[FoCHAT] Urgent: please send one email about HUD investigation of the Road Home Program

Thu May 14 12:47:16 CDT 2009

Dear Concerned Citizens,

>From Citizens' Road Home Action Team (CHAT)

 CHAT Road Home Action Item

Please send an email to chatlra at yahoo.com insisting that there be no more delays in a fair investigation of the Road Home Program by the HUD Office of the Inspector General. 

CHAT will fax these emails to Sens. Vitter and Lieberman and Rep. Olver and hand deliver them to a HUD official and Sen. Landrieu on May 20. 

This is one of the last opportunities to have the program meaningfully examined before they spend all the money, which mostly comes from HUD.

CHAT recommends you write your email like this:

Dear Sens. Landrieu, Vitter, and Lieberman and Rep. Olver, 

Use your own words to urge that the HUD OIG conduct a fair investigation of the Louisiana Road Home Program without delays. Please tell why this is important. Give a personal example if you like. 

Yours truly,

YOUR NAME AND ADDRESS 

Explanation:

A complaint about the Road Home Program was accepted for investigation by the Office of the HUD Inspector General. The 39-page complaint was co-signed by leaders of the all-volunteer Citizens’ Road Home Action Team (CHAT), Loyola Law Clinic in New Orleans, and Terrebonne Readiness and Assistance Coalition in Houma. The complaint is about serious problems in the Road Home Program which resulted in many applicants not getting fair grants for rebuilding after Hurricane Katrina or Rita seriously damaged or destroyed their homes. 

Melanie Ehrlich, founder of CHAT, has been asked by Sen. Landrieu's staff to testify in DC about the Road Home Program on May 20. Sen. Landrieu chairs the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Disaster Recovery Subcommittee.

CHAT is urging residents to send an email BEFORE MAY 20 to make sure that a fair investigation of the Louisiana Road Home Program begins promptly. 

You can send this email to 

chatlra at yahoo.com 

and CHAT will fax these emails to Sens. Vitter and Lieberman and Rep. Olver and hand deliver them to a HUD representative and Sen. Landrieu on May 20. 

More Explanation: 

As the Program nears its end, we are very concerned that the remaining money for the Program is not being spent to correct extraordinarily frequent mistakes made by the Program that led to grant short-changing. 

Many applicants cannot repair or rebuild their homes without fair grants. 
There should be accountability for the extremely high uncorrected error rate of the Road Home Program. 
A HUD inspector was supposed to start the investigation on Apr. 2 by meeting with Melanie Ehrlich, the Co-Chairman of Citizens’ Road Home Action Team (CHAT). Suddenly, the meeting was cancelled and she was told that the investigation would be postponed for 6 months. 

While there have been HUD investigations of the Road Home Program, they have all been about overpayments to applicants. None have looked at the much more serious and frequent problem of underpayments. The complaint that HUD has accepted for investigation but is delaying starting is about underpayments.

The longer the investigation is delayed, the less chance that the government will take responsibility: 

for the extraordinary neglect that many thousands of applicants have faced during grant processing 
and for the violation of HUD rules and Road Home Program rules, which has hurt so many applicants. 
If you have a fax machine available, please fax your letter yourself, and send an email to chatlra at yahoo.com telling us that you did so. 

Sen. Mary Landrieu, Louisiana
Fax:(202) 224-9735 

Sen. David Vitter, Louisiana 
Fax: (202) 228-5061 

Rep. John W. Olver, Chair, Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies 
Fax: 202-226-1224 

Sen. Joe Lieberman, Chair, Governmental Affairs and Homeland Security Committee 
Fax:(202) 224-9750 

For more information about the HUD OIG complaint and for updates about the Road Home Program, elevation grants, follow-up of building by LRA, and other Road Home matters from the applicants’ viewpoint, please see CHAT's website: www.chatushome.com or r send an email to receive our free weekly e-newsletter. 

write “join CHAT” in the subject 
give your name and city in the body of the email 
send to chatlra at yahoo.com 

Thank you in advance,

Melanie Ehrlich
Founder, Citizens' Road Home Action Team (CHAT); http://chatushome.com 
Member, LRA Housing Task Force

PS This text is mostly taken from LouisianaREBUILDS.info, which kindly posted it in their e-newsletter yesterday at the following link:

 Click here for more information about this action item
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