[FoCHAT] CHATNews: OCD & HUD: Going After Victims of Broken Promises

Wed Jun 23 00:02:34 CDT 2010

Myth vs. Reality
OCD & HUD: Going After Victims of Broken Promises

CHATNews                         June 22, 2010
Dear CHAT Members,
It is the final crowning indignity for state Road Home (RH) officials and anyone else involved to attempt to “recover” compensation grant money from applicants:
1.       who tried to appeal but never were allowed to (e.g. filled out the appeal request form but did not know that they had to send in a letter too);

2.       who had a denied appeal that could in no way be described as independent or with publicized rules for conducting weighing or deciding on the evidence; 

3.       who were caught in the misnamed “dispute resolution” process and left in limbo and never had a chance to offer documents to refute ICF or HGI mistakes; 

4.       who were entangled in an ever widening and changing web of rules that even most RH employees did not understand, rules that confused applicants and HUD to ICF’s and OCD’s advantage;

5.       who were in the dark about how this extremely complicated program functioned because they were among the 40% of RH applicants not internet connected and so without access to those rules that RH did finally share after repeated requests from CHAT or;

6.       who were financially strapped and facing RH rules biased against applicants with low land values from the very beginning of the program despite the seemingly compensatory Additional Compensation Grants that often missed those most in need.

I live in a rather typical neighborhood in New Orleans in which about only 40% of the houses are reoccupied.
 Just in the last few days, I came across the following statements which were made to me by a friend, two acquaintances, or were distributed online at our district yahoo group (made anonymous below). They all pertain to two recent news articles and convey the reality of the many homeowners who were promised and wanted compensation grants to bring them home but got no grant, less than they were supposed to get according to Road Home rules, or less than they needed to repair or rebuild.
1.  “Many people want to rebuild with their Road Home grant but cannot for many different reasons. People who just don’t understand this and haven’t suffered the same from Hurricane Katrina or Rita under continuing financial stress have no right to criticize those who have not rebuilt yet. Many like me are just waiting to be able to repair or rebuild.”
2. “I am digging out from Katrina debt after fixing my home.”
3. “ It is saving my life to have a dog after the trauma of Katrina.”
4.            Road Home compliance letterFriday, June 18, 2010 9:44 PMFrom: "zzz" 
<zzzz at yahoo.com>Add sender to ContactsTo: gentilly_after_katrina at yahoogroups.com  
what????-that is the stupidest thing Ive heard yet-I guess they have money left over so they're gonna use it up by giving someone a ridiculous job to harass us a little more
--- On Fri, 6/18/10, xxx <xxxx@ yahoo.com> wrote:
From: xxx <xxxx@ yahoo.com>
Subject: [gentilly_after_ katrina] Road Home compliance letter
To: gentilly_after_ katrina at yahoogro ups.com
Date: Friday, June 18, 2010, 7:57 PM
Received letter from Office of Community Development today with a form to fill out and a list of all the documents I need to send them within 30 days to prove I have repaired and occupied my house and have insurance. "Once this documentation is received, a representative from the compliance and Monitoring Department will conduct a site visit of your property."

With respect to the last yahoo New Orleans’ chatbook posting, nearly 3000 state jobs have been cut last weekend in the state budget. 
http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/frontpage/index.ssf?/base/news-14/127710182128330.xml&coll=1 

