[FoCHAT] CHAT: Please attend: 6:30 PM Wed, and next LRA Bd. Meeting to help reverse the RHP Backward Motion!

Tue Apr 3 11:41:12 PDT 2007

Dear CHAT and FoCHAT Members,

  Our next weekly Wed. meeting (tomorrow, 6:30 PM) will be at my house at 1450 Crescent Dr., opposite the new site of Holy Cross Sch. and the old site of Redeemer HS, between Paris and St. Bernard. I live in a post-K 10 ft elevated house, pink with blue trim right past Cartier St. We are having the meeting at my house because UNO came up with a new rule to give $50 tickets to anyone parked in their free lots, even for a public event which has been scheduled and about which we remind the UNO police every Wed. afternoon.

   All are invited (whether a member of CHAT, FoCHAT, or a prospective member) to the Wed. meeting at my house. Please come if you are available,  in the metropolitan area now, and bothered (or livid) upon reading the two articles below and the other inexcusable news about stoppages of processing RHP grants and loans.

  In addition, we urge those of you who can attend the next LRA Bd. Meeting (see immediately below) to do so and help us by speaking out as a CHAT member for the 3 min allotted per member of the public at the end of the meeting. You need not attend the whole meeting. If you can do that and try to help us make a big difference in the Road Home Program, please write to chatlra at yahoo.com and put LRA Mtg. in the subject and all your contact details in the text. We will coordinate the presentations. This upcoming meeting will be discussed at the Wed. evening meeting at my house.

  Melanie Ehrlich

  The UPCOMING LRA BOARD MEETING TO BE DISCUSSED AT THE CHAT MEETING AT MY HOUSE ON WED. at 6:30 PM

  Tuesday, April 10, 2007
Event: LRA Board of Directors meeting
Time: 9:00 am – 3:30 pm
House Committee Room 1
State Capitol, Baton Rouge, La. 

  http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/frontpage/index.ssf?/base/news-8/117549264173650.xml&coll=1
  Road Home faces detour
  Lenders want to keep installment option 
  Monday, April 02, 2007
  By David Hammer
  Staff writer 
  If the state's mortgage lenders have their way, the recent federal rebuke of Louisiana's Road Home program won't change the way most of the rebuilding grant applicants get their money: slowly, in installments tied to the completion of renovations. 

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  The federal department of Housing and Urban Development recently ruled that the rebuilding and buyout program for flood-damaged homes violated federal rules by mandating the installments without submitting to the costly environmental and labor reviews that must take place with all federal rehabilitation programs. 

  The alternative is a direct compensation program in which homeowners with mortgages must work out payment schedules with any lenders that share a claim to the money, as Mississippi has done. 

  For the past two weeks, state and federal negotiators have been trying to work through a compromise. On Friday, the state ordered the Road Home program to temporarily stop sending out award letters until it figures out a new payment policy, Road Home spokeswoman Gentry Brann said. 

  The state is leaving all options open, including a plan endorsed by the New Orleans faith-based organization The Jeremiah Group in which grant checks for mortgaged properties would be made out to the homeowner and the lender jointly. In this scheme, borrowers would have a choice: take a lump sum to spend as they wish, except their lender would have the power to take it for mortgage payments; or, take installments as repair work is completed, without lenders laying claim to the money. 

  The Rev. Walter Baer, pastor of Grace Episcopal Church, said the group is worried the state will push for lump-sum awards so the money will be out of its hands and homeowners will be stuck battling the banks over how to use it. 

  "The proposal we are supporting assures that homeowners have a choice in how to receive their awards, that they receive an incentive to rebuild and that they are protected from having mortgage companies seize their Road Home grants," Baer said. 

  The state's mortgage bankers, who want to ensure that homes are rebuilt to back their loans and protect neighboring property values, don't like the lump-sum option either, and appear to be digging in their heels to fight for grants paid in installments as work is done. 

  "We still think it will come down to disbursement accounts," said Francis Creighton, senior director of government affairs for the national Mortgage Bankers Association. "It's the only way." 

  Too soon to tell 

  That association, along with the Louisiana Bankers Association and Fannie Mae, met in Washington through the weekend, looking for the best way to preserve the existing installment rules. Currently, homeowners can get only $7,500 in their first grant installment, and receive the rest of the money in thirds as they prove they have completed repairs. Louisiana officials had expected to send a new agreement with the lenders to federal housing officials by the end of this week, but the lending community still has some concerns. 

