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Sept. 2012 Newsletter: Roofs & Government advice
A
recent collection of some of our newsletters can be read by clicking here
v The Road
Home Program (RH) is administered by the state of Louisiana as a HUD Community
Development Block Grant (CDBG)
·
ICF Emergency Services
(ICF) and HGI contracts used about 10% of the $10.4 billion program funding
v This program officially ends in June 2010 but will continue to
monitor grantees for compliance with covenants for “compensation” grants that
unfairly shortchanged many thousands of the applicants
v In addition, funds that will be collected for not meeting the
covenants and for planned construction loans will go into state coffers for
undetermined purposes
v ICF, the main RH contractor: its slogan of “Passion, Experience, and
Expertise” is contradicted by reality
1. See
the CHAT newsletter from Sept. 13, 2010
2. More
about the unconcern, inexperience, and lack of knownledge
of ICF in following newsletters
v In the following article,
former RH officials & former Gov. Blanco stated that they did not
know
about underfunded
applicants in the beginning of the program
http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/neworleans/index.ssf?/base/news-15/128522342444460.xml&coll=1
1. CHAT documents show that top RH officials were informed of the
problems in Oct. 2006, 2 months after the program started in a meeting in the
office of Walter Leger, former Chairman of the Louisiana Recovery Authority
(LRA) Housing Task Force
·
Correspondence
to Gov. Blanco’s chief advisor on RH issues; Walter Leger; and Mike Byrne of
ICF
·
Correspondence
to and from Dr. Norman Francis, Chairman of the LRA Board of Directors
2. Four years ago, we documented the problems with underfunding of RH
applicants because of RH using ‘pre-storm value of land and home” instead of
the rebuild estimate
o
The above file uses sample
calculations based upon numbers given to us by the RH officials in the meeting
two days earlier in Oct., 2006
o
The document contains our
conclusion communicated to these officials 4 years ago that ” The people
who need the money the most to be able to come back to their LA home are given
the least help. This is prejudicial.”
o
The early calculations in
this document were based on a sliding scale for rebuild costs that was later
changed by the RH to $130 per sq ft for everyone
o
However, most applicants
had their grant determined by pre-storm valuations, that were often
underestimates and were done by poor methods and often inexperienced ICF staff
o
Applicants whose grants
were determined by rebuild costs often were underfunded, especially due to
unfair rules and practices during the administration of Gov. Jindal and LRA Director Paul Rainwater
o
For example, Paul
Rainwater changed the rule in the summer of 2008 to exclude mold and mildew
damage even for homes that stewed in water for 3 weeks as a result of the Army Corp of Engineers’ mistake-laden
oversight of the levees
“We believe that it is likely that the
state will face claims of economic or racial discrimination arising from the
policies now be carried out by ICF.”
4. The present Gov., Bobby Jindal’s
administration made the program more unfair despite appeals from CHAT and other
organizations of applicants who were given much too little funding to repair
their homes due to faulty rules and faulty implementation
v The Dead-end of Road Home: Waste of Taxpayer Money To Intimidate
Tens of Thousands of Homeowners
1. The Louisiana State Office of Community Development is sending
out letters to tens of thousands of Road Home (RH) Applicants that ask them to
sign statements threatening “fine” and “imprisonment” if they have not provided
true information about filling the covenant for their RH grant.
2. One major problem is that the covenant and Compliance and
Monitoring Forms being send to them are contradictory. The covenant requires
that they live in their repaired house for any time (officials of Road
Home often stated at public meetings that one day would suffice) during the
course of 3 years after receiving their grant funds. The Monitoring Forms
demands a current utility statement despite the fact that the covenant
does not require that they be currently living in their home.
3. Another is that applicants are being asked to give a certificate
of occupancy or other such document. This was never mentioned in the covenant
and, because of technical, bureaucratic, and financial reasons, some applicants
will be living in their home while still awaiting a certificate of occupancy.
4. They are also being asked to get a copy of initial permits from
the city or parish, which should be unnecessary and was never mentioned to
applicants before. If they lost their
copy, these are time-consuming to obtain.
5. They are being asked to produce all these documents within 30
days from the day the letter was sent to the applicants, which is unfair and
unreasonable. RH routinely left applicants incommunicado for many months and
more than a year but demands rapid responses from beleaguered
applicant-hurricane victims, which includes many of those suffering again
because of the catastrophic BP oil spill.
6. The covenant states that the money applicants received is
“compensation for damages. ” What right does the state
have to demand repair of homes from applicants and maintaining maximum flood
insurance in perpetuity? Many of the
low- and middle-income applicants lost all their possessions in the flood, are
in difficult financial straits, were
systematically shortchanged on their grant amounts, and falsely led to believe
that they would have a chance for a fair appeal to correct the state’s and the
contractor’s (ICF Emergency Management Services) shortchanging mistakes after
they signed the covenant papers.
7. The covenant states that “”Nothing in these Covenants shall be
construed to require the Owner to repair, rebuild, relocate or sell the
Property.” Now the state monitoring staff is requiring precisely that repair or
rebuilding despite the acknowledgement that “The Louisiana Recovery Authority estimates that at
least 20,000 Road Home recipients, or 15 percent, will be unable to rebuild
their homes without substantial help.” http://www.nola.com/hurricane/index.ssf/2010/05/nonprofit_assistance_for_road.htm
o
Even if funds from only
5% of these applicants are recovered, that would mean about $60 million, given
the average grant size of about $60,000.
o
What will the state do
with the majority of these 20,000 applicants who needed the grant money to pay
down mortgages suddenly demanded or to pay rent or to pay for partial home
repairs that they could not complete because their grant was inadequate?
o
Will the state try to put leans on thousands
of homes thereby negatively impacting the real estate market, which is already
depressed?
8. All the signs point to this “monitoring” being a waste of
taxpayer money for the purpose of justifying jobs for state staff in Baton
Rouge and filling state coffers with money (see Item 10, below). Not only will
state staff (~120 in the Disaster Recovery Unit that includes OCD) have to
process 128,000 Monitoring and Compliance forms and associated documents sent
by applicants, but also, the letter with the form tells applicants that there
will be a tax money-wasting personal visit to their home to check on the status
of repairs!
