Citizens' Road Home Action Team
Road Home Program Misery Index

• ICF call center staff continue to give wrong information to applicants who sometimes find out only months later that their “problem” holding up an application can be fixed immediately at an “advisory” appointment at the Housing Center. This allows ICF to clock in more hours for reimbursement and justify keeping the Housing Centers open while applicants who are far from Housing Centers or don’t have the time to go there (often many visits are required to settle “problems”) are out of luck.

• Applicants waiting up to 1 1/2 years for their grant are told that there are liens on their property when there are not. One applicant who applied 15 months ago with no grant in sight, wrote last week that there were no liens on her home other than an SBA loan but an ICF employee told her that she should know better than them as to the nature of liens which Road Home stated were on her property. The ten supposed liens on her property were from different people who shared only the same, common last name. See similar inexcusable mistakes about liens in a Times-Picayune story

• Many Road Home applicants struggling to rebuild tell of being “forced” to go to closing despite the award amount being wrong and then being left in dispute resolution or appeals for many months with no resolution. Applicants are sometimes incorrectly told by ICF staff that they must go to closing before they can dispute the amount of their grant. This allows ICF to make quotas for closings with quantity, not quality (fair grants desperately needed by thousands of applicants).

• A family living in a FEMA trailer on their lot with rats around them. The mother applied 16 months ago, when the program first started, who still has not gotten her grant and does not know why. They had 6-7 feet of water but were told by ICF staff that it was not enough damage. The mother told us that she just really want to get back into her home and get her life back together. She has been repairing her home little by little with little money that is coming into the household. Then, like so many Road Home applicants she pleaded for us to help her.

• An 86-year-old woman who applied the first month of the program, 16 months ago, and has never received her award letter wrote that the ICF staff finally told her to write a letter and send it to appeals. She then received a letter stating that she was declared ineligible because she never had the first meeting. She had to send a letter to appeals showing that long ago she did have the required initial appointment.

• Very many applicants have had delays of many months in their “second closings” for obtaining the additional compensation grants for those with under 80 percent of the area median income or increases in grants for those who won dispute resolution or appeals cases. That and the indefinitely stalled elevation allowances are deterring people from rebuilding their homes.

• An applicant suffering with his family in a FEMA trailer, who got his shortchanged grant and while awaiting on appeal the money he should be eligible for was told that he would get no more because the Road Home would not cover the extreme mold damage that required gutting of his house after 8 inches of long-standing flood water.

• A New Orleanian who applied 15 months ago with no award letter and only found out in Dec. 2007 upon intercession of a State senator that the hold-up was because the area where her home was located is being reviewed by the state because the area was an agricultural landfill(superfund). No one is able to give her information when a decision will be made or other options I have until a decision is made.

• An applicant whose grant award got down-sized after he raised objections to the delays found out that Road Home ordered three BPO’s to estimate his home’s value, even though he raised no objective to initial pre-storm value from the Road Home. The square-footage of the “comparables” were lower than for Road Home’s stated square footage of his house and the last one had the lowest square footage of all thereby giving him a lower pre-storm value and decreased grant.

• I feel that the road home program has lied to me. I am disabled so how will i ever be able to save another retirement? I have been trying to call the roadhome program for 7 WEEKS without anyone getting back to me. The last phone call i got was from a XXX asking me for a copy of my cash deed on the land. I faxed that to her and never heard from her again. The person i bought the house from happens to be a law enforcement officer, if this should mean anything. Now they found me to be eligable for a roadhome award of 111,000 plus 30,000 elevation. Now they don’t find me eligable. I need my elevation back…!!!!! and i need my appeals money to finish my house. How can they take all of this away from me.?????

• CHATSurvey Response from Feb. 2009. My application has sat over at HGI since January 2008 waiting for me to go to closing. According to HGI, they have everything needed to close. They cannot tell me why I have not closed. In fact, I cannot get anyone on the phone. Most of the time the mailbox is full or they don’t bother to return the call. The number I have is 504-885-4540 ex. 179. Now they are bragging that they will end up with a surplus. Can you believe this?

• {color:purple} have not received anthing in monies from grant to repair my home nor any monies for elevation.Now this is twofold in damages for me because all the work we have done was caused again because of Hurricane IKE. We are so far in debt from materials we had to buy and loans from our children { I THANK GOD FOR THEM} plus money I had to take out of my husband"s 401K to help out and I see no end in sight. My husband has not worked since 1996 because he is disabled. I cannot tell you how many faxes and copies I had to send out of my pocket to ROAD HOME over and over again because they either lost or could"t find it. This has been so very, very stressful for us. It will be four years come September that we have gone through this. I don" know whereelse we can go for help.

• Mid Feb., 2009, CHAT Survey Response. The Road Home contacted me on Dec. 13, 2008 to ask for a copy of the settlement statement on my sold home. I faxed it immediately. I also mailed a copy immediately. I heard nothing. On Jan. 22, 2009 (5 weeks later) a different staffperson called and asked for a copy of the settlement statement on my sold home. I told her I had faxed and mailed copies. She could not locate them. I e-mailed another copy, as per her instructions, and mailed another copy. I asked her to e-mail or call me back to verify that she had received them. She has never done so. I called on February 2 to verify the status of my application and was told that I was now classified as “ineligible” because someone had used a totally inaccurate figure for the sale proceeds to calculate my award – even though to my certain knowledge they had received FOUR SEPARATE COPIES of the Settlement Statement showing the correct amount. No one will return my calls.