less common occurrence than underpayments.  
 I live in a two-story double, two blocks from the 17th Street Canal break.  My home, and everything in it, was all but destroyed by the levee breaks after Katrina in 2005.  Despite getting the full grant amount, my family is still struggling to rebuild.  I cannot imagine where we would be if we had been turned down by the program – yet there are many applicants who find themselves with nothing.  I am grateful for the funding that my family received to begin compensating us for our structural losses and I ask that you ensure that all Louisiana homeowners affected by the 2005 hurricanes receive the same opportunity to receive a fair grant under the established policy rules of the program.
The Louisiana Recovery Authority (LRA) and the Office of Community Development (OCD) were supposed to oversee Louisiana’s Road Home Program to ensure that the contractor hired to administer the program (ICF International) performed the job effectively.  Unfortunately, the system of checks and balances to ensure that this program operated as intended was flawed and the program has denied thousands of deserving homeowners crucial aid.  Because the program policies were not followed and because both the LRA and OCD were unable or unwilling to correct this problem (leaving thousands of applicants without critical funding with which to rebuild their lives), it is imperative that the HUD OIG investigates this matter.
May 15, 2009 
Dear Sens. & HUD:
 
  The phrase; "Louisiana wants you to come home." is sounding more like a lie than ever.  I may not be the one to write this letter, as I have received the max grant and have completed my home.  However I have friends and neighbors who did not take on "Road Home" as a job and they remain wanting.
 
I have a neighbor who has been turned down on several occasions for any funds at all.  First she received a BPO for a value of $179k on a 1700 sq.ft. property, when in fact her home is 3000 sq.ft.  
 
The rules have changed "in mid-stream." The array of changes have done nothing to serve the people on the ground in their recovery.  Another friend of mine waited three years to get "Road Home" to agree to  a reasonable value for her home and now has waited four months for a closing which has not happened.  Disappointment abounds in the life of New Orleans.  Lack of vision at every level of government has caused stress in more than a few residents in south Louisiana.




 
May 16, 2009      Dear Sens. Landrieu, Vitter, and Lieberman and Rep. Olver, 

Please impress upon the HUD OIG to conduct a fair investigation of the Louisiana Road Home Program without delays.  I am a senior, in New Orleans , who has gone as far as possible to maintain my residency.  Due to all of the delays, I am now in foreclosure with Wells Fargo and will soon not have a home.  I have followed AARP's advice and made contact with the Louisiana AG and just two days ago I wrote to the White House.  
Although my situation may be coming to an end, I know that I am not the worst off of NOLA citizens.  In Indiana a young boy lived in the house with his dead mother after they fled NOLA.  Of course I could go on with heartbreaking stories but that is not my intention as I am sure many who fled and have found that leaving, even under Katrina circumstances, was the best thing that could have happen for them and their families.  
However, for those who have stayed, the struggle to survive since 2005 has not yet reached a final conclusion.  Being held in limbo is not much different than waiting at the Convention Center.  It is a slow and scary death.
Today is May16, 2009.  The mother of a dear friend died this morning at 9:21 a.m. in Chicago .  All I could think was “good for her.”   No waiting to hear about the corrections in the Appeal Determination Report, no being subject to attacks from mortgage companies because insurance money was used to make her house livable, no fear of hurricane season because the insurance is not paid.  Life’s necessities have made it impossible for some of us, on a fixed income (pension) to keep up with rising utilities, medical, and transportation, while maintaining a good credit standing – for me a house note on an adjustable mortgage - and survive.
Our government has become a laughing stock.  However, being from the old school, I know no other way to find honorable remedies without turning to that very same entity and plead that you help us remain on the census record. 
 
 
Melanie:
In conclusion we ask that 

the HUD Inspector General stops delaying the investigation of our complaint about the RHP
 and that the HUD OIG office conducts a fair and thorough investigation.
 
To read our formal complaint and get more detailed information and updates, please go to our website     
 
            http://chatushome.com
 
 
Thank you and good evening.
 
 
                  Melanie
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