[FoCHAT] URGENT: CHATNews, Unhappy Endings for the Road Home Program

Mon May 3 00:09:46 CDT 2010

5/2/10   
Dear CHAT Members,
You have until May 7 to comment on the new LRA Action Plan Amendment to spend much of the remaining Road Home funding on construction loans, which will surely involve fees for the banks and will send the repaid federal disaster aid back into state coffers.  
Please send an email to 
                ocd at la.gov 
and cc chatlra at yahoo.com 
to object to the fact that these are not being offered as forgivable loans and make any other comments you about the program  from your own experience or the experiences of others.

This is an unhappy ending, indeed, for many RH applicants who got too little funding to repair their homes through no fault of their own and don’t have the necessary funds.
Please read below about a summary of the broken promises about this that matches untold numbers of applicants who were promised one amount of money on a yellow letter from RH and then were summarily  and unfairly given much less.
In addition, you can below excerpts from a December, 2006 newspaper article called “Unhappy Endings” focusing on unhappy endings for a couple of Road Home applicants in their 90’s. 
http://www.chatushome.com/blog/?p=85
Now, we have an unhappy ending to the RH program because tens of thousands of  hurricane disaster victims have been unfairly and inconsistently treated by it. 
One and a half years ago, Paul Rainwater, former director of the Louisiana Recovery Authority (LRA), told me that he wished he could re-open appeals to fix shortchanging mistakes but he said he just won’t have enough money to do so.
LRA had over $700 million in “surplus” Road Home (RH) funds but they chose to do anything other than correct some of the many thousands of shortchanging mistakes that applicants are still stuck with.
LRA has decided to end the RH program with its many thousands of shortchanging mistakes intact. 
Recently, Robin Keegan, current LRA director, told the LRA Board and in phone calls and a meeting told me that she was considering forgivable loans as part of the mixture of items for remaining RH funds (now, by various kinds of spending, about $0.2 billion).
However, she has chosen to submit an LRA Action Plan Amendment with nothing but construction loans for applicants with insufficient funding to build.
. http://www.doa.louisiana.gov/cdbg/dractionplans.htm   Action Plan Amendment #43
The following is excerpts from one of the insightful articles about the Road Home Program (RH).  This 2006 article is about a couple in their 90’s for whom RH found a way to absurdly conclude that 9 feet of sewage/salt water/flood water in their home for several weeks  grant caused only $550 of damage.  I will shortly post the full article with comments.
Just last week, I received another pleading letter about similar mistakes in damage calculations for a mother in her eighties who can’t repair her home and I still have not been able to get help for yet another mother in her 90’s in the same situation. These well-intentioned individuals are the very tip of the iceberg. Their children eloquently pleaded for them to LRA with facts and documents to no avail. 
 LRA wants to offer to some applicants the chance to borrow money through banks (which will 

http://www.doa.louisiana.gov/cdbg/DRactionplans.htm
UNHAPPY ENDINGS
Some of Road Home's final letters are sending shock waves 
Thursday, December 14, 2006 
By Coleman Warner
The yellow award letter from the state Road Home program -- meant, at long last, to be the final statement of a flood victim's federal rebuilding grant -- started on a celebratory note: "Congratulations!" 
With all their savings tied up in their flooded-to-the-ceiling Lakeview house, and desperately needing that money to live, Saul and Mildred Rubin, both in their 90s, had been waiting for their grant award for months. In the meantime, they have been reluctantly living in a West Bank retirement community paid for in part by their children. 
So what was the good news? 
The government estimated the damage to their uninsured, 2,000-square-foot home -- which took on nearly 9 feet of water from the nearby 17th Street Canal breach -- at $550. 
…
The two families' dilemmas are not unique, as a smattering of letters to the editor, weblogs and phone calls to state offices attest. Melanie Ehrlich, a founder of the New Orleans advocacy group Citizens' Road Home Action Team, said she has seen 15 yellow final award letters and found errors in 11 of them 
…
Residents who think their final award letter is incorrect can file a formal appeal, but Road Home staffers acknowledge they don't encourage such a step because it could cause delays in resolving problems. Instead, they recommend that homeowners call the Road Home assistance number, then press 6 and a "resolution" expert will respond as soon as they are able. 
…
Regarding complaints about errors, program administrators are backed generally by the Blanco administration's Office of Community Development, which is overseeing the ICF contract. In a recent e-mail, the office's director, Suzie Elkins, said errors seem limited. 
She conceded that some final letters incorrectly used an elevation grant figure a second time in the line intended to offer an affordable loan and that other errors stemmed from a few data-entry errors in calculating the amount of flood insurance collected by a homeowner. 
But Elkins echoed Hector-Harris: "We believe the underlying approach is sound." 
"Any mistake is too many," Centanni said. "We want to get these homeowners the help they deserve to rebuild." 
. . . . . . . 
Coleman Warner can be reached at cwarner at timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3311.

The LRA Action Plan Amendment has nothing but construction loans for applicants who have  insufficient funding to build,  rather than at least offering them forgivable loans.
This is one more argument against that last statement in the article.
Please send an email to 
                ocd at la.gov 
and cc chatlra at yahoo.com 
to object to the fact that these are not being offered as forgivable loans and make any other comments about the program  from your own experience or the experiences of others.

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

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