9. What is the purpose of these expenditures? The effect will be to
harass over 100,000 victims of the catastrophic hurricane/floods, who often
lost their homes as well as their possession due to the faulty oversight of the
US Army Corp of Engineers. This was federal guilt money that the State of
Louisiana was never given (they got no interest and had to draw down grant
funds from a federal account), but rather was responsible for distributing to
the victims.
10. What will happen to the federal tax dollars “recaptured” from
intimidated RH applicants despite the highly dubious legality of the covenant
and contradictions in it and in the compliance documents? By the admission of
one of the heads of the Housing Dept. of OCD at a public meeting, the
recaptured money from applicants will go into OCD’s coffers.
11. Therefore, federal dollars intended for hurricane victims are
being changed to state dollars to be used at Gov. Jindal’s
discretion. This will include enabling state staff to reinforce the opinion of
very many applicants who have described the 4-year RH program as a terrible
ordeal of no answers or nonsensical ones to why mistakes in their grant
calculations were not corrected. Many thousands of these applicants are still
not able to repair their homes because of the systematic shortchanging of grant
funds to them while almost 10% of the $11 billion went to the contractors ICF
Emergency Management Services and HGI (Hammerman
& Gainer Inc).
Reference Documents
http://chatushome.com/chatusfiles/MonitoringForRecaptureLettersForms_7_2010.pdf
http://chatushome.com/chatusfiles/Covenants_SeePoint9_112607.pdf
Grant
recipient affidavit, note Point 3
Grant
Agreement for homeowners, note Point 4
v
Some recent CHAT newsletters:
· Converting
Federal Disaster Relief Money to State General-Coffer Money: March 25, 2010
· Amnesty
International and Rights of Victims: April 11, 2010
· Unhappy
Endings to the Road Home Program: May 1, 2010
· Louisiana
House of Representatives Speaker Jim Tucker & the Politics of RH Money: May
17, 2010
· Road
Home Numbers and Reality: May 25, 2010
· Road
Home Tries to Stifle Complaints, Part 1: May 29, 2010
· Road
Home Tries to Stifle Complaints, Part 2: June 9, 2010
· LA
Office of Community Development (OCD) and HUD Going After Applicants: June 23,
2010
v This is
the link to our complaint (39 pages and 88 footnotes) to the HUD Office of
the Inspector General (OIG):
http://chatushome.com/chatusfiles/HUD_OIG_Complaint_ForPublicRelease_final__2_2_09.pdf
Below is a description of the
outcome of this complaint from Melanie Ehrlich, the founder of CHAT, and main
author of this complaint
· When I was interviewed by an
inspector from the HUD OIG, I asked if Fred Tombar,
the Special Assistant on Disaster Recovery to the Secretary of HUD, would
have any influence on the outcome of the promised investigation.
· Mr. Tombar is
a former subcontractor and paid TV-apologist for the main Road Home Program
contractor ICF Emergency Management Services (ICF).
· The HUD OIG inspector only
smiled and said no.
· I asked if he would
interview any of the list of representative applicants who had been treated
unfairly or inconsistently and were willing to be interviewed by the HUD OIG.
He had asked for such a list.
· “No,” said the HUD OIG
inspector but he would be sure to interview representatives of the
contractor, ICF, and HUD staff (whom our complaint implicates
in covering up the mismangement of the
state-administered program) and state officials from the Louisiana Recovery
Authority (LRA) and the Louisiana Office of Community Development (OCD).
Ø
Our complaint, which dealt with violation of HUD
rules, concerned the following substantive issues:
o failure
to provide a common, consistent, fair and independent method of determining
homeowners’ damages, including pre-storm values,
§ thereby,
many applicants received less grant money than they were entitled to, which has
caused an especial hardship for moderate-to-low income applicants consequently
unable to repair or rebuild their homes;
o failure
to provide program rules, information and documents to applicants in derogation
of their rights;
o failure
to meet the contractual obligation to provide an “ombudsman” type program;
o failure to provide a fair and independent
appeals process in violation of due process;
o acts
in derogation of HUD requirements for citizen and local government
representative participation.
Ø
Why was there nothing but a one-paragraph dismissal
(“case closed”) of our complaint?
·
after the
HUD OIG sat on it for 7 months
·
after the
inspector from HUD flew down to interview me
·
after the
office of the HUD OIG promised a full, publicly posted report whatever the
outcome
·
despite our
extensive documentation of glaringly inconsistent treatment of applicants
o
inconsistent
treatment is a major violation of HUD rules
Ø The answer is that the evidence that HUD OIG
was so damning their only response could be either a real investigation or no investigation
at all
·
They choose a cover-up with no investigation at
all
·
HUD, like officials of the State of Louisiana,
are complicit in knowingly allowing more than ten thousand applications (see
our complaint to the HUD OIG linked above and more documentation below) were
subject to appeals conducted by the contractor (ICF) who made the mistakes or
state staff who had no rules for conducting those appeals
v If you are a member of the media and want more
information, write to mehrlich8@yahoo.com
· If you are a Road Home applicant or other
individual and want to subscribe to our free weekly newletter
or want more information, write to chatlra@yahoo.com
April 11, 2010
Ø A report that was just released by Amnesty International has much merit but is missing
the main problems for eligible Road Home (RH) applicants, ~ 130,000 –
140,000 hurricane victims. It isn’t the Stafford Act upon which the report
focuses that is responsible for so much heartache and so many RH
applicants being unable to rebuild or repair their homes despite $10 billion of
grant money for the program.
Ø It is largely the government’s and contractors’
administration of the program irrespective of the Stafford Act. It is that
there was far too little targeting of applicants’ needs. Sure tens of thousands
got the grants they needed and deserved but tens of thousands didn’t, due to no fault of their own.
Ø For other programs, the Stafford Act may be the major
hindrance, but not for the Road Home Program.