Going after applicants who got Option 1 grants to check if they rebuilt would help justify retaining state employees.
 It would also put federally derived Road Home compensation grant money that is paid back by applicants into state coffers, apparently with no restrictions on how it is spent. 
Will the representative of the Monitoring and Compliance Dept. be state employees or Beacon of Hope staff to again check up on neighbors? One CHAT member told me of neighbors encouraged to nastily and unjustifiably inform on other neighbors who had been acting in good faith. This poisoned the neighborhood spirit. 
Trying to stop flagrant blight of uncut jungles or ungutted homes is one thing but going after bedraggled homeowners trying to scrape up enough money to fix their homes with little help from RH is quite another.
Can RH tell the difference? Does anyone at OCD care about the difference?  This is OCD/LRA that brought us the "surplus" by shortchanging applicants and making rules 2 years into the program that mold and mildew damage would not be covered.
Will the parish governments be as deaf to the injustices and inconsistencies of RH as our state legislators, if and when they get the “surplus” RH money, according to the bill passed in the State legislature last week? The Louisiana Senate Finance Committee (see the names below) didn’t care. Members were reported to be swamped with requests from constituents to not divert the RH “surplus” from applicants (Thanks CHAT members!). They voted to do so anyway.
Will anyone in charge care about those who had to spend their 1 ½  - 3 year delay in getting their RH grant while having unexpected rent expenses on top of mortgage payments, lost income due to the hurricane, bills to replace their ruined clothes, furniture, etc, or a mortgage that was suddenly called in?
Will anyone in charge care about applicants now suffering financially because their business is directly or indirectly hurt by the oil gushing into the Gulf? 
We will probably hear about how HUD is making OCD do the “recovery” work (trying to extract compensation grant money back from applicants). Remember that Road Home (RH) is a HUD CDBG program, which gives the state “maximum possible deference” in designing rules. For example, without even an action plan amendment, in 2008 the state Road Home oversight agencies LRA and OCD (as of July, just OCD) made a change in the program to give elevation grants, usually $30,000 flat, to applicants who qualified even though the previous administration said it would not use RH for this purpose. Remember also that Mississippi had a Hurricane Katrina HUD CDBG grant of the same type as Louisiana and had extremely simplified rules for giving out their compensation grants. 

The article below refers to the RH “surplus,” which is mostly from the Rental Program. Core CHAT members correctly described the RH rental programs as unworkable at our meetings in 2006 and for all the reasons that have now surfaced.
The “very difficult circumstances” referred to below were largely of the State’s choosing and pale in comparison to the ordeals that many applicants have undergone trying to get answers that make any sense from this program (and often trying in vain to get any answers at all for many months at a time).

http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2010/06/unspent_2005_recovery_money_pr.html
Unspent 2005 recovery money prompts criticism of Louisiana in U.S. Senate
Published: Friday, June 18, 2010, 7:45 AM     Updated: Friday, June 18, 2010, 9:36 AM
 Bruce Alpert, Times-Picayune 
WASHINGTON -- Louisiana has spent only 77 percent of the emergency community development block grants approved for housing needs after the 2005 hurricanes, and other Gulf states have an even lower percentage, prompting questions by an Oklahoma senator on whether the money can really be defined as "emergency."
Sen. Tom Coburn, the top Republican on the Permanent Senate Subcommittee on Investigations, who requested the funding data from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, said taxpayers "would likely be surprised to find out a portion" -- about $3 billion -- of the $13 billion allocated to Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina "remains unspent."
Share Christina Stephens, spokeswoman for the Louisiana Recovery Authority, said that "the bottom line is that we've spent the lion's share of our recovery funds over the past four years under very difficult circumstances."
In a letter to Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan, Coburn said that while the federal government rightly allocated "significant federal resources" to the "unprecedented damage to the Gulf Coast, serious questions need to be asked about whether this money was appropriately designated as emergency funding."
Coburn spokesman John Hart said the report on unspent 2005 hurricane emergency funds raises the "broader issue of government's inability to respond efficiently to emergencies."…

Lastly, about those checks that OCD is starting, here are links to the closing documents describing obligations of grant recipients, in case you don’t have access to these documents. Note that they refer to giving applicants additional time in some unspecified circumstance and to applicants who have rebuilt producing documents within three years showing that they did so.
http://road2la.org/Docs/closing/option%201/Covenants_112607.pdf
http://road2la.org/Docs/closing/option%201/LRH%20-%20Grant%20Agreement%20ALL%20Home_9April07.pdf
http://road2la.org/homeowner/resources.htm#closing

