Latest articles featuring CHAT or members of CHAT
Outgoing director says LRA needs new direction
By David Hammer, The Times-Picayune, Monday January 14, 2008,
http://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2008/01/outgoing_director_says_lra_nee.html
Many early applicants waiting on Road Home: Homeowners blamed for some delays
By David Hammer, The Times-Picayune, Wednesday, January 23, 2008
For months [since the spring of 2007], advocates and policymakers at the Louisiana Recovery Authority have been asking Road Home officials to disclose how many of the 70,000 homeowners still awaiting grants were applicants from the first months of the program. The state asked for the data at the Jan. 4 LRA housing task force committee meeting, but the information wasn’t released then. Committee member Melanie Ehrlich finally received a report last week and passed the numbers along to The Times-Picayune.
The report showed that 13,452 of the 67,255 eligible homeowners who applied in 2006 still hadn’t reached a grant closing by last week, including some who were in the pilot program launched in July 2006…
Suzie Elkins, director of the state Office of Community Development, the agency overseeing the Road Home, said many of the old files are not ones for which the calculations are in question, but ones requiring the applicants to take some kind of action to move the process forward.
“We’re working hard, really hard,” Elkins said. “Our goal is to move the homeowner as fast as we can through the system. But most of these cases are dependent on the homeowners.”
http://www.nola.com/timespic/stories/index.ssf?/base/news-5/1201069823185270.xml&coll=1
Road Home applicants pressured, panel told
By JOE GYAN JR. Advocate New Orleans bureau. Feb 7, 2008
NEW ORLEANS — Louisiana’s “Road Home’’ hurricane recovery program, sharply criticized since its inception for moving too slow in getting grants to homeowners, now may be putting speed ahead of fairness, a state legislative panel was told Wednesday.
http://www.2theadvocate.com/news/neworleans/15387296.html?showAll=y&c=y
State promises Road Home fixes
by David Hammer, The Times-Picayune. Wednesday February 06, 2008.
About 97,000 of an estimated 160,000 eligible applicants have received at least some money. But homeowner advocates testified before the state Senate committee Wednesday that many of those who have received money are still appealing for more.
http://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2008/02/state_promises_road_home_fixes.html
Homeowners to receive elevation grants:
Two programs give mitigation money
Saturday, February 23, 2008
By Robert Travis Scott, Times-Picayune
Melanie Ehrlich, a member of the watchdog Citizens Road Home Action Team, said she is concerned the state might be moving in the wrong direction by using the block grants for the elevations.
Ehrlich said the FEMA hazard mitigation program is coming soon and state officials are being too optimistic in predicting how much of the block grant money will be needed to meet all the Road Home needs. Those needs include obligations to shortchanged Road Home recipients who are seeking their full reward, she said.
http://www.nola.com/timespic/stories/index.ssf?/base/news-5/120374882251080.xml&coll=1
Elevation grant rules change
by David Hammer, The Times-Picayune Wednesday March 05, 2008, 8:21 PM
Louisiana has again changed its rules governing grants to raise hurricane-damaged homes.
But not everyone is singing the praises of the new elevation program. Melanie Ehrlich, co-founder of Citizens Road Home Action Team, or CHAT, said the program could lead to a windfall for people whose ICC and Road Home elevation assistance combine to exceed the costs to elevate. She said the flat payments are irresponsible for a program that already has miscalculated how much money it would need, and doesn’t seem to be taking into consideration the potential price of correcting underpayments.
Like Leger, Ehrlich is an LRA Housing Task Force member, but said the whole panel wasn’t given the chance to review the elevation grant plans before they were changed.
CHAT’s pressure did lead the LRA to change Road Home rules on appraisals of applicants’ property values, something that should help resolve many pending disputes. The state announced Wednesday that every applicant has a right to what’s called a “1004 appraisal,” a full appraisal of their home’s value that would automatically trump any other values the Road Home had used to calculate grants.
Ehrlich further encouraged homeowners to take the extra step of requesting access to their entire Road Home file. Some applicants who have managed to see their files have discovered that Road Home was collecting multiple estimates of their home’s pre-storm value—and using the lowest one to calculate their award, even though official program policies said the highest one was supposed to be used, Ehrlich said.
She said she’s been gathering dozens of examples of applicants who were denied their right to their files—sometimes, apparently, because they didn’t refer to the specific policy change that allowed them to do it. She said anyone requesting their full file should reference policy CP-189(a) to hold the Road Home to the new disclosure rules.
http://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2008/03/elevation_grant_rules_change.html
EDITORIAL: Untangling the red tape
Monday, March 10, 2008
...Perhaps the most far-reaching change, however, is the recent decision to let Road Home applicants have access to their case files. The administration of former Gov. Kathleen Blanco and program contractor ICF International opposed the move for months, but it’s the right thing to do, and the state deserves praise for finally taking this step.