Ø Amnesty International: U.S. guilty of Katrina-related
abuses
http://neworleanscitybusiness.com/blog/2010/04/09/amnesty-us-guilty-of-katrina-related-abuses/
CHAT’s
online applicant surveys: (click
here) for which we have ~ 1600 responses from applicants
v To
read the complete responses to one of CHAT’s three surveys click here
· The survey has been made anonymous for the public but all these respondents supplied contact information
Ø
Ø
HUD’s Rule of Maximum Feasible
Deference: LRA and OCD explanations are contradicted
·
http://fhasecure.gov/offices/cpd/communitydevelopment/library/stateguide/appg.pdf
24 CFR 570.480
(c) of the State CDBG regulations provides that the Secretary will give maximum
feasible
·
deference to the state’s interpretation of the statutory requirements
and the requirements of this regulation, provided that these interpretations
are not plainly inconsistent with the HCDA and the Secretary’s obligation to
enforce compliance with the intent of Congress contained in the Act.”
·
The
general meaning is that for HUD CDBG-funded programs (like the Road Home, RH) the
State has very much freedom to set the rules as it sees fit.
·
A
specific application is to the rule that if an applicant gives RH an appraisal
that is more than 20% higher than the pre-storm value (PSV) used for grant
calculation, RH will not accept it. This detailed requirement could not have
come from HUD according to the “maximum feasible deference” regulation.
·
This
20% rule was changed on Nov. 9, 2007 after much advocacy by CHAT. The new rule
(# 188G) was that instead of rejecting the appraisal out of hand, RH would do
an evaluation of how good the appraisal was by another appraisal called a field
review appraisal, also done by certified appraisers but arranged by ICF.
·
Here
are the problems associated with this 20% rule.
o
LRA
and OCD (RH state agencies, Louisiana Recovery Authority and Office of
Community Development) told us in meetings first that OCD decided on 20%
themselves (and Mike Spletto, formerly head of
Housing for OCD) said the number could have been 5%, 10%, or 20% and he thought
they were generous to choose 20%).
o
LRA
later told us that HUD requires this 20% cutoff and told the Times-Picayune
that HUD gave “guidance” about this 20% rule. http://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2008/07/rule_changes_frustrate_road_ho.html
o
OCD
told state legislators that “HUD allows approximately 20% over the highest
valid pre-storm value to be paid to homeowners” … exceeding the 20% allowance
…would not be eligible for CDBG funds.”
The
legislative fiscal note to a Road Home reform bill http://www.legis.state.la.us/billdata/streamdocument.asp?did=497732
o
Quite
a different statement was made by Mike Spletto,
former head of Housing at OCD during a Louisiana Legislative Subcommittee at a
Town Hall meeting on RH on Feb. 6, 2008 .
1. On p. 17 of the official minutes
available from the Municipal Affairs Committee of the Louisiana Senate, the
following was written
(emphasis added).
“Ms. Elkins said there
have been about three policy changes on appraisals and asked Mr. Spletto to go over the most recent one. Mr. Spletto
responded, "As you heard earlier, a lot of the complaints were that when a
homeowner provided an appraisal, a post-storm pre-value appraisal greater than
twenty percent, the comment was that we just ignored it. The state had us set up a policy that twenty percent was a number
that we could accept a non arms length transaction.”
2. LRA said that it has two letters
from HUD indicating that 20% is the highest deviation that they would consider
acceptable. With considerable difficulty, I obtained one of these letters. It
(the May 19, 2008 letter) is unconvincing. It refers to the state’s
determination of PSV and the homeowner’s appraisal, as if they were done by
similarly good methods. They are not. The state’s involves a drive-by appraisal
(“market analysis”) at best and often just a broker price opinion with a
drive-by. The appraiser for the market analysis and the evaluator (background
unspecified) need not leave their car. Moreover, there is a mistake in the
second sentence of the letter. Lastly, this letter to Suzie Elkin, former
executive director of OCD, is in response to a Mar. 31, 2008 letter from her. I
have been unable to obtain that letter despite a public records request to the
LRA for it dating from July 1, 2008. A Freedom of Information Act request to
HUD produced the May 19 letter from HUD but not this Mar. 31 Elkin’s letter to
HUD nor any second letter from HUD about this.
3. As to the second letter, Paul
Rainwater, current head of LRA and OCD, told Sen. Murray at a meeting of the
Legislative Audit Advisory Council that he had two letters from HUD about the 20%
appraisal rule and would be glad to share it with the legislators.
“Mr. Rainwater said the 20% appraisal
is a HUD rule and when he started in January 2008, the former administration
had set a policy of no more than 20% and did not tell anybody. He said that he
has tried to be very transparent about this process and told his team that they
would write HUD. He went up to HUD National and met with the Secretary and
program managers said down in Louisiana you are telling us that the
differential can be no more than 20%. Louisiana Recovery Authority Board of
Directors sent a letter to the HUD Secretary asking for clarification asking if
they could exceed the 20% appraisal. Mr. Rainwater said HUD sent a letter back
very clearly which was made public to the media that they cannot exceed 20% and
if so chose to exceed it then it would come out of state general fund money.
That was the clear guidance that received from HUD…. He said he was told that
it was a HUD regulation because they use FHA's rule which is about 5%, but HUD
said we will allow up to 20%, which may not be enough, but it is the rule that
HUD set forth. Mr. Rainwater said he has two letters from HUD stating that and
would be happy to provide them to the committee or the full legislature.” http://www.lla.la.gov/legislativeservices/advisorycouncil/
p. 7 - 8
However, Mr.
Rainwater has not shared the letter with CHAT Founder, Melanie Ehrlich, despite
a public records request on July 1 2008 for the second letter and a writ of
mandamus (request for court hearing) as a follow-up to unanswered public
records requests. She received the first letter only after insisting that LRA’s
statement that there were no letters was incorrect because she had seen one of
them (the May 19 letter) briefly when sheI gave
testimony in Baton Rouge to a Senate subcommittee.
4. It is arbitrary and inconsistent
for RH to accept without question for grant calculation a homeowner-supplied
appraisal that is 19% higher than the PSV determined by inferior methods by RH
but to reject one that is 21% higher or 60% higher. The more
erroneous the PSV by RH, the less chance that an applicant gets any correction.