  That means the 80 percent of southern Louisiana homeowners with active mortgages might have rejoiced too soon two weeks ago, when a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development decision seemed to hasten a switch from a controlled disbursement of Road Home grant awards to lump-sum payments. 

  Two weeks ago -- nine months into the homeowner grant program -- HUD officials informed the state it would have to change its grant disbursement methods or submit to onerous environmental and labor reviews on tens of thousands of properties. Under the current mandated installments, the state violated the rules for so-called "compensation" programs, which aim to make grant recipients whole, with few strings. Federal officials determined that Louisiana's effort to control the rebuilding decisions of homeowners with the mandated installment plan made the Road Home a "rebuilding" program, thus subject to a whole slew of extra rules. 

  Lenders' worries 

  To avoid the expensive, time-consuming reviews, the state chose last week to make direct compensation grants available to homeowners without mortgages, starting in April. But the lenders say a similar program for mortgaged properties will not fly. 

  The lenders, larger banks in particular, say they aren't too worried about protecting individual mortgage investments. A part of every mortgage agreement covers miscellaneous proceeds, which includes the Road Home grant money, giving lenders legal control over the disbursement of the money, up to the amount of a homeowner's mortgage debt. 

  But lenders have no say over grant money covering homeowners' equity, and no power whatsoever over properties without mortgages. Still, mortgage or not, the lenders are worried that any up-front, lump-sum grant payments will be an open invitation for homeowners to use the money for other things, leading to rampant blight that drives down property values for everyone -- including those neighbors who are responsible enough to rebuild. 

  "This can cause a 100 percent increase in blight, and we already have a blight problem as it is," said Alden McDonald, president of Liberty Bank and a participant in some of the lenders' continuing negotiations. 

  Now that lump-sum payments are approved for nonmortgaged properties and Chase Bank in Columbus, Ohio, will no longer disburse such grants, only a tough-to-enforce covenant prevents about one in five Road Home applicants from taking the money and leaving their properties to rot. The state would have to wait at least three years to see whether a good-faith effort was made to repair and reside in the home before suing to recover the grant money. 

  Confusion, frustration 

  With half of New Orleans' pre-Katrina population gone, the city almost certainly will end up with a huge inventory of vacant housing, even after the state hands out the $7.5 billion in Road Home money. If the Road Home becomes a pure compensation program -- and cannot ensure a certain amount of rebuilding -- the area will lose even more, McDonald said. 

  "You want a banking community that feels good about investing here," he said. "This change in HUD policy is changing the dynamics for rebuilding. It's frustrating, but it's also an opportunity to set a clear housing policy." 

  Like McDonald, the national mortgage association can't understand why HUD has stepped in now after months of careful review of the lender-state agreements. Several lenders signed pacts with the state last year agreeing not to snatch their clients' Road Home grants to pay off mortgages, so long as they could arrange for the homeowners to collect the money as they complete restoration work. 

  State and industry leaders say they thought HUD had signed off on the wording of those agreements, so the Road Home was cleared as a compensation program, not a forced rehabilitation program. 

  "We thought HUD had it right the first time," Creighton said. 

  HUD has said it simply stepped in as soon as it had a chance to actually see how the grants were being disbursed, and that the state's practice did not match its federally approved plan. 

  If, as expected, the state gets an agreement from lenders and sends Road Home program changes to HUD, lawyers for the state and the lenders will have to craft language carefully so the state is encouraging -- but not forcing -- homeowners to use all of their grant money to rebuild. 

  . . . . . . . 

  David Hammer can be reached at dhammer at timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3322

  http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/metro/index.ssf?/base/news-20/11755807139050.xml&coll=1
  Audit finds uneven Road
  Counselors give out inconsistent info 
  Tuesday, April 03, 2007
  By David Hammer
  Staff writer 
  A state audit has found the counselors at Road Home housing centers often don't have formal procedures and give out inconsistent information when they meet with homeowners who have applied for the hurricane recovery aid. 

  The office of Legislative Auditor Steve J. Theriot reviewed operations at six of the Road Home's 12 permanent housing assistance centers, where applicants come to hold initial, and sometimes follow-up, interviews. 

  The interviewers aim to help homeowners start the application process and organize documentation they need to establish what they lost in Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. But auditors who observed these meetings found the program's 255 housing advisers rarely provided applicants with the same types of information. 