Some applicants who have already used the new policy to see their files have discovered problems. That’s why all homeowners who feel shortchanged by the program should ask for their files.
Unfortunately, advocate Melanie Ehrlich says her Citizens Road Home Action Team has gathered dozens of examples of applicants who were denied their right to see their files. In some cases, the apparent reason was that requests did not refer to the specific policy change allowing access to the files. Only uptight bureaucrats would be that obtuse, yet that’s the kind of action people have come to expect from the Road Home.
Ms. Ehrlich understands what her group and thousands of other applicants are up against. So she’s advising homeowners to reference the new policy, CP-189(a), when asking for their files.
But homeowners should not have to remember an arcane policy number in order to see their Road Home documents, and the LRA needs to make sure ICF interprets requests as liberally as possible.
Only then will the promised access be for real.
http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/editorials/index.ssf?/base/news-4/1205126486120880.xml&coll=1
Katrina victims complain about red tape
BY JOHN MORENO GONZALES
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
NEW ORLEANS —Two and a half years after Hurricane Katrina, tens of thousands of miserable homeowners are still waiting for their government rebuilding checks, and many complain they can’t even get their calls returned. But the company that holds the big contract to distribute the aid is doing quite well for itself.
ICF International of Fairfax, Va., has posted strong profits, gone public, landed additional multimillion-dollar government contracts, and, it was learned this week, secured a potentially big raise recently from the state of Louisiana.
In the waning days of Gov. Kathleen Blanco’s administration, state officials increased the management contract ceiling from $756 million to $912 million – this, after the Legislature wanted to fire ICF over its handling of the homeowner recovery program, called Road Home.
“It is outrageous that ICF couldn’t do the job for more than $750 million and that they were given a pay raise after their history of disappointing service,” Blanco’s successor, Gov. Bobby Jindal said in an e-mail Thursday.
Some of those displaced from their homes were equally angered.
“I’m flabbergasted that this company could be so inefficient and could mess up so consistently and for so long,” said Bill Yurt, 57, who has been living in a FEMA trailer for 2 1/2 years.
Yurt said ICF hasn’t sent an appraiser to determine the grant amount that will resurrect his gutted house in Gentilly. And his calls to an ICF caseworker have gone unreturned for a month.
Road Home was created in June 2006 as a state-run, federally funded plan to compensate homeowners for the breach of New Orleans’ government-run levees. Homeowners can apply for grants to repair their homes, or obtain buyouts if they don’t want to fix things up.
Yet, 56,000 applicants – nearly 40 percent of the qualified total – had yet to receive a cent as of last month. Plagued by cost overruns and delays, Road Home is expected to cost the taxpayers $10 billion in federal money and has become another glaring symbol of frustration and red tape in post-Katrina New Orleans.
“Supposedly they had the expertise, but what we’ve learned ever since is it’s been on-the-job training,” said Frank Silvestri, co-chairman of the Citizens Road Home Action Team, or CHAT, a community group that was formed in anger over ICF.
ICF spokeswoman Gentry Brann blamed the state’s ever-changing rules and political meddling by officials and community groups for many of Road Home’s difficulties.
She said that Road Home has come to be regarded as an entitlement program, and said the company must carefully evaluate 157,000 applications to guard against fraud.
“The state essentially redefined the goal of the program from rebuilding to relief in midstream,” Brann said.
She said the $912 million that the company could be paid is to cover the costs of the program and was approved by public officials.
“It’s very important to note this is not a ‘pay increase.’ It’s not actually even ‘pay’ to ICF. Rather it is an increase in the contract ceiling to cover the additional unit price costs incurred by our subcontractors,” Brann said.
Still, Paul Rainwater, the executive director of the Louisiana Recovery Authority, which oversees the Road Home, said Thursday he will ask the state legislative auditor to look into the ICF pay structure.
The state got tough with ICF last year, threatening to terminate its contract, and but ultimately set benchmarks to force it to “close,” or decide, cases more quickly.
However, ICF now stands accused of inflating its closing figures by deliberately using red tape, confusion and delays to get applicants to settle for low grant amounts.
“They have been pressured into signing closing documents,” said Melanie Ehrlich, the other chair of CHAT, who has documented nearly 1,000 such disputes. “We know that this includes applicants who had obvious mistakes in the calculation of the grant.”
Ehrlich said more than half of the Road Home applicants who have contacted CHAT say they are appealing their awards. Some report getting letters from ICF telling them they were not eligible for a grant, followed by letters congratulating them for receiving one.
Dorcil Albair, a resident of Cameron Parish, said she got $9,800 from Road Home for damage estimated by her insurer at $49,000. She said she signed Road Home papers with hundreds of others at a local hotel.