5. Applicants who had handed in their
appraisals that were more than 20% higher than RH’s PSV were left waiting for
months without field review appraisals and then the field review appraisals
were summarily stopped. We were told first that HUD objected to them, which
made no sense because we had earlier been told that the long delay in passing
the rule in the first place was that HUD had to approve it. In fall of 2008, we
were told during a meeting with RH officials that most applicants who had the
field review appraisals objected to them because they were giving values LOWER
than the original PSV. That was amazing because the applicants were disputing
the PSV as too low and had an appraisal by a certified appraiser to back them
up. Moreover, that would imply that RH’s PSVs were too high even though
applicants said they were too low.
6. Core CHAT member Mindy Milam’s
case helps us to understand these comments from OCD about the field review
appraisals. She was mentioned in a recent article but has kindly shared more of
the details with us.
http://blog.nola.com/jarvisdeberry/2009/06/jarvis_deberry_goodbye_good_ri.html
RH did a field review appraisal of Mindy’s certified
appraisal that had been rejected because it was more than 20% higher than RH’s
PSV.
One of the comparables in RH’s field
review appraisal of Mindy’s home in a middle-class neighborhood came in at an
incredibly low $61/sq ft. Mindy’s house had been demolished but RH has more
faith in their field review appraisal of her demolished home than in a
certified appraisal of the inside and outside of her home while it was still
standing. This field review appraisal was done as a “favor” to Mindy because
she complained at a special meeting of RH officials and CHAT leaders. This
field review appraisal was not binding. If it had been binding, Mindy would
have had to pay back to RH $21,000 of her grant money.
7. RH tells applicants now that field
review appraisals were secretly discontinued (although if you read their website
in great detail, you could have found out 2 months after they were discontinued
that they were no longer available), that applicant can request a RH certified
appraisal. The catch is that if RH’s appraisal comes in lower than a
homeowner’s appraisal and the RH PSV the homeowner has to pay back money to RH.
All this for victims of
the worst hurricane-flood in US history!
v The Incredible Saga of Secrecy, Public
Documents, and the Louisiana Recovery Authority (LRA)
·
The founder of CHAT, Melanie
Ehrlich, describes below her attempt to obtain public documents about Road Home
Program (RH) rules, expenditures, and surveys of applicants
·
The requests were directed
to the LRA, which has oversight of the RH
·
This goal was to get some transparency
in the RH using the clear and citizen-friendly Louisiana Public Records Request
law
·
This pursuit of RH documents
via Public Records Request took one-and-a-half years from July 1, 2008 to Dec.
20, 2009
·
It required filing a legal
complaint (Ehrlich vs. Rainwater) on March 31, 2009 and nine additional
months of legal negotiations to get most of the documents
·
Click here to see the legal complaint
· Here is a brief chronology of the
public requests that I made for which I had to file for a hearing about LRA
violating the Louisiana public records request law
·
My public records request of
July 1, 2008 was only partially filled
·
My public records request of
Oct. 20, 2008 was not filled at all, as of Mar. 2009, when my lawyer started to
write to LRA about a legal hearing
·
My public records request of
Dec. 15, 2008 was not filled at all as of Mar. 2009
v Chapter 1:
First letter from my lawyer mentioning the
need to file a legal action
·
This letter was sent on Mar.
12, 2009 to Dan Rees, LRA attorney
·
It describes LRA not releasing
documents that detail new policy changes affecting applicants
·
I was told by my attorney
that any policy changes to state procedure were supposed to be made publicly
automatically
·
Instead, LRA and the similar
state agency Office of Community Development (OCD)
§
kept many of the rule changes for Road Home
secret
§
hid important details about
most rule changes from the public
ð
until CHAT obtained the
Change-Policy or CCB documents by public records requests
ð
For records requests for
change-policy documents filled in 2007, see http://www.chatushome.com:2500/chatus/published/HomePage#changepolicy
·
Assurances were from Paul
Rainwater, then LRA Executive Director and Custodian of LRA records
·
Mr. Rainwater provided unfilled promises of
compliance on
·
Aug. 11, 2008 (mentions overdue
response to my July 1, 2008 request for documents, including documents
describing major policy changes in the RH)
·
Oct. 17, 2008
·
Oct. 20, 2008
·
Dec. 18, 2008
·
Dec. 30, 2008
·
Feb. 25, 2009
Ø Chapter 3, Part1:
Documents provided by in-house LRA attorney,
Dan Rees, on Mar. 2, 2009
·
These
were the first documents provided by LRA after notification that we would have
to file for a court hearing because LRA was ignoring my record requests for
many months
·
Mr.
Rees sent a letter on Mar. 2, 2009 to my lawyer with some of the missing documents requested on Oct. 20,
2008
·
His letter addressed none of
the many missing documents from my records request on July 1, 2008
·
Still I had received none of
the documents requested on Dec. 15, 2008 and the letter did not even mention
those requests
o The
State Appeal Panel is the final appeals that LRA allows applicants
·
Mr. Rainwater and Mr. Rees failed
to provide what was clearly requested, guidelines & procedures for the
State Appeals Panel
o “Provide any and all policy, guideline, and procedure documents given to members of the State Review Panel, appeals advisors, and PALs for resolving dispute or appeals issues.”
Ø So
LRA was still withholding a document with rules for how to decide applicants’
appeals about mistakes in their grants
·
They were thereby
keeping secret whether shortchanging grant calculation mistakes were considered
with consistent or fair methods by State staff
·
These mistakes
averaged over $25,000 per applicant for ~7,500 applicants who managed to win
appeals (see road2la.com, pipeline reports)
·
Was there a vote by the
State Appeals Panel to decide an appeal?
·
Did it have to be unanimous
for an appeal to be granted?
·
What were the guidelines for
weighing applicant evidence vs. evidence from the
notoriously mistake-prone contractor, ICF International?
Ø Chapter 3, Part 2: More
State Secrets From Mr. Rees’ Mar. 2, 2009 Letter-- Who Is On the State Appeals
Panel & Applicant Documentation of
Mistakes
The State Appeals
Panel is supposed to “include at least 6 panelists with the state and adhoc members from the legislature.”
·
According to LRA (and
contrary to state law), applicants have no right to go to court, so this panel
is supposedly the last body who could review claims by applicants of RH
mistakes or even misdeeds
·
When I requested the names
of the Panel members (in July 1, 2008), Mr. Rees finally responded on Mar. 2,
2009 that
§ “It
is not appropriate to be disseminating the personal information of
non-management personal.”