 Here are some questions for applicants about this monitoring. 
How many times do we have to produce these verifying documents to Road Home? For example, many of us sent them (often sent and then, upon repeated requests, resent) as part of one of those HMGP applications (FEMA, hazard mitigation grant program), which required extensive and difficult documentation but were often just left in limbo (due to changing rules stopping the flow of funding and misleading promises, a la the Road Home itself). Do we have to send them again for the monitoring purpose? What will happen if we don’t?
 What is the justification for this form to fill out and visual inspection of our homes in addition to the demands for telephone or water bills to prove that a house is lived in by us? 
Why did Mike Spletto, former head of Housing at OCD, and Walter Leger, former head of the Housing Task Force of LRA, state repeatedly at public meetings that all Option 1 (repair/rebuild) applicants had to do to show that they satisfied the covenant was to live in their fixed up house for one day and to produce a single bill showing that the house was leaved in but now multiple documents and house visits are invoked?

Lastly, it is so helpful when CHAT members send us tips (relevant newspaper links) or descriptions of their RH or HMGP experiences. Thank you very much!

Please send us information about your experience of being "monitored" or applying for HMGP funding for home elevation or individual mitigation grants (storm shutters etc., up to $7500). 

Please label the subject of your email Road Home Experience and send to chatlra at yahoo.com.  It will be kept anonymous.

Best wishes,
Melanie Ehrlich
Founder, Citizens’ Road Home Action Team (CHAT)
http://chatushome.com 

Hall of Unconcern at the State Senate

Finance Committee 
Committee Members
Senator Michael J. "Mike" Michot (Chairman)
P.O. Box 80372
Lafayette, LA 70598                         
(337) 262-1332
lasen23 at legis.state.la.us 

Senator Lydia P. Jackson (Vice-Chairman)
330 Marshall Street
Suite 706
Shreveport, LA 71101                     
(318) 676-7029
jacksonl at legis.state.la.us 

Senator John A. Alario, Jr.
1063 Muller Parkway
Westwego, LA 70094                      
(504) 340-2221
alarioj at legis.state.la.us 

Senator Sharon Weston Broome
P. O. Box 52783
Baton Rouge, LA 70892                 
(225) 359-9352
lasen15 at legis.state.la.us 

Senator Sherri Smith Cheek
9973 Mansfield Road
Keithville, LA 71047                        
(318) 687-4820
smithcheek at legis.state.la.us 

Senator Jack Donahue
3030 East Causeway Approach
Mandeville, LA 70448                     
(985) 727-7949
donahuej at legis.state.la.us 

Senator Eric LaFleur
P.O. Box 617
Ville Platte, LA 70586                     
(337) 363-5019
lafleure at legis.state.la.us 

Senator Gerald Long
P.O. Box 151
Winnfield, LA 71483                        
(318) 628-5799
longg at legis.state.la.us 

Senator Edwin R. Murray
1540 N. Broad St.
New Orleans, LA 70119                 
(504) 945-0042
murraye at legis.state.la.us 

Senator John R. Smith
611-B South 5th Street
Leesville, LA 71446 
(800) 259-2709
smithj at legis.state.la.us 

Senator Mike Walsworth
4007 White's Ferry Rd
Suite A
West Monroe, LA 71291               
(318) 396-5499
walsworthm at legis.state.la.us 

Senator Dan Claitor 
7520 Perkins Road
Suite 170
Baton Rouge, LA 70808                 
(225) 765-0206
claitord at legis.state.la.us 

Senator Willie L. Mount 
P.O. Box 3004
Lake Charles, LA 70602                  
(337) 491-2016
lasen27 at legis.state.la.us 
Senator Francis Thompson (Interim Member)
P.O. Box 68
Delhi, LA 71232          
(318) 878-9408
thompsof at legis.state.la.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://chatushome.com/pipermail/fochat/attachments/20100622/29157df7/attachment-0001.html>