[FoCHAT] CHATNews: Much of What You Wanted To Know About RH Appeals But Couldn’t Ask

[Melanie Ehrlich]

Much of What You Wanted To Know About RH Appeals But Couldn’t Ask 
Sept. 27, 2009 
Dear CHAT Members, 
First, welcome to our new members. We now have 985 members of our network. 
  
We have very much evidence that the dispute resolution process for the Road Home Program that involved more than 22,000 applicants was intentionally misleading (see pages 2, 8, 9, and 10 http://chatushome.com/chatusfiles/HUD_OIG_Complaint_ForPublicRelease_final__2_2_09.pdf .   
Below is some of the evidence that the first-tier appeals, conducted by the Contractor, who was certainly not an independent source of appeals, was often intentionally misleading. 
The next and final step in appeals is the State Review Panel appeal. I still cannot get any document describing how that is conducted despite a public records request that is more than 1 year old. 
Lastly, the state is still trying to block applicants any judicial review of any Road Home (RH) decisions. 
1.  Inside ICF Appeals 
This weekend, I had a long talk with a member of the ICF Appeals Dept., who, along with about 800 other ICF employees was laid off last March - April. I took notes as she spoke to me on the phone. 
I am not revealing her name.  I knew her somewhat before she went to work for ICF. From my occasional conversations with her, I know that she is conscientious, careful in her evaluations of ICF’s procedures, even defended ICF to me on a couple of issues, and did not hesitate to criticize applicants if she thought they were trying to take advantage of the system. 
She told me that “without a doubt, thousands of RH applicants were shortchanged.” 
She said that she thought that “less than 1%” of Appeals applicants “were gaming the system.” 
“To me it was all about numbers processing, how many appeals we processed a day.” 
Below are some highlights of what she shared with me.  These are her paraphrased or quoted comments, not mine except for the comments in brackets and the headings not in quotes. What she told me explains some of the complaints that we have received multiple times on the same issue from applicants. Furthermore, a long time ago, she had told me about the 35% rule for appeals. It is written nowhere for applicants to see and was hidden for a while even from Appeals Advisors.  I made a public records request  to LRA about this rule over a year ago. Recently, I obtained LRA documents that confirm this unfair rule and confirm that Appeals Dept. decisions were routinely overwritten and sometimes in direct contradiction to web-posted rules of the RH.  I will explain this rule in another newsletter, when I post the RH document about it, for the public to see for the first time. 
A. Many Appeals Determinations That Were Just As Worthless As Many of the So-Called Gold Award Letters from RH 
Applicants were sent an Appeal Determination Report from the Appeals Dept. of Road Home that told them the amount of money that they would get during a second closing if the appeal had been decided in their favor. However, the letter with this Report said at the bottom that the appeal was subject to further review. Indeed, it was! These letters were often no more trustworthy than initial "gold" award letters that applicants received because of these pre-programmed further reviews.
 
>From about Nov. 2007 until Mar. 2008, many applicants were receiving written Appeals Determination Reports telling them that they would receive extra money but subsequently their second closing was put on hold because one of four teams re-evaluated the appeal determination during Post Closing evaluation and changed the amount (often decreasing the appeal award or reducing it to zero). 
 
The teams that did their own determination of appeals claims were:
 
Appraisals Closings Titles team (ACT)
Additional Compensation Grant team (ACG)
Home Evaluation (HE) Team 
Insurance Team 
 
Appeals with award amounts reduced by one of these teams after applicants had been notified that they had won their appeal were often left in limbo for as much as six months. Eventually the appeal was kicked back to the Appeals Dept. 
 
The revised appeal amount was then sent out by the Appeals Division but other than insurance disputes, the Appeals Division was not routinely told the reason for changing (often reducing or eliminating) the appeal award amount other than that they were “not in compliance with Road Home policies.” Moreover, Appeals advisors could not give applicants a number and a person to call in one of the four teams that were, in fact, doing much of the actual appeals determinations. All they could give them was an address to write to for the team that considered their appeal. “What good is an appeals determination report that must go to another department that might increase or decrease it?”
 