§ And,
no, he wrote, state legislators (who at least would have provided some element
of impartiality to the state-run appeals) had not been on the appeal panels
(contrary to LRA rules)
·
No rules were provided about
what kinds of documents applicants should provide during state appeals
·
Documents, including photos
of damage that had since been repaired, were often rejected by staff from the
RH contractor
·
Applicants seem to have been rarely, if ever,
asked to give specific documents during State Review Panel proceedings
·
In fact, sometimes
applicants told us that State appeals were decided so fast, “it would make your
head spin” and other times their cases languished for many months, as if in
limbo
Ø
Therefore, the
State Appeals for RH, which were decided in the applicants’ favor only 6% of
the time, were conducted by individuals whose identity was hidden from the
public (even after a records request was filed) and the Panel used secret rules
or no rules to arrive at their conclusions
Ø Recently,
LONG AFTER HER STATE APPEAL WAS DENIED, an applicant was told that she should
have hired an appraiser to document a mistake in RH’s determination of the
square footage of her house even though she previously provided three other
forms of documentation to correct that mistake
·
This applicant, like many
others, had SBA or municipal documentation correcting RH mistakes but this was
ignored by the Appeals Board
·
Many applicants with obviously
mistaken RH damage assessments had originally been told by RH staff that they
had more than 50% damage but, later, had their damage assessments & grants
reduced
·
This 50% damage threshold
was a critical determinant of grant size
Ø Who
were the lucky applicants who managed to win State Appeals?
·
One lawyer, who wrote a very
long and detailed legal-type document won his appeal about a damage assessment
that violated RH rules
·
One elderly mother whose
lawyer-son hired a surveyor to document that her single-story New Orleans home,
which stewed in 9 feet of filthy water, really did have more than 50% damage
§ He
hired the surveyor because he had been told that applicants appealing wrong
damage assessments hardly ever win appeals
Ø Wrong damage estimates that deprived applicants of their rightful
grants according to RH rules were the most frequent source of denied appeals,
as a RH official told us and ICF staffers confirmed
§ But
Paul Rainwater, former Exec. Dir. of LRA and now in Gov. Bobby Jindal’s inner staff, repeatedly argued that Charity
Hospital with 20 stories, a flooded basement, and 3 ft of water in the first
floor was more than 50% damaged by
Hurricane Katrina so that FEMA would give the state more money
§ But, falsely and hurtfully to human victims of Hurricane Katrina,
Mr. Rainwater would not reverse RH decisions that outrageously called one- and
two-story New Orleans & St. Bernard homes with 5-12 feet of water less than
50% damaged
Ø
Chapter 3, Part 3: LRA Withheld
the Names of First-Level Appeals Subcontractors for 7 Months
·
In my public records request of Oct. 20, 2008, I asked LRA to:
a) Provide the names of any and all subcontractor(s) who are
conducting appeals.
The answer from Mr. Rees was “I am awaiting receipt of this data.”
b) Provide the names of any and
all subcontractor(s) who are providing the case managers (PALs) for resolving
dispute issues with applicants.
The answer again from Mr. Rees was “I am
awaiting receipt of this data.”
Although these names of state subcontractors were obviously readily
available and should be public information, it was not until 8 weeks after
filing a court order for LRA to produce documents and 11 weeks after this
letter from LRA attorney Dan Rees that I
received subcontractor names formally requested 7 months earlier.
c)
The answer to both of these
requests was finally provided on May 27, 2009 by an outside attorney, T. Allen Usry, hired at public taxpayer expense ($175 per hour;
total expense for him and the other outside attorney, E. Wade Shows, hired for
my public records request case was over $20,000).
d)
For both requests, the answer was as
follows:
“Quadel,
Providence, and Franklin Industries. Worley did some elevation PAL work.”
·
So, the same subcontractors who supposedly helped applicants with
disputed issues during the compulsory pre-appeals review
were paid to administer the subsequent appeals.
·
Despite the fact that some appeals staff tried to be as fair as
management would allow them to be, how could that double role for the three
subcontractors provide fair appeals of contractor mistakes?
·
In summary, the contractor hired subcontractors who reviewed the
contractor’s mistakes at pre-appeal level (the so-called PALs misnamed Personal
Assistant Liasons) and the same subcontractors
handled first-level appeals.
a)
The
PAL system was a compulsory pre-appeal system instituted by Mike Spletto and Suzie Elkins, previously heads of the state
Office of Community Development, OCD, and Paul Rainwater of LRA; it was little
better than the previous, also misnamed, Dispute Resolution pre-appeal system.
b)
Not
to worry. If you did not get an unbiased assessment during first-level appeals,
there was always the state appeals, your final level of appeals, conducted by
unknown state personnel by unknown rules (see Chapter 3 Part B).
c)
If
you want to avail yourself of the guaranteed-by-law right of judicial review of
state decisions for individual citizens, LRA is claiming in the Louisiana
Supreme Court, that you have no access to a judicial hearing even if RH takes
your house and doesn’t give you any of your money after a duly signed closing
(a real previous RH legal case).
Road Home has left many on the road: An
editorial, Times-Picayune, January 06, 2010, http://www.nola.com/opinions/index.ssf/2010/01/road_home_has_left_many_on_the.html
Road Home program still a dead end for some New
Orleans homeowners, David Hammer, Times-Picayune, December 28, 2009, http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2009/12/post_225.html
·
Why did Paul Rainwater, Exec. Dir. of the Louisiana Recovery
Authority (LRA) and LRA attorney Dan Rees go to such extents to keep secret the
subcontractors for the main Road Home Program (RHP) contractor, ICF?