“They just shoved the paper in front of us,” said Albair, 65. “It was like an assembly line.”
....
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iLX8wQokuZJefFl7pdM95pZZRTEQD8VCRNOGA
http://www.star-telegram.com/462/story/528066.html
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080313/ap_on_re_us/katrina_recovery_company
http://www.2theadvocate.com/news/16806111.html
Study: Home grants lagging
By JOE GYAN JR.
Advocate New Orleans bureau
Published: Mar 19, 2008 – Page: 1A – UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.
NEW ORLEANS — The state’s federally funded Road Home hurricane recovery program has not been an express lane for many homeowners who applied for grants, a nonprofit research group told a Louisiana Recovery Authority panel Tuesday.
The RAND Gulf States Policy Institute examined the history of all Road Home applications through mid-December, looking specifically at the total time it takes an eligible homeowner to apply for and receive a grant, and found that some homeowners got their grants in two months while others waited more than 500 days.
The Road Home recorded more than 185,000 homeowner applications from July 2006, when the program began, to July 2007, when the application deadline expired. To date, more than 103,000 homeowners have closed on their grants.
RAND Corp. senior analyst Rick Eden likened the crush of Road Home applications to a marathon and the varied speeds of its runners, saying some applications were resolved quickly, others slowly, and eventually they became spread out.
“You can get hung up in a variety of places,’’ Eden said of the many stages in the grant-making process during an LRA Housing Task Force meeting in New Orleans.
Eden said the fastest 25 percent of grant recipients received funding within about 200 days; the median recipient was funded in about 243 days; 75 percent of eligible homeowners received their grants within 296 days; and a fourth of the recipients waited at least 384 days.
“That’s history,’’ LRA member John Smith shot back. “Let’s get to the root of the problem. Deal with it, ICF. Deal with the problems.’’
Former Gov. Kathleen Blanco’s administration hired Virginia-based ICF International to administer the Road Home program. It was recently revealed that state officials increased the management contract ceiling from $756 million to $912 million in the waning days of Blanco’s administration.
LRA Housing Task Force Chairman Walter Leger said the task force’s chief concern is with “getting the job done,’’ not with how much it will cost.
Eden said RAND Gulf States Policy Institute found, among other things, that:
Homeowners that chose to either sell their home to the state and relocate within the state or sell and move out of state waited about 100 days longer for their grant than homeowners who chose to rebuild in place.
Applicants living in condominiums or townhouses waited 50 days longer than homeowners.
Homeowners with flood or wind insurance waited a little longer for grants.
Thousands of eligible applicants remained in the verification stage for more than 100 days.
“There are a lot of unexplained variations,’’ task force member K.C. King, who belongs to the watchdog Citizens Road Home Action Team group, noted.
CHAT founder and LRA Housing Task Force member Melanie Ehrlich said she was disappointed that the institute did not address the quality, or the lack thereof as she alleged, in the Road Home program. She complained that some applicants are dealing with “exorbitant resistance to correcting mistakes.’’
The LRA hired the institute to assess the performance of the Road Home program.
Eden said the institute’s final report will be out in about a month, after it is peer reviewed.
“Please ask your peer reviewers to read faster,’’ Leger urged Eden.
The Road Home program also has a rental housing component, providing grants to landlords who agree to keep rents low in exchange for forgivable loans.
The Louisiana Housing Finance Agency and the New Orleans demographic consulting firm of GCR & Associates conducted a study of rental housing demand in the New Orleans area and told the task force Tuesday that the estimated demand for rental units affordable to low- and moderate-income households is between 29,000 and 50,000 in metropolitan New Orleans.
GCR planner and housing consultant Rebecca Rothenberg said Hurricane Katrina only worsened the pre-storm housing needs in the New Orleans area.
“There was a lot of need before the storm,’’ she said.
Rothenberg also said homelessness is up 400 percent in New Orleans since the hurricane and is now six times the national average.
http://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2008/03/study_road_home_waits_vary.html
Study: Road Home grant process slow and unpredictable
by Michelle Krupa, The Times-Picayune Tuesday March 18, 2008, 9:52 PM
Homeowners who sold their hurricane-damaged properties to the state through the Road Home program generally waited 100 days longer to receive their money than those who opted to get cash to rebuild, according to preliminary results of an independent study of the beleaguered grant process.
Owners of condominiums also faced grant delays, waiting about 50 days longer than owners of single-family homes and duplexes to receive their grants. Meanwhile, shorter—but still significant—lag times were faced by homeowners who carried wind and flood insurance, compared with those without coverage.
Researchers with the RAND Gulf States Policy Institute offered no conclusions as to why certain categories of homeowners waited longer for Road Home money. But their broad findings echoed what has been a familiar theme: The process of landing a Road Home grant is slow and unpredictable.
