It is the responsibility of the Road Home Program to make current, updated rules available to applicants as soon as new rules are put into effect, to notify applicants of any changes, and to make those changes retroactive for those who have gone to grant closing.
Homeowners rely on the timely processing of their applications. ICF should maintain and publish reports on the time periods that applications have been stuck are various levels of the program. The contractor should propose and implement new strategies to effectively deal with the very long delays delaying many applications. In addition, the contractor should regularly post information on its web site describing the number of applicants who are delayed more than 1 month at the four or five major steps in processing and the average number of weeks delayed applications have remained at these steps. Finally, ICF and its subcontractors need to sustain an average of at least 500 closings per business day starting in May, and contract benchmarks should reflect this goal.
Homeowners should be able to access information by phone immediately. The contactor should provide staffing sufficient so that voicemail should not be necessary or used (a person should always be available to answer a phone), and that training of phone operators should be sufficient and up to date so that they can always inform homeowners of status, policies, and rules.
The Road Home Program should have a timeline for dispute resolution and appeals. The resolution and appeals process should be mandated in the program rules to provide a written, point-by-point response to applicants for all questions raised in their appeal. The contractor and state should give monthly reports detailing the number of personnel and supervisory personnel handling these problems.
The concept of assignments has been a part of the program since its first action plan amendment. The implementation of assignments by ICF has lagged behind other features of the program. This rule is critical to allow for reasonableness and flexibility. It also relates to the importance of allowing resale of properties after homeowner’s have closed.
Road Home staffers are typically not aware of or trained on the rules regarding the assignment of Road Home benefits. It must be well communicated by the ICF team, and training of Road Home staff should be adequate to explain this potentially complicated process. In addition, clear and accurate communication and training on this issue for the real estate professionals in South Louisiana is also critical.
Pre-storm value is fundamental to the calculations of benefits. The state improved the rules of the appraisal process in determining pre-storm values in late December. These rules allow that a homeowner without a pre-storm appraisal can order a Louisiana-certified appraisal after the storm, which will accepted as the primary determinant of pre-storm value. These guidelines need to be clear to all homeowners, and training of ICF counselors and resolution officials should make this clear.
The rebuilding and recovery of the housing stock requires that there be sufficient grant funds made available to help homeowners to elevate their homes. HUD’s determination that the state can’t require homeowners to elevate creates a problem for a program that needs to give homeowners this resource in a way that ensures that elevations will occur. However, this part of the program must remain a priority and receive sufficient money to improve elevation allowances so that they can be closer to the real cost minus the ICC compensation.
Homeowners need to be given good information about how to rebuild in a way that prevents future losses.
Middle- to low-income families with homes of moderate value are less likely than other income groups to get enough Road Home compensation grant funds to rebuild. Congress should waive the SBA duplication of benefit requirements so that homeowners will be able to retain their low-cost SBA loans for their additional rebuilding needs. Further, the state should strive to create more affordable or forgivable loans for those with rebuilding costs that exceed their pre-storm values.
Where possible, the disposition of properties acquired by the Road Home program should be the responsibility of local leadership. For affected cities with large devastated areas and other large areas that had little devastation, this input should be at the level of the districts covering the impacted areas with public participation in discussion of land-use decisions for property acquired by the Road Home Corporation or other organizations dealing with acquired properties. Profit from the sale of Road Home Corporation-acquired properties should be used for the benefit of grantees and their neighborhoods, not for districts that did not suffer great storm damage. The process for transferring properties is still in development.
The LRA will work together with partners in the state and federal government to ensure that funds exist to cover serve all the eligible homeowners who have applied without cutbacks in funding policies.