·
They did this even
though
a) the state
senators voted almost unanimously to fire this contractor
http://www.trinitynola.com/Document.Doc?&id=372;
Dec. 15, 2006, Louisiana Senate votes 97 to 1 to cancel the ICF contract, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/katrina/etc/cron.html
b) it was common
knowledge that the contractor was extraordinarily deficient in running the
program
"The reality is the Road Home program has been a
dysfunctional program since its inception," said City Councilman Arnie
Fielkow. Loyola University press release - August 15, 2008
http://www.loyno.edu/news/story/2008/8/15/1545; “Road Home Fix Falls Short”
“The Road
Home Program has messed over so many people in so many ways over such a long
period of time that, at this point, it takes a particularly egregious error to
attract attention now. “
http://blog.nola.com/jarvisdeberry/2008/10/lose_the_attitude_not_the_pape.html
Ø Chapter 3, Part 4: Officials
from Gov. Jindal’s Administration Withheld the Names
of Road Home Subcontractors in Defiance of a State Road Home Oversight Law
·
Click here to
read how the state Office of Community Development withheld names of Road Home
subcontractors from the Louisiana Legislative Audit Advisory Council for 7
months contrary to Road Home reform law Act 829.
·
Then the legislators turned
their backs on applicants who were short-changed in their RH grants and did not use their own law
to help them get oversight of the program.
Ø
Chapter 4, LRA-LSU Customer Satisfaction Survey
·
For a summary description in
our May 29 CHATNewsletter of this survey paid for
with taxpayer money that was not released to the public by LRA or LSU, click here
·
For the contract to the LSU
Reilly Center, Kathryn Rountree, Operations Manager
of Public Policy Lab, the questionnaire, the unpublicized reports from the
survey, and one of 11 tables of applicant comments obtained during the surver, click here
Ø Public Records SagaTo Be Continued:
o
More about the public
records requests, a hidden RH rule finally revealed, the judges and lawyers
involved in the case, an unpublished LRA-LSU Customer Satisfaction Survey
showing lots of dissatisfaction despite being set up to be biased toward
satisfied applicants
v
Some
Recent CHAT Newsletters:
HMGP
News from LRA, News from Applicants
FEMA
documents about mitigation grants
(difficult
to get clarification from Road Home; see above newsletter for the link to Road
Home information NOT at the RH site, but at the LRA site)
·
Natl.
Flood Insurance Booklet
·
Mitigation
reconstruction guidance
·
Reconstruction
Grant Unit Cost Guidance
o Note the word “guidance”
o Reconstruction grants refer to those who demolish their
hurricane/flood-ruined home and rebuilt
Including Important Newspaper
Article About Frank Silvestri, CHAT Co-Chair &
About Denial of Assess to Court for RH Applicants
Chapter
1-Records Requests Of LRA & More HMGP House
Elevation Grant Problems
v To see the Project on Government Oversight
feature on CHAT’s HUD OIG Complaint and Applicant Responses
o http://pogoblog.typepad.com/pogo/2009/09/the-far-too-long-and-winding-road-home-program.html
o The Project on
Government Oversight, an independent nonprofit that investigates and exposes
corruption and other misconduct in order to achieve a more effective and
accountable, open and ethical government, has posted at its blog an article
entitled
o
“The
Far Too Long and Winding Road Home Program”
o
To read or comment at the Blog,
§ see http://pogoblog.typepad.com/pogo/2009/09/the-far-too-long-and-winding-road-home-program.html
o
Their blog posting was
done after an investigator from the Wash. D.C.-based organization which studied
CHAT documents, including:
§
CHAT’s complaint to the
HUD Inspector General
§
CHAT survey information
from hundreds of applicants
§
Summaries of reports and
documents with links to the originals
v
On Public Access TV (COX
10) The Eighth Filming of a CHAT Meeting
The Meeting Was
About Our Complaint to the HUD Inspector General Office of About the RH Program
Thanks to Carleen Dunn and COX 10! Our 1 and a half hour meeting was shown on COX 10 as follows:
Wed.,
June 10, Noon-1:30 PM; Fri., June 12, Noon-1;30 PM; Sun., June 14, 10:00-11:30;
Mon., June 15, 8:00-10:00; Thurs., June 18, 8:00-10:30; Sat., June 20,
11:00-1:00; Mon., June 22, 12 - 2 PM; Fri., June 26, 8-10 AM; Wed., July
1, 3 PM; Thurs. July2, 2:30 PM; Fri., July 3, 3 PM; Sun., July 5, 9 AM; Mon.,
July 6, noon; Tues., July 7, 1:30 PM; Wed., July 8, noon; Mon., July 13, 4 PM;
Wed., July 15, 3 PM; Thurs., July 16, 3:30 PM; Mon., July 20, 3 PM; Mon., July
27, 3:30 PM;
Wed., Aug. 5, 3 PM; Fri., Aug.7, 8 AM and 2:30
PM; Mon., Aug. 10, 3 PM; Wed., Aug. 12, 3 PM; Fri., Aug. 14, 12:30 PM;
Tues., Aug. 19, 4:30 PM; Fri., Aug. 22, 2 PM; Sat., Aug. 23, 10:30 AM;
Wed., Aug. 26, 2 PM; Fri., Aug. 28, 2 PM; Sun., Wed., Sept. 9, 2 PM;
Fri., Sept. 11, 2 PM; Tues., Sept. 15, noon.
v More Background About the Road Home Program and the HUD OIG
·
Why is our complaint addressed to the HUD OIG and what is the
nature of these grants?
o
HUD funds this $10.4 billion program run by the State of
Louisiana and HUD has responsibility for oversight
o RHP has given an
average grant of $64,000 (including about 20,000 $30,000 house-elevation
awards) to 124,000 applicants as of May,
2009
o RHP grants to homeowners
are for up to $150,000 as compensation for otherwise uncompensated structural
damage
o These grants are for
Louisiana victims of Hurricanes Katrina or Rita
o There is $1.5 billion
left as of June 2009 in this program for homeowner victims of the
hurricane/floods
o
LRA has not agreed to
set up an independent and fair appeals system with publicized rules for
deciding appeals
o
This new appeals
system should be described in a letter to applicants who tried to appeal but
still have shortchanging mistakes
o
Fair appeals without
difficult, unclear deadlines and pre-appeals procedures should be a first
priority for the remaining RH funds
o
The other first
priority should be applicants still in grant-processing limbo through no fault
of their own
·
On May 5, the Inspector General of HUD released two audit
reports in answer to a citizen complaint about ICF staff erroneously receiving
grant money intended for low-income applicants
http://www.hud.gov/utilities/intercept.cfm?/offices/oig/reports/files/ig09a1002.pdf
http://www.hud.gov/utilities/intercept.cfm?/offices/oig/reports/files/ig09a1001.pdf
·
The HUD OIG found that there were incorrect payments to 5 of 34
employee-applicants and that the State did not make sure that ICF had
procedures in place to identify such errors and did not follow program rules.