  The auditors observed interviews in New Orleans, Metairie, Lake Charles, Baton Rouge, and St. Bernard and Vermilion parishes. In as many as a third of those sessions, Road Home staff failed to address critical details about eligibility, program options or requirements of the covenant applicants would be signing if they planned to rebuild, the audit report said. 

  Most of the problems stem from a lack of formal performance measurements, and in some cases, managers reviewed their employees' work, but left no written quality-control record. The state Office of Community Development, which oversees Road Home contractor ICF International, agreed with the audit's criticisms and promised to demand formal policies from the company. 

  ICF, which stands to make as much as $756 million running Gov. Kathleen Blanco's Road Home program, already has had the April 1 deadline for setting those policies pushed back by a few days, company spokeswoman Gentry Brann said. The delay, she said, stems from current efforts to change the program's payout methods, a significant detour spurred by a recent ruling from federal housing officials. 

  Further delayed 

  The federal Department of Housing and Urban Development two weeks ago ruled that the program's way of paying out grants in installments as home repairs are done would trigger extensive and expensive environmental and labor reviews unless the state changed the policy. That sudden news, nine months into Louisiana's $7.5 billion aid program for homeowners, sent state officials scrambling to alter the process and forced more delays. 

  Beyond delaying ICF's ability to respond to the legislative audit, the Road Home temporarily stopped sending applicants their award letters while state officials and lending institutions try to work out a new payment method. The letters had to be put on hold, Brann said, because they contain information about how money will be paid out after closing -- information that soon could be out of date. 

  Also postponed was a final agreement between the state and ICF to include contractual deadlines for moving applicants through the process, along with penalties on the company for failing to meet those goals. 

  Community development officials said they finally had reached an agreement on the formal goals two weeks ago and the new contract language was on Blanco's desk March 16, awaiting the governor's signature. But that's where it stayed after HUD dropped a bombshell that appears to be leading to significant changes in the way homeowners get their grants. 

  'More than a nuance' 

  HUD's ruling had a direct effect on slowing down a process that the state thought was just starting to pick up steam, said Sam Jones, who has kept track of the Road Home program for Blanco's office. 

  "Any time you make a change, even a nuance, there's a minimum of two weeks of retooling," Jones said. "And this is more than a nuance. On a major change like this, sometimes you have to go through a month of changes. That's why we were so bitter on that Friday when HUD gave us the news." 

  As of the end of business Friday, 5,444 applicants, or 4.5 percent of the 120,680, had held their grant closings. That represented a significant increase from the end of January. It also means the program completed about 2,700 closings in March, less than half of the 6,200 closings the state had set as a goal for the month. 

  . . . . . . . 

  David Hammer can be reached at dhammer at timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3322. 

  Tue, 3 Apr 2007 07:58:29 -0700 (PDT) 
  From:  "Christopher Tidmore" <christophertidmore at yahoo.com>  Add to Address Book  Add Mobile Alert 
  Yahoo! DomainKeys has confirmed that this message was sent by yahoo.com. Learn more 
  Subject: Tidmore's Stories: ICF: "We're A Year Ahead  
  To: "Christopher Tidmore" <christophertidmore at clearchannel.com> 
  CC: "Donaldsonville Chief" <dvillechief at bellsouth.net>, "Melanie Ehrlich" <mehrlich8 at yahoo.com>, "Jim Engster" <jim at wrkf.org>, "Amy Erwin" <amy at kkay1590.com>,  "Les Evenchick" <piratefish at yahoo.com> 

  ICF: "We're A Year Ahead of Schedule"
  By Christopher Tidmore, www.thenew995fm.com

  When asked if ICF had credibility with the people of
  Louisiana, company spokesperson Gentry Brann replied
  to Rob Couhig on 99.5 FM's morning show, "I believe
  they do". She added that ICF was a year ahead of the
  original schedule the state laid out. 

  Couhig then narrowed his questioning to the recent
  history of the company. 

  ICF held an IPO to become a public company on
  September 27, 2006. It then signed the contract with
  the State of Louisiana on October 19, 2006. A company
  that had never had more than $182 million dollars in
  business was able to make a stock offering boasting of
  a $756 million contract. In the original press release
  for the IPO, ICF boasted of the Housing Program
  Management Contract with Louisiana's Office of
  Community Development to demonstrate the financial
  viability of the firm. 

  Questions have arisen in recent months if the timing
  of the IPO, which by all appearances was formally
  scheduled right before ICF's deal with the state was
  closed, could have resulted because of insider
  information on the Road Home contract that the firm
  might have had. 