Highlights from the study were presented Tuesday during a meeting at the University of New Orleans of the Louisiana Recovery Authority’s housing committee. They were among the initial results of a $49,000 “in-flight review” that the LRA commissioned in August. The LRA ordered the study to identify “points of delay and error introduction that inhibit the quality and efficiency of the program.”
Wait time about 8 months
In reviewing thousands of applications that were moving through or had completed processing by Dec. 18, researchers pegged the median wait time for receiving a grant at 243 days, or about eight months. That means half the grant recipients waited less than that period and half waited longer, according to a two-page fact sheet distributed at Tuesday’s meeting.
In some cases, the wait was far longer, researchers said.
“RAND found that although some applications have been processed in a timely manner, the timeliness of the grant-making process overall has not been consistently fast and predictable. Grant wait time has ranged widely, with some homeowners receiving grants in as little as two months and others waiting as long as 500 days,” the fact sheet states.
Researchers relied on data provided by ICF International, the Virginia firm that could receive as much as $912 million for managing the Road Home program.
The study found that applications have not always been handled on a first-come, first-served basis.
“As of December 18, 2007, many thousands of eligible applications were still in progress, and some of these were among the earliest to enter the grant-making process,” the document states.
Rick Eden, the report’s principal investigator, said researchers reviewed 57,000 cases in which applicants had received money by mid-December and 79,000 others that were “active and eligible” at that time.
Eden said some delays were caused by homeowners who dallied in their decisions about whether to use Road Home money for a buyout or for rebuilding. But he said a review of data and of ICF’s process showed that while the contractor pushed to meet monthly quotas for closings, it had little regard for the pace of individual applications.
“There were not necessarily goals that addressed the experience of each individual applicant,” Eden said. “They had program goals.”
In many cases, delays began the moment an application was sent to ICF, he said.
“A lot of applications got off to a slow start due to long initial processing time,” Eden said.
Report leaves questions
Though rife with detail about the time that applications spend in the various stages between application and closing, the preliminary findings did not satisfy all housing committee members.
Melanie Ehrlich, co-founder of Citizens Road Home Action Team, said RAND focused too little on customer service.
“I’m most disappointed to see it’s mostly focused on timeliness and not what matters right now to the applicants, which is quality closings,” she said.
Walter Leger, the housing committee chairman, wanted to know whether the analysis identified any process changes that could be implemented immediately.
“What steps can we take to analyze right now what can be done in terms of resolving the more difficult cases?” he asked.
Eden, however, said RAND still was working into the report comments from members of the LRA and state agencies, ICF employees and others, and would not have a complete slate of conclusions or recommendations for at least a month. A peer review by other experts is still needed, he said.
“Please ask your peer reviewers to read fast,” Leger said.
Despite requests from Leger and The Times-Picayune, researchers refused to release a copy of the detailed computer presentation displayed Tuesday, which included scores of charts and graphs breaking down application data by type of applicant and stage of the grant process. Data provided by ICF for the RAND analysis did not include any personal information about applicants, such as names or Social Security numbers.
RAND spokeswoman Lisa Sodders cited “corporation policy” in saying that RAND generally does not make public such “work product.” She added that the think tank’s release of preliminary details Tuesday was unusual, that such precise information is typically withheld until the writing of a final report.
Michelle Krupa can be reached at mkrupa@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3312.
http://www.2theadvocate.com/opinion/16918431.html
Letter: ICF gets break; applicants don’t
Very many Road Home applicants who got their grants know that there were mistakes in their awards which are undercutting their ability to repair or rebuild in Louisiana.
This includes several thousand whose languishing disputes were supposedly resolved by the contractor, ICF, in July 2007 to avoid a contractual fine for not meeting a benchmark. However, the state is giving ICF until May 8 to provide “more convincing proof” that those disputes really were resolved and not just dropped.
So while ICF gets almost a year to try to prove that it does not deserve a fine for failing to meet a contractual benchmark, thousands of applicants are stranded with shortchanged grants that they were pressured into accepting. The applicants are not given the time, data or fair appeals system that they need to get the mistakes reversed, even though some will lose home ownership as a result of not getting a fair grant.
Although the amount of money that the Road Home contractor, ICF, can be paid for Road Home work was increased in December by $156 million, applicants who were encouraged to apply but had to sell their homes at a loss in 2006 are now being told that budget constraints prevent their grants being funded.
Meanwhile, the state is promising a rapid end to the Road Home Program while eating away at the pot of grant money. It is unnecessarily using grant money for elevation allowances, even though there is $1.2 billion in a separate FEMA Hazard Mitigation fund that had been described all along as the intended source of money for elevation and hazard mitigation allowances.