Many in the Appeals Dept. were furious about the reversal of their appeals determinations. They began revolting in Mar. 2008 and demanding that that they have access to the four teams. Some sent scathing letters to Al Blankenship, Head of ICF Road Home Operations, and some even quit in protest. Finally in Apr., 2008, the procedure was revamped. The four teams still had just as much input into the final appeals determination but now this was done before the applicants were sent their appeals determination letter. Some of the Appeals Dept. personnel felt that they were largely reduced to paper pushers.
 
B.” If You Were Appealing the Estimated Cost of Damage or Determination of Less Than 50% Damage, It Was the Hardest Thing To Win.” 
The only way to win an appeal about the estimated cost of damage [ECD, usually based on a CAD report] or determination of the % damage [Type 1 for more than 50% and Type 2 for less] was to do the work yourself to find out the exact mistakes made by RH and documentation of those mistakes. For example, you had to send in an itemized insurance breakdown that showed the number of damaged doors was more than your RH CAD report had listed or that the square footage was wrong with the important items marked. 
We could not explain the uneven treatment that applicants received. For example, a person on a block in who had a one-story home and was given a damage estimate of less than 50% while everyone else on the block had damage estimates of more than 50%. 
I think something like 1/3 of the Appeals applicants were appealing damage estimates and less than 20% won their appeals while about a similar number of Appeals applicants were appealing their pre-storm value and about 40-50% of those applicants won their appeal.  The rest of the Appeals applicants were mostly appealing ownership issues [grant eligibility] or insurance or Additional Compensation Grant [ACG, additional grant funds of up to $50,000 for low-income applicants]. 
C. Doing Road Home’s Work For Them 
Besides the need for applicants to study their own complicated CAD reports to refute their damage estimates, they needed to know in their initial appeal letter exactly what they were appealing. This was very difficult for applicants who did not have higher education [given how very complex the RH rules were]. If an applicant mailed in a letter asking to appeal their grant amount and did not specify in detail what they were appealing, they were often sent an appeal denial that told them that they had 14 days to submit additional information or their appeal would be dropped. 
However, many of the applicants did not even get the letter within 14 days of the date by which they had to return specific documentation. [At a New Orleans meeting in Jan. 2008 between myself and officials of the RH, namely, Paul Rainwater, Suzie Elkins, Mike Spletto, Adam Knapp, Paul Rainwater, and Al Blankenship, I protested this very same unfair rule. To his credit, Adam Knapp (former Deputy Director of LRA) supported me fully and supposedly the time limit was extended.] 
D. Additional Compensation Grants Frequently Cut 
Many applicants were told at the initial interview that they qualified for an ACG based upon their documentation of their low income and had award letters specifying the amount of their ACG but later were later told that they did not qualify for an ACG. This often happened when they showed up for their closing. [We know of one applicant who testified before the New Orleans City Council that her ACG was denied, not in her closing documents but only by RH refusing to deposit in her bank the money specified in her closing documents. This is termed by RH a pullback. It is a breach of contract. The only explanation given to her was that RH recalculated her income and she was $40 over the limit.] 
For ACG appeals, many applicants lost eligibility because ICF said HUD made RH recalculate ACG income eligibility from within 6 months of closing. Many lost ACGs that way who had qualified at their first interview long before their closing and had brought all the income documentation then. [HUD officials have told me several times that under Maximal Feasible Deference for CDBG programs, like RH, they leave detailed rules up to the state, so long as they are consistent in their treatment of applicants.] 
One applicant in appeals about her ACG was unemployed until one month before closing. RH extrapolated from that one month pay  to the whole year [multiplied it by 12] even though they could not know if she could maintain the job.  Therefore, they told her that she lost eligibility for her ACG.[This violates a RH Income Policy Document The Road Home Homeowner Program Income Policies and Procedures, December 28, 2007, p. that states such extrapolation can be used only if the paycheck is representative of the yearly income.] 
  
