[FoCHAT] CHAT Mtg. this Wed.; LRA HTF Mtg. open to public, Fri.; just some examples of remaining problems

Tue Jan 1 15:00:40 PST 2008

Dear Citizens Concerned about Rebuilding Louisiana in 2008,

  1. CHAT Meeting: Tomorrow, Wed., Jan. 2, 2008

  UNO Old Bus. Admin. Rm. 212 on Wed. 6:30 PM.
  Directions to the Business Bldg  are given on the Campus Map for UNO. The URL is http://www.uno.edu/university/maps/maincamp.cfm. The Business Bldg is #7 on the map.

  2. Housing Task Force Meeting - Fri., January 4, 2008
  Open to the public

  If you would like to make public comments (2 min per person, non-redundant and polite), please send an email to chatlra at yahoo.com for additional information.

  The Housing Task Force meeting is scheduled for Friday, January 4, 2008, 10:00 a.m., University of New Orleans Lindy C. Boggs International Conference Center, Lakeshore Drive, New Orleans. 

  Some pressing Issues (from http://chat.thinknola.com)

        3. From our website http://chat.thinknola.com  Road Home Program Misery Index- Selected items from the last two weeks of responses to CHAT’s online survey http://chatforfairness.org and and emails to chatlra at yahoo.com    
   ICF dispute resolution staff continue to deny (as of Dec. 31) that there is a field review policy for evaluation of homeowner-supplied certified appraisals that are appreciably higher than Road Home’s much less accurate BPO’s. (I have a series of emails that document this.)

   An applicant who applied 15 months ago, sent back her option choice in April, and still has not received a closing date tells us the often-repeated uninformative answers that she gets from the Road Home about being in a given phase of the program but no time line or other information can be provided. 

   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 16 months for their grant are told that their are liens on their property when there are not. One applicant who applied 15 months ago told us about confusion of his name with a similar name that led to an erroneous claim by Road Home that there was a lien on his property. This applicant had to work on this issue himself for 2 months before Road Home staff would acknowledge a letter that the applicant himself got from a lawyer working on the case. Another 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 given the wrong information that they must go to closing before they can dispute the amount of their grant. 

   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 here to write a letter and send it to appeals. She received a letter staing that she was declared ineligible because she never had the first meeting. She had to send a letter to appeals showing that she did have the required initial appointment long ago. 

   Additional compensation grants for those under 80 percent of the area median income and increases in grants for those who won dispute resolution or appeals cases have been delayed for countless applicants. 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 extreme mold damage that required gutting of his house after 8 inches of long-standing flood water was not covered. 

   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 of his home’s value, even though he raised no objective to Road Home’s pre-storm value. 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 and gave him a lower pre-storm and grant. 
  Times-Picayune Editorial Gets It Right: Right the Wrongs  EDITORIAL: Right these wrongs
Tuesday, January 01, 2008
Road Home contractor ICF International wants Louisianians to believe it’s doing an awesome job. ICF spokeswoman Gentry Brann even compared the program to a car driving “100 miles an hour on the Spillway.”
  That’s how fast many frustrated Road Home applicants want to run a truck over this maddening bureaucracy.
  In ICF paradise, all people would talk about is the selective statistics the program releases, such as Monday’s announcement that the Road Home would meet a Dec. 31 deadline to close 90,000 grants. Reaching the benchmark indicates that the Road Home is less awful now than when it was handing out only a few thousand grants a month. But that’s little solace for 75,000 applicants waiting for their money more than 27 months after Katrina.
  The same goes for people who have gotten only part of their grant, yet get counted by ICF in the same category as those who have received full amounts. Many of these and other applicants trapped in Road Home purgatory haven’t gotten an explanation—let alone well-deserved apologies—from program officials.
  Consider the case of 69-year-old Catherine Clark of New Orleans, chronicled by Times-Picayune reporter David Hammer. Ms. Clark, who lost her Lower 9th Ward home, had a Road Home grant amount set in April.
  But last month officials with the program called to say Ms. Clark could not get her money because of outstanding liens on her property. Problem is, the program cited liens against Ms. Clark’s husband and her son, who never owned the property and who died 25 and 11 years ago, respectively. When a flustered Ms. Clark asked the Road Home employee for her name, the employee hung up on her.
  Heck of a job, ICF.
  Instead of giving Ms. Clark her money, ICF’s delays forced her to take out an $88,000 Small Business Administration loan. If the SBA cleared Ms. Clark for a loan, why is ICF still holding up her grant?
  Unfortunately, Ms. Clark’s injustice is hardly an isolated blunder. Consider these examples from Letters to the Editor received in the past two weeks:
  —The Road Home refused to set up a first appointment by the Dec. 1 deadline for Mike Rodriguez of Metairie, because a program employee could not locate his application number. But on Christmas Eve Mr. Rodriguez said he got a Road Home letter—with his identification number at the top—saying he was now ineligible for aid because he had missed the Dec. 1 deadline. “Not only have I witnessed the Road Home’s incompetence, but I can bear witness to its lies,” Mr. Rodriguez wrote.
  —Melody Riley of Violet took a partial grant in May and was assured the rest would be forthcoming. All she’s gotten since are false promises.
  —After months waiting and numerous inquiries, O.D. Ricks of Covington found out his case was deemed inactive because ICF had incorrectly noted that the property had been sold. “One phone call to us would have cleared things up, but no—that is too simple a solution,” Mr. Ricks wrote.
  ICF and state officials may pat themselves on the back all they want. But until they stop tormenting Ms. Clark and these other applicants—as well as countless others like them—and give them their money, Louisianians will hold the program in contempt.
  As Mr. Ricks wrote, “Accolades? You want accolades? Do your job and help the people of Louisiana.”

Best wishes for the New Year,

  Melanie Ehrlich
  Co-Chairman, CHAT

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