More than $1 billion of Road Home grant money (mostly HUD money) might be spent on elevation allowances and mitigation allowances despite the long-awaited release of FEMA Hazard Mitigation (HMGP) money as of January by an unprecedented cutting of red tape by FEMA. If the state gives out most of the elevation money from the Road Home grant funds, it will thereby save money from this HMGP fund.
That HMGP money came to Louisiana as an automatically transmitted percentage of FEMA money spent on immediate disaster relief in the wake of hurricanes Katrina and Rita hitting south Louisiana.
The use of Road Home grant money as the primary source of elevation grants, unlike the original plan to depend on HMGP money, will prevent the best use of Road Home grant money for fairer grants to applicants in great distress because of these hurricanes that devastated their homes.
Once again, the Road Home Program is losing sight that this federally funded program was supposed to be designed for sake of the applicants, not the contractor and not the state.
Melanie Ehrlich
founder, Citizens’ Road Home Action Team
member, La. Recovery Authority Housing Task Force
New Orleans
Also published in the Daily Comet from Thibodaux (Editor Mike Gorman 985 448 7612 asked for permission to print)
http://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2008/03/road_home_to_demand_cash_back.html
Also, yahoonews and apnews
Road Home to demand cash back from some homeowners
by The Associated Press
Saturday March 29, 2008, 9:29 PM
NEW ORLEANS —The private contractor under investigation for the compensation it received to run the Road Home grant program for Katrina victims says that, in the rush to deliver aid to homeowners in need, some people got too much. Now it wants to hire a separate company to collect millions in grant overpayments.
The contractor, ICF International of Fairfax, Va., revealed the extent of the overpayments when it issued a March 11 request for bids from companies willing to handle “approximately 1,000 to 5,000 cases that will necessitate collection effort.”
The bid invitation said: “The average amount to be collected is estimated to be approximately $35,000, but in some cases may be as high as $100,000 to $150,000.”
The biggest grant amount allowed by the Road Home program is $150,000, so ICF believes it paid some recipients the maximum when they should not have received a penny. If ICF’s highest estimate of 5,000 collection cases—overpaid by an average of $35,000—proves to be true, applicants will have to pay back a total of $175 million.
One-third of qualified applicants for Road Home help had yet to receive any rebuilding check as of this past week. The program, which has come to symbolize the lurching Katrina recovery effort, has $11 billion in federal money.
4 percent error rate
ICF spokeswoman Gentry Brann said in an e-mail Friday that the overpayments are the inevitable result of the Road Home grant being recalculated to account for insurance money and government aid given to Katrina victims.
Brann said there was a sense of urgency in paying Road Home applicants, and ICF knew applicants would have to return some money.
“The choice was either to process grants immediately or wait until the March 2008 deadline [SHOULD HAVE BEEN JULY 1, 2007 DEADLINE] (for submitting Road Home applications) before disbursing any funds,” Brann said in her e-mail.
Brann pointed out that 5,000 collections cases would represent a 4 percent error rate for the Road Home that is “quite good for large federal programs.”
Frank Silvestri, co-chairman of the Citizens’ Road Home Action Team, a group that formed out of frustrations with ICF, sees it far differently.
“They want people to pay for their incompetence and their mistakes. What they need to be is aggressive about finding the underpayments,” he said. “People relied, to their detriment, on their expertise and rebuilt their houses, and now they want to squeeze this money back out of them.”
ICF got pay boost
The prospect of Road Home grant collections comes less than two weeks after the Louisiana inspector general and the legislative auditor said they were investigating why former Gov. Kathleen Blanco paid ICF an extra $156 million in her waning days in office to administer the program. With the increase, ICF stands to earn $912 million for running Road Home, a contract that also sweetened its initial public stock offering and helped it buy out four other companies. It now reaches into government contracting sectors that include national defense and the environment.
Paul Rainwater, executive director of the Louisiana Recovery Authority, the state body that asked for the Blanco-ICF investigations, acknowledged the collections could be painful for applicants, many of whom have used up their nest eggs to rebuild.
“The state must walk a fine line of treating homeowners who have been overpaid with fairness and compassion and ensuring that all federal funds are used for their intended purpose,” said Rainwater, an appointee of Gov. Bobby Jindal.
Upon receiving money from Road Home, grantees sign forms that say they must refund any overpayments.
Melanie Ehrlich, co-chairwoman of Citizens’ Road Home Action Team, which has documented Road Home cases that appear littered with mistakes, said she had no confidence that ICF had correctly calculated overpayments. She charged that the company was more likely using collections as retribution against people who had appealed their award amounts in effort to get the aid they deserved.
“I think they are looking for ways to decrease awards, and that’s part of dissuading people,” she said.
Brann said applicants are told an appeal could boost or diminish their award. She called Ehrlich’s charge “a totally unfounded assertion.”