·
In addition, the HUD OIG reported duplicate payments to single
addresses due to the State’s failure to ensure that ICF had controls to
identify multiple disbursements to a single address.
·
Our complaint to the HUD OIG, which was accepted for
investigation in February, 2009, includes the following allegations:
o a lack of adequate State
oversight of the program leading to thousands of applicants having their grants
short-changed and to waste and abuse of program funds because of ICF failing to
follow program rules.
o evidence for an intentionally
fraudulent pre-appeal program that 22,650 applicants tried to navigate and
arbitrary and capricious manipulation of procedures for damage assessment and
house valuation during grant processing.
o ICF purposefully inflating numbers of
applicants and falsely arguing that it did more work than stipulated in the
contract in order to justify an increase in its contract payment.
· No investigations of the Road Home Program by the HUD Inspector General’s Office have tackled the problems of underpayment of applicants often described in the local media and addressed in several bills passed by the State Senate
One of Many Examples of
Violations of HUD Rules & Serious Mismanagement
The contractor (ICF) established an
intentionally misleading pre-appeal program (dispute resolution) and then left
thousands of applicants in limbo, unable to appeal. LRA has not given large
numbers of applicants a chance to appeal.
·
The Louisiana Legislative Auditor analyzed 50
applicant files of a total of 22,650 that had the pre-storm value (PSV) dispute
flag as of March 2008 and found that 27 of the 50 (54%) did not have an issue
related to PSV in the JIRA database for resolving issues associated with grant
processing. Without the applicant’s file being transferred to the JIRA files,
no dispute resolution or appeal was possible. http://app1.lla.state.la.us/PublicReports.nsf/6F905AB4148A123C8625753D0066BD41/$FILE/00008378.pdf
o
In answer to complaints from CHAT & others, the
following was posted in Feb., 2009 at the LRA website (not the much better
known Road Home website):
§
“For many
months we have heard of people who believe their Road Home appeal was lost in
the shuffle, or that they were never able to exercise their right to appeal
because their case was stuck in the "resolutions" process…the
Louisiana Recovery … will review these cases.”
http://lra.louisiana.gov/index.cfm?md=pagebuilder&tmp=home&pid=106
Applicants are told
to contact LRA through one of three addresses or phone numbers.
· Email info@louisianarecoveryauthority.org
with "Road Home Appeal" in the subject line
· Or call (225) 342-1700
to find out how to request an appeal
· Or mail a letter to
the Louisiana Recovery Authority, ATTN: Ty Larkins,
150 Third Street,Suite 200, Baton Rouge, LA,
70801 (CHAT recommends certified mail}
o
However, subsequently, after LRA was swamped
with requests, LRA wrote the following to applicants who try to get this review
“Mr. Rainwater did not say he was
opening appeals to applicants who have gone pass [sic] the deadline.
His comments were directed at serving persons who were in appeals who
"fell through the cracks" and therefore, never had their matters
resolved.”
o Once again, a promised, long-needed reform was revoked by LRA with
no public notice
Ø We still hear over and over about
outrageous mistakes made by ICF International, the contractor, that OCD says
cannot be fixed or that during appeals just have a rubber stamp put on the
wrong data in an applicant’s file
Ø One of numerous examples is a rural
applicant whose barn was appraised for grant calculation instead of her house;
OCD
said this could not be corrected even though they admitted the mistake
Ø How will applicants who never had a
chance to continue their pre-appeal process or had no access to their files
during appeal have a fair chance to appeal?
Ø What will LRA do with their projected
“surplus” of $200 – 300 million dollars and why are they not using that for
fair appeals?
Ø A Times-Picayune editorial in 2009 stated the following about the contractor, ICF International
§
“ICF's abysmal management of the Road
Home program hampered people's recovery from the 2005 hurricanes and caused
great misery and hardship.” http://blog.nola.com/editorials/2009/02/keep_watch_on_icf.html
v
Senate subcommittee testimony on the need for
the HUD OIG investigation
Melanie Ehrlich,
founder of CHAT, was asked by Sen. Landrieu's staff to testify in DC about
the Road Home Program on May 20. Sen.
Landrieu chairs the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee
Disaster Recovery Subcommittee.
Click below to see the whole testimony at the hearing: http://hsgac.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?Fuseaction=Hearings.Detail&HearingID=f7448914-51a5-41dc-8f75-1e820a008a80
Other Items:
v
Questionable contracts by the Louisiana
State Government under Gov. Jindal or former Gov.
Blanco
or by the
US Government: CLICK
here to read more
·
ICF Emergency Management Services, LLC (ICF
or ICF International)
·
Camp, Dressler, and McKee (CDM)
·
Hammerman &
Gainer Inc. (HGI)
v
Updated description of disappearing
dispute resolution cases that favored the contractor but left many
applicants in limbo
v
For information about HMGP elevation grants
contact:
Ø
1-877-744-7235
or 1-225-339-3746 or hazardmitigation@la.gov
Ø
Save all building plans, permits,
dated photos, invoices, receipts, and other proof of payment of costs to be
reimbursed by an HMGP elevation grant, if you are eligible
Ø
However, we note that these grants have been awarded
to only a tiny fraction of eligible RH applicants
v Congress
should not allow diversion of RH funds from applicants who have been denied
fair grants
v Unfair
Attempts to Get Money Back From Applicants
The
article about many Road Home grant recipients not following covenants to
rebuild within three years does not mention some key facts. LRA Director Paul
Rainwater stated, "We're going to be very strict" about allowing
extensions of one to two years to the covenant requirement.