E. Told to “Leave It Alone” When Helping Appealing Applicants Having Trouble 
One applicant in appeals would not sign her closing documents because they reduced her grant very much at closing. She appealed. The computer erroneously showed that she had closed and was no longer eligible for grant money. I worked on this case for weeks to show that she did not close. They had so much trouble fixing the computer mistake. Finally, I got it resolved. I tried to help appealing applicants and stuck with cases where I thought applicants deserved help. 
I kept getting flack from supervisors about why I kept working on these cases so long. “Leave it alone,” they told me. 
Applicants really needed an advocate inside the system. 
F. Arbitrary Handling of Pre-Storm Value (PSV) Appeal Cases 
The handling of PSV appeal cases was not uniform. Sometimes applicants who had bought a certified appraisal that was more than 20% higher than RH’s PSV had their bought appraisal used for calculation during appeal [even though that is against the 20% rule]. 
Field review appraisals were not handled uniformly. Some applicants got them when they should have and others did not. You could not tell why. 
G. Not Only Applicants Have Trouble Getting The Rules for Road Home 
I never saw a master rules book with all the regulations of Road Home. [During a previous conversation, she told me that she learned of a couple of important new rules only from CHAT newsletters.] 
  
  
2. On Public Access TV (COX 10)The Latest Filming of a CHAT Meeting About Our Complaint to the HUD Office of the Inspector General About the Road Home Program 
  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;  Wed., Aug. 5, 3 PM; Fri., Aug.7, 8 AM and 2:30 PM; Mon., Aug. 10, 3 PM; Wed., Aug. 12, 3 PM; Fri., Aug. 14, 12:30 PM;  Tues., Aug. 19, 4:30 PM; Fri., Aug. 22, 2 PM; Sat., Aug. 23, 10:30 AM; Wed.,  Aug. 26, 2 PM; Fri., Aug. 28, 2 PM; Sun., Wed., Sept. 9, 2 PM; Fri., Sept. 11, 2 PM; Tues., Sept. 15, noon; Thurs., Sept. 24, 2 PM; Sun., Sept. 27, 10 AM; Mon., Sept. 28, 1:30 PM; Fri., Oct. 2, 2 PM. 
  
3. LouisianaREBUILDS.info 
http://LouisianaREBUILDS.info  an important resource for many kinds of information, for example: 
Green Building and Weatherization 



Build it Back Green, a service of Global Green, can help you rebuild your home in a healthier, more energy-efficient way, helping you to reduce monthly utility costs. Homeowners can call Global Green to learn how simple home modification upgrades can save up to 20% on utility bills. Find out about BIBG and other ways to build green in our Homeowners section. 
Contractor Rating System 



Find and rate contractors working locally and help our community rebuild by getting the word out about good and bad contractors. Use our Contractor Rating System (with over 500 local listings and ratings) to rate a contractor you've used or search for contractor reviews before you hire. Find our Contractor Rating System and a wealth of information about hiring contractors in our Contractor Guide. 
Entergy Energy Efficiency Incentives 



Entergy New Orleans encourages energy efficiency by providing rebates for ceiling insulation, wall insulation, air sealing, duct sealing, and high efficiency air conditioning and heat pumps in existing homes through its Residential Energy Solutions program. Find out more about this program and other tips for reducing utility bills by making your home more efficient in our Utilities section. 
Affordable Rentals 



Louisiana Housing Search and the UNITY Housing Locator are two options for finding affordable rental properties. Search online for rentals or call toll free for operator-assistance with finding housing that fits your price range in your preferred area. Find these resources in our Renters Section. 
Blighted Property Information 



You can report blighted property to the city by calling 311 from a land line or the Code Enforcement Department at 504-658-4300. The Code Enforcement section of the City's website includes information about code enforcement procedures. Find this information in our Local Services section under "Litter, Blight, and Other Public Nuisances." 
To find out about purchasing blighted properties, see our Buy a House section under "Adjudicated/Blighted Property Programs." 
Rebuilding Assistance 



Several organizations are helping homeowners rebuild with volunteer labor and donated materials. Find these organizations offering rebuilding assistance in our Homeowners section under "Rebuild Your House."
  
Best wishes, 
Melanie Ehrlich 
Founder, Citizens’ Road Home Action Team 
Member, LRA Housing Task Force 
 
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