Print title of the article below was:
State aims to calm grant recipients; Sympathy pledged on Road Home errors
http://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2008/04/road_home_efforts_to_recover_o.html
Road Home efforts to recover overpayments will not create hardships
by David Hammer, The Times-Picayune Tuesday April 01, 2008, 8:03 PM
State officials say the Road Home program will not be allowed to go after homeowners for grant overpayments until a government panel reviews each case, and the head of the Louisiana Recovery Authority promised that compassion will be used in any reclaiming of grant money.
LRA Executive Director Paul Rainwater sought to assuage fears of Road Home recipients Tuesday after weekend reports that the Road Home contractor, ICF International, planned to hire a collection agency or similar firm to reclaim money from some homeowners.
The collection effort, scheduled to last a little more than a year, isn’t expected to affect the overwhelming majority of grant recipients.
Federal laws governing the Road Home money require that any overpayments be recaptured, but Rainwater says he’s concerned about scaring honest homeowners as the state complies with that requirement. He said the LRA will work to make sure homeowners’ due-process rights are protected and that people who already spent an excessive grant on rebuilding are given a chance to repay the money gradually.
Also, he said the state will pursue waivers from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development that would let the Road Home eat costs of overpaying certain elderly or disabled homeowners who were overpaid because of contractor error and have spent the money.
“We’re still writing the policy on how this should work, but we are ensuring that this process has checks and balances in it,” said Rainwater, who took over his post in January and was immediately given expanded powers by Gov. Bobby Jindal to make the Road Home easier for consumers to navigate.
Acknowledging hardships
All grant recipients signed documents during their closing saying they understood the state has a right to recover any overpayments. ICF’s request for bids says the subcontractor it hires should first work informally with overpaid homeowners “in a professional, compassionate and positive manner that takes into account the trauma and hardships experienced during and after the hurricanes by the grant recipients,” and then pursue repayment in a more formal “legal” collections process.
“We are working closely with the state to assure that the very small percentage of recipients we expect to be affected are treated fairly and with the highest level of concern for their individual situations,” ICF spokeswoman Gentry Brann wrote in an e-mail Tuesday.
Rainwater said ICF will not be allowed to profit from the collection effort and will be fined whenever it’s established that the firm’s errors led to overpayments or underpayments.
The LRA director also said his agency would be overhauling the Road Home appeals process to make sure it’s smoother for thousands who feel shortchanged by the program. ICF’s telephone-based dispute resolution process has been scrapped, Rainwater said, and he hopes to replace it with an appeals review board comprising ICF, Community Development and LRA officials.
“This is about identifying who owes us money, but also who we owe money to,” he said.
Spotty history
But some see a decidedly one-sided effort. ICF’s request for bids says it may end up paying a subcontractor based on a percentage of the debt it collects from homeowners. Meanwhile, Virginia-based ICF never made good on its promise in 2006 to create an independent “ombudsman” who would be an advocate for applicants who feel shortchanged. Only recently has the Road Home program revamped a customer service process, in response to criticism.
Given that spotty history, homeowner advocate Melanie Ehrlich, co-founder of the Citizens Road Home Action Team, said Rainwater’s promise for a compassionate process for recapturing alleged overpayments rings hollow.
“This program has been egregiously insensitive to the needs of applicants all along, so LRA can’t talk about acting compassionately,” she said.
Three types of grant recipients will be asked to repay money:
—Those who collected too much through fraud.
—Those who got additional insurance proceeds or FEMA assistance after closing on their Road Home grants.
—Those whose grants were too large because of calculation errors by ICF.
Rainwater said there’s no way to know how many homeowners might fit into each category, but he thinks the number of overpayments due to applicant fraud is low. A federal anti-fraud task force has investigated some allegations of homeowner fraud, but the Housing and Urban Development Inspector General’s Office has said Louisiana has far fewer cases than Mississippi. Not a single Louisiana resident has been indicted for fraudulent Road Home claims, while Mississippi’s equivalent program has yielded a handful of indictments.
ICF’s request for bids estimated that 1,000 to 5,000 recipients would have to repay some of their grants, with an average repayment of about $35,000.
Rainwater said Tuesday that those numbers were “arbitrary” and probably a little high, but he also couldn’t estimate what the total might be.
Existing audits and litigation have already identified some overpayments and underpayments. An audit in September by Legislative Auditor Steve Theriot looked at a sample of 80 of the earliest grants and found that 19 of them were overpaid by a total of $166,871, and 11 other homeowners were underpaid by a total of $29,103.
A report earlier this year by the HUD inspector general’s audit division found 392 low- and moderate-income Road Home applicants got a total of $14.7 million in compensation even though ICF didn’t declare them eligible.
A federal civil lawsuit in Baton Rouge, the only one filed against a Road Home recipient as of last month, claims that a homeowner there was overpaid about $140,000 because ICF mistakenly ordered the wrong kind of damage assessment on her house. U.S. Attorney David Dugas said his office had to take action because the money was part of the applicant’s personal bankruptcy filing.