  There was no connection, the Spokesperson said. Brann
  defended timing of ICF's stock offering, claiming that
  there was nothing secret about that decision. "It had
  been in process for a year before," she said. "It was
  set up a year in advance of us signing the contract,"
  well before the Road Home management contract even had
  a Request for Proposals.

  Addressing the slowness of the award process, Brann
  maintained, "No one is blaming anyone. The people of
  Louisiana are part of this process, and it is in all
  of our interest to get everyone their awards as
  quickly as we can." 

  "We have been seeing record number of closings every
  day."

  Some may see the amount in the award award letter
  change. Under federal law, she said, there cannot be a
  duplication of claims. That is causing many homeowners
  to contest their amounts, delaying the award process,
  she claimed.

  However, responding to the Legislative Auditor's
  Report, that found massive failures in the operation
  of ICF, she replied, "We're still reviewing the
  auditors report."

  "We are going through it with a fine tooth comb, and
  we are in the process of preparing our response to the
  state." She disagreed with the claim by the
  legislative auditor, though, that managers make no
  written reports on the work of various employees. 

  "We aggressively train our housing advisors," she
  stated. 

  Brann said many of the problems have already been
  examined and improved previously. ICF gets audited all
  the time. "This is sort of business as usual for
  us...We always welcome audits." The company learns
  from them, she said. "We have seen many changes in the
  program," since the problems of the audit. "We work
  really quickly to apply those learnings. And, I think
  that in this one in particular, the things that they
  addressed were things that have gone back a long way
  in the program that have already been addressed or we
  have systems in place to quickly address very specific
  issues."

  "Today, as I sit here, we are anticipating significant
  changes."

  "There have been frustrations. There have been things
  that have gone wrong with the program," but Brann said
  that ICF is working to improve performance.
  But a caller still could not understand why the total
  closing numbers were so low after almost a year. In
  her personal case, she was ready to close, had no
  objections with the award amount, yet seemed blocked
  at every turn. Brann replied, "Just because you are
  ready to go closing doesn't mean all the documents are
  ready."

  ICF has to do a full title search for all closings.
  However, Brann did say is that ICF reps should be able
  to give an caller an update of his or her status. The
  caller retorted that everytime recently that she asked
  for such an update, the ICF reps responded that they
  cannot tell her status "because there was a glitch in
  your paperwork". 

  "We would have to find out," Brann said, the nature of
  the caller's individual problem.

  Nor did Brann claim any responsibility for ICF from
  the HUD's "memorandum of understanding" which demands
  block payments or an expensive regime of environmental
  study before awards can be spent on reconstruction--a
  provision for which the Louisiana supposedly received
  a waver. Brann said that state negotiated that deal.

  Still, Couhig interjected as the interview came to a
  close, how did a company that had a market value of
  $182 million, how did it get a better than a 760
  million dollar contract? "I have to tell you," she
  said, "ICF is one of 23 companies that make the Road
  Home program," most of the money goes to
  infrastructure, other firms, and the over 2000
  employees who were hired in Louisiana--better than 80%
  natives of the state.

  Couhig said, though, that the President of ICF bragged
  that the profits were substantially higher than any
  previous year in their corporate report. That was one
  of the reasons they were able to go public, the
  President reportedly claimed--according to the 99.5
  morning show host. 

  Brann replied that the company's other contracts
  contributed to the success of the company.

  She also added that starting next week, a new "Road
  Home Advisory Program" premiers.

  "It's an optional program for people who want to come
  in and have a second or third appointment with an
  advisor," Brann explained. This will allow people to
  check the status of their applications, the recovery
  status of their neighborhoods, and other rebuilding
  information. "It's like having a caseworker."
  Still, Brann could not promise outright that an
  advisor will now stay with a homeowner throughout the
  award process. For more information, call
  1-800-ROAD2LA.

  The Spokesperson bragged there have been 46,000
  letters sent, but admitted that only 6000 awards have
  fully closed. She noted that ICF was aiming for
  "another 18,000 closings" to happen within a few
  weeks, but she would not give a specific date. The
  goal is 8,000 for April, yet she warned that the
  recent "technicalities" could delay reaching that
  threshold. 

  It was ICF's position, she maintained, that "we are a
  year ahead of our original schedule that the state
  laid out."

  TO HEAR BRANN VOICE THAT CLAIM CLICK HERE FOR
  NEWSMAKER ON DEMAND. 
  http://www.thenew995fm.com/cc-common/podcast.html

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