[FoCHAT] CHATNews: RH & The Law: Empty Assurances; T-P RH Editorial & Commentary; ACG

Sun Jan 10 11:02:35 CST 2010

RH & The Law: Empty Assurances; T-P RH Editorial & Commentary; ACG 
Jan. 10, 2010 
Dear Chat Members, 
Ø    Road Home and the Law 
Chapter 2: Empty assurances from LRA to fill my requests before I filed for a hearing on the LRA’s disregard of the Louisiana public records law 
Ø Assurances were from Paul Rainwater, then LRA Executive Director and Custodian of LRA records 
Ø See email from Mr. Rainwater on Aug. 11, 2008 regarding the overdue response to my July 1, 2008 request for documents, including documents describing major policy changes in the RH 
Ø See empty assurances of compliance from Mr. Rainwater on 
§  Oct. 17, 2008 
§  Oct. 20, 2008 
§  Dec. 18, 2008 
§  Dec. 30, 2008 
§  Feb. 25, 2009 

Ø     Comments on a Times-Picayune Editorial 
(emphasis and comments added by a citizen advocate) 
Road Home has left many on the road: An editorial
By Editorial page staff, The Times-Picayune January 06, 2010, 

“Thanks in great part to significant efforts by the Jindal administration and to pressure from citizen advocates to improve the Road Home in recent years, the vast majority of program applicants have received compensation grants.” 

Did Congress intend for hurricane/flood victims to receive only some or any amount of compensation (applicants whose homes were devastated and got little from insurance often got far less than originally promised in their award letter for no good reason and many applicants got <$20,000)? 

Or, did Congress and the American people intend fair compensation according to publicized Road Home rules and up to $150,000, as we were led to believe? 

“John Meehan said he encountered every imaginable roadblock in the Road Home program. But almost 4 1/2 years after Hurricane Katrina, a few thousand homeowners are still trapped in the program's bureaucracy -- and state officials need to focus on these cases to try to bring them to resolution. 
Almost 126,000 applicants have received grants. It'll take months, or years, for those who chose to rebuild to complete their efforts. But in most cases the Road Home is no longer the obstacle it once was.” 

Ø But Road Home is the obstacle for thousands of hurricane victims. 

Ø An unpublicized survey done by LSU at LRA’s request and obtained by myself only after filing a request for a court hearing subsequent to LRA’s refusal to provide this document. 

Ø This survey was paid for by $42,000 from Louisiana taxpayers. 

Ø This is one of the documents asked for in my public records request, which I will be posting at http://chatushome.com in the future 

Ø One conclusion of this survey was: 

“Option 1 applicants not yet in their home identified a number of barriers to rebuilding. 
• The most common reason was an insufficient Road Home grant amount, which was reported to be a major impediment by 55% of respondents” 

The editorial continues:
“That's not true in all cases, though. About 3,500 homeowners are still waiting to resolve difficult title and property succession issues. A few hundred more have pending appeals. And more than 9,000 applicants had their appeals rejected. At least some seem to have legitimate concerns that they were wronged by the program.
Consider the case of New Orleans carpenter Chris Meehan, who restored his Treme home. He applied for a grant in mid-2006 and was first assigned to the Road Home's small-rental program because his lot had three addresses. Two of the addresses, however, applied to a traditional New Orleans mother-in-law structure in the back that he had never rented out. That meant he did not qualify for the renters program. In late 2007, more than a year after he applied, the Road Home shifted his case to the homeowners program.
That didn't end Mr. Meehan's tortuous road, though. An inspector from Boston accused him of fraud, wrongly assuming a white homeowner would not live in a black neighborhood. Mr. Meehan was later cleared. Then the program charged him a 30-percent penalty for not having insurance, which was later found to be a mistake. The Road Home also determined his 2,800-square-foot house was only 700 square feet and denied his grant based on that smaller size. Finally, a few weeks ago, the state rejected Mr. Meehan's appeal, citing the property's three addresses, an issue Mr. Meehan thought had been resolved years ago.
That's grinding-your-teeth maddening -- and wrong. 
Not every applicant was improperly denied aid, of course. But cases like Mr. Meehan's show some homeowners may have been severely wronged -- and they should not be left behind.” 

Ø Some?? The Legislative Auditor determined that over 22,000 applicants asked for dispute resolution on the issue of pre-storm value of their house.   
Ø The Auditor found that about half of them had their file intentionally not tagged for dispute resolution by ICF http://chatushome.com/chatusfiles/HUD_OIG_Complaint_ForPublicRelease_final__2_2_09.pdf 
Ø So they were left in limbo for months, over a year, or forever. 
Ø And this 22,000 number does not include additional thousands of applicants who tried to dispute wrong damage estimates or insurance deductions. 
Ø There is not only the 9,000 applicants who lost their appeals but also thousands of applicants who tried to appeal but so much red tape was put in their way (or they were left in Dispute Resolution limbo) so that they never got a chance to appeal 

Ø     Information About Raising the Cap on Additional Compensation Grants 

This was kindly provided by Seth Weingart,  Interim Co-Director, Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center 
Housing counselors at the Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center can help you with your Road Home appeal, mortgage delinquency or default, insurance claims, and other homeownership issues. Learn more about our free services here. 
Want to talk to a counselor? Call (504) 596-2100 or click here. 

We have a number of clients who we know should be eligible for more money under the new rules who have not received any letter. When we contacted LRA-OCD, we were told that there are approximately 3,000 applicants who should be eligible but must go through a "final inspection phase" before receiving their letter.  

I have now been told that the final inspection should be completed by the end of this month or early February and the remaining letters should then go out.  

Click on the purple link below to see a copy of the ACG letter 
Ø Another unfair aspect of the attempts to recapture grant money is that 
o   many other low-income applicants were promised an Additional Compensation Grant (ACG) & then 1- 2 ½ years later had their income recalculated and were denied this grant 
Ø So while Additional Compensation Grants awarded to many low-income applicants have been increased in amounts lately, a good reform 
o   many of the low-income applicants most in need of an ACG to be able to rebuild their home have not benefited from this reform 

Ø The ACG was originally instituted because low-income applicants got smaller standard RH grants due to the generally low value of their land, as Greater New Orleans Fair Action Housing Center and CHAT pointed out to RH officials long ago 

Best wishes, 
Melanie Ehrlich 
Co-Chairman, Citizens’ Road Home Action Team (CHAT; http://chatushome.com) 
Member, LRA Housing Task Force 
Comments: 
http://pogoblog.typepad.com/pogo/2009/09/the-far-too-long-and-winding-road-home-program.html 
or 
http://www.chatushome.com/blog/?page_id=70 

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