David Hammer can be reached at dhammer@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3322.
http://www.nola.com/timespic/stories/index.ssf?/base/news-0/1207314002149690.xml&coll=1
Post-Katrina advocacy honors King’s legacy
Friday, April 04, 2008
James Perry
Forty years ago today, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on the balcony of a Memphis hotel. Since then, Dr. King’s reality has been replaced with a seemingly mythological character of the same name.
America has forgotten much of the soul-awakening substance of King’s work and has been entranced in a 40-year old dream state. A careful review of King’s advocacy reveals a body of work that transcends King’s ubiquitous dream and draws close parallels to the current day social justice advocacy of New Orleans’ citizenry.
In post-Katrina New Orleans, advocacy has been reborn through a myriad of group efforts to better our community.
Citizens Road Home Action Team—known as CHAT —holds the government and ICF accountable for Road Home program failures. Public housing protesters made the world aware of New Orleans’ affordable housing woes. The Women of the Storm doused Capitol Hill with information about the needs of our community in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
The Louisiana Housing Alliance pushed for more Road Home money and funding of the Louisiana Housing Trust Fund. Citizens from Lakeview, eastern New Orleans, the Lower Ninth Ward and Broadmoor refused to quietly accept the recommendations of the Bring New Orleans Back Commission to shrink their neighborhoods.
Each effort exemplifies citizen advocacy at its best. But there are two particularly important aspects of these and other post-Katrina advocacy efforts.
First, post-Katrina advocacy coalitions have almost uniformly transcended race and ethnicity. Examine the ranks of supporters of CHAT, public housing, Women of the Storm, the Louisiana Housing Alliance and the neighborhoods noted above, and you will find that diversity is the norm.
This is not unlike the movement that King sought to galvanize against racial discrimination. Under King’s leadership, African-Americans partnered with white-Americans to investigate housing discrimination. White college students joined efforts to register black sharecroppers to vote. Black civil rights lawyers used logic and reason to sway white judges and legislators into stewarding the cause of ending indefensible legal segregation.
Second, each of these post-Katrina advocacy coalitions have made progress in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds, using legal advocacy and other nonviolent pressures. They have demanded that local, state and federal governments make changes for the better.
Similarly, King noted in his letter from a Birmingham jail, “We have not made a single gain in civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent pressure.” King noted that a key to successful advocacy is making the situation ripe for negotiation. He advised that this can be done by using nonviolent advocacy to make a situation “so crisis packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation.”
One can only imagine the discomfort of members of Congress as they looked into the eyes of Women of the Storm and members of the housing alliance who lamented instance after instance of the government’s failure to provide for the needs of Americans in the wake of the 2005 storms. The result: Billions of dollars were allocated for Gulf Coast recovery.
Undoubtedly, King’s work now has an enhanced meaning for New Orleans. The efforts of citizens here embody and honor King’s work.
Seven days after King’s assassination, Congress passed the federal Fair Housing Act. They did so because for all King’s accomplishments, he was unable to fully challenge and defeat housing discrimination and provide for the affordable housing needs of America in the 1960s.
Similarly, New Orleans’ advocacy community has accomplished much. However, 12,000 New Orleanians remain homeless. Families are living in gutted homes and poisonous FEMA trailers unfit for human habitation. There is an unprecedented housing supply shortage and persistent housing discrimination.
New Orleans advocates have an opportunity that was denied to King when his dream was deferred by an untimely bullet. While some advocates may tire or even quit, there are many who have shown the determination to continue the push for New Orleans’ recovery and affordable housing choice.
As the track record demonstrates, our efforts are unprecedented and our ranks continue to grow. With each new advocate, we take a step closer to making New Orleans better for all citizens. Together, we will attain this goal.
Honor Dr. King’s legacy by joining an advocacy effort today.
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James Perry is executive director of the Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center. His e-mail address is jperry@gnofairhousing.org.
http://www.nola.com/timespic/stories/index.ssf?/base/library-145/1207373008107880.xml&coll=1
Road Home blocks way to courts, lawsuit says
Provisions in grant agreement blasted as unconstitutional
Saturday, April 05, 2008
By Frank Donze
Staff writer
Two Road Home applicants filed a class-action suit in federal court on Friday seeking to prevent the homeowner assistance program from enforcing what they claim are illegal restrictions on grant recipients who want to take the state to court after their grant closing.
The plaintiffs target as unconstitutional a provision in Road Home documents stating that grant benefits determined by the Louisiana Office of Community Development, which oversees the program, are “final” and “non-appealable.” The plaintiffs also question the state’s authority to attempt to recover legal fees from grant recipients in the event that they challenge an award in court.
Those provisions are spelled out in the so-called “Grant Agreement,” which applicants must sign before they receive money from Road Home, the state’s principal grant operation for homeowners affected by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
“This language and similar language in other grant documents is unlawful and misleading and has a chilling effect on Road Home applicants’ right to seek judicial review of their grant” under state law, attorneys for Jacob Groby III and Durrell Williams wrote in a news release.
A spokeswoman for the Louisiana Recovery Authority declined to discuss the suit.
“We are taking the lawsuit under advisement and do not have a comment at this time,” Christina Stephens, the LRA’s deputy director of communications, wrote in an e-mail.
The suit, which charges that the language in the grant agreement violates Road Home applicants’ “federal constitutional right of access to the courts,” seeks an injunction prohibiting state officials from enforcing the restrictive provisions and ordering them to remove the “constitutionally suspect language” from all documents.
Groby is identified as a St. Tammany Parish resident who lived in St. Bernard Parish when floodwaters destroyed his home.
Williams is a New Orleans resident who hasn’t yet signed the grant agreement, according to the suit.
Groby submitted his Road Home application in August 2006 and Williams applied in January 2007.
The suit says Groby went to a closing for the sale of his property to the state on Jan. 17, but has not yet received any grant money, while Williams has not been scheduled for a closing.
While the plaintiffs are not seeking monetary damages, they are asking that the court order the state to pay their legal fees.
Groby and Williams are being represented by the law firm of Silvestri & Massicot. One of the firm’s principals is Frank Silvestri, a founder of the homeowner advocacy group Citizens Road Home Action Team, or CHAT, which has emerged as a leading critic of the grant program’s management and procedures.
To date, the Road Home program has paid out more than 105,000 grants to homeowners and could pay about 40,000 more by June 2009.
Named as defendants in the suit are Angele Davis, the state’s commissioner of administration, and Suzie Elkins, executive director of the Office of Community Development.
The case has been assigned to U.S. District Judge Mary Ann Vial Lemmon.
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Frank Donze can be reached at fdonze@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3328.
http://www.2theadvocate.com/news/17317594.html
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Road Home applicants sue state over grants’ intimidating wording
By JOE GYAN JR.
Advocate New Orleans bureau
Published: Apr 5, 2008 – Page: 5B – UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.
NEW ORLEANS — Two New Orleans area residents whose homes were flooded during Hurricane Katrina accused the state Friday of “intimidating or discouraging’’ homeowners from challenging their Road Home grants.
Jacob Groby III, a former St. Bernard Parish resident now living in St. Tammany Parish, and Durrell Williams of New Orleans claim in a federal lawsuit that language in Road Home grant documents violates their civil rights by infringing on their right to judicial review and access to the courts.
The suit, filed by the New Orleans law firm of Silvestri and Massicot and New Orleans lawyer Peter D. Derbes, contends Groby and Williams were “falsely told’’ Road Home applicants are not entitled to seek judicial review after exhaustion of administrative appeals within the Road Home program.
“By falsely advising Road Home applicants that they have no right to judicial review of their Road Home grants or of the procedures utilized by the Road Home program to determine their grants, Defendants have misled Plaintiffs and those similarly situated and have intentionally chilled their right of access to the courts protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution,’’ the suit charges.
A grant agreement that homeowners must sign as a condition of receiving their Road Home money also contains wording that says the state has the right to recover attorney fees and litigation expenses from a homeowner if the homeowner sues the state over the amount of their award and loses, the suit alleges.
“By placing the fee shifting language in the Grant Agreement, Defendants intended to discourage dissatisfied Road Home applicants from judicially challenging their Road Home grants or any actions or decisions by Defendants and the Road Home Program taken before or after the Homeowner signs the Grant Agreement,’’ the suit adds.
“I think that is intimidating. That is incredibly intimidating,’’ lawyer John Massicot said.
The suit, allotted to U.S. District Judge Mary Ann Vial Lemmon, seeks to be certified as a class action on behalf of the more than 150,000 Road Home applicants across south Louis-iana. The suit seeks to, among other things, have the state remove what the plaintiffs call constitutionally suspect language from Road Home documents.
“We are taking the lawsuit under advisement and do not have a comment at this time,’’ Louisiana Recovery Authority spokeswoman Christina Stephens said.
The suit was filed against state Commissioner of Administration Angele Davis and state Office of Community Development executive director Suzie Elkins. OCD oversees the Road Home program, which is administered by Virginia-based ICF International under a state contract. ICF works with the LRA and OCD to develop policies and procedures.
Groby, who decided to sell his St. Bernard home to the state and relocate within the state, has signed a grant agreement with the Road Home but has not gone to closing. Williams, who applied for a grant with the Road Home, has not yet signed a grant agreement.
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