However,
thousands of applicants received much less money than they were promised in
grant award letters, through no fault of their own. Road Home staff frequently
admonished applicants who protested grant downsizing that they must wait to
appeal only after they signed the closing documents. Thousands of these appeals
were subsequently denied by the contractor who determined grant amounts in the
first place or by a State Appeals Panel that has never disclosed its
guidelines. Also unfair to homeowners is the great delay in awarding elevation
grants.
Clearly,
homes should be elevated before rebuilding or repair, but HUD and FEMA
elevation grants still are being given out one or two years after applicants
signed their Road Home grant covenant. The "backlash against previous
efforts to recoup overpayments" briefly noted in the article was centered
on the discovery of an attempt of Road Home to get a collection agency to
recover "overpayments," including for ICF International's supposed
mistakes in determining grant amounts. A 2008 LRA survey found that 55 percent
of applicants had not repaired their homes because of insufficient grant funds.I agree that applicants should use the Road Home
grant money to repair or rebuild if they signed a covenant to do so. But
two-year extensions of the rebuild deadline won't help most of the applicants
who were given less money than originally promised and just don't have the funds
to rebuild.
Melanie
Ehrlich
Founder,
Citizens' Road Home Action Team
New Orleans
Ø Another unfair
aspect of the attempts to recapture grant money is that
o
many other low-income applicants were
promised an Additional Compensation Grant (ACG) & then 1- 2 ½ years later
had their income recalculated and were denied this grant
o
many of the low-income applicants most in
need of an ACG to be able to rebuild their home have not benefited from this
reform
Ø The ACG was originally instituted because low-income applicants got
smaller standard RH grants due to the generally low value of their land
v Louisiana Acts 872 and 829, enacted in July,
2008, have not brought relief to shortchanged RH applicants
·
because the Office of Community Development
(OCD) violated the law (Act 829) by not
giving monthly reports on the performance of the contractor, ICF Emergency
Management Services, LLC (ICF)
·
and because the HUD Office of Disaster
Recovery and Special Issues rejected a change requested by the Louisiana
legislature (Act 872) to make grant processing consistent with grant appeal
rules
v For predatory language in the
closing documents used in sale of homes to the state, click
here: Website
Congress Must Not Allow Gov. Jindal To Divert Money from the Road Home Program For Construction
of a New Hospital
(especially when a
pre-existing hospital can be renovated for much less money without destruction
of part of a renovated Mid-City neighborhood)
Ø Very
many applicants have been unable to get a fair appeal of the shortchanging of
their grant; others have been left in limbo; yet others have had reduced grant
sizes due to inappropriate restrictive rules made in 2008
Ø Tell
Senator Landrieu laverne_saulny@landrieu.senate.gov
Ø Tell
members of the State Legislature who have shown much concern about the Road
Home Program in this past
o Sens.
Murray, Gray, and Morrell: murraye@legis.state.la.us; grayc@legis.state.la.us, jeanpaulmorrell@hotmail.com
about not diverting Road Home funds to other purposes than helping
applicants and fixing mistakes by opening up fair appeals
to those who were shut out of a chance for a fair appeal or any appeal
Many thousands of applicants have
been shortchanged by the Road Home Program
v and so are unable to return to
Louisiana,
v to fix their hurricane/flood- devastated
home,
v to move out of crowded, unsafe
conditions,
v or are in debt because of borrowing
money from relatives
v The
following Resolution passed by the LRA Board implies that there may be a
“surplus” of Road Home funds
Not so. There has been a systematic
squeezing of grant amounts over the last year.
We at CHAT frequently noted this and
wondered about its purpose
In early 2008, CHAT Co-chairmen Melanie
Ehrlich and Frank Silvestri were told by LRA and OCD Director Paul Rainwater
that there would just not be enough money left over from RH to allow LRA to
re-open appeals
to those who were unable to have a copy of their file before
they appealed
or who did not have a chance to appeal because of various
problems
Now, with no fair appeals for shortchanged
applicants who can’t get back to their home because of broken promises, there
is talk of a “surplus.”
v
Excerpts of Draft
Minutes, LRA Board Meeting Nov. 18, 2008
Monthly Budget Presentation
Mr. Paul Rainwater said we had asked HUD for an Action
Plan Amendment to eliminate the $150,000 cap on the Road Home program. We are not sure
how much will be spent on elevations, but $650 million has been drawn down in
individual mitigation funds. It is not known how much LLT will spend on demolitions and slab
removals, but it could range between $300 and $450 million. Adjustments are being made
to the Small Rental program, but there could be between $300 and $500 million in
unallocated funds. We do not want to return these funds to the Treasury because we want
homeowners to have this funding. Mr. Sean Reilly asked if these are just Road Home
figures. Mr.
Rainwater explained that the figures encompass all recovery programs. If we are
allowed some
flexibility by Congress, then we may be able to help Charity Hospital , the New
Orleans Sewerage
and Water Board and others in need.
Mr. Sean Reilly
offered a motion to approve a resolution to petition Congress for reallocation
of the appropriations
to cover other obligations. The motion was seconded by Ms. Pat LeBlanc
Final Approval of the Resolution to Petition Congress for
Reallocation of the Appropriations to Cover Other Obligations.
RESOLVED, that the Board hereby accepts and approves the resolution
to petition Congress for reallocation of the appropriations to cover
other obligations.
Voting: Rep. Karen Carter-Peterson, Dupre,
Jas Gill, Lasseigne, Pat LeBlanc, Walter Leger Jr.,
Roy O. Martin III, Sen. Edward Murray , Sean Reilly,
and John
E. Smith.
v The proposed diversion of Road Home homeowner (and rental program)
funds would be taking money from where it was promised & still needed:
providing places for hurricane and flood victims to live after the worst US
natural disaster
o
“State asks feds to OK funds
for N.O. hospital”: http://docs.newsbank.com/s/InfoWeb/aggdocs/NewsBank/124924606E649E10/0EEA30604397A028
The Advocate, (Baton Rouge, LA) - Wednesday, November 19, 2008, ALLEN M. JOHNSON JR.
o
“Media allowed inside
shuttered Charity”: http://www.wwltv.com/topstories/stories/wwl010709mlcharity.3d3f007.html
o And spending it on a new hospital when the renovation of Charity hospital is feasible, expeditious, and cost-effective:
http://www.fhl.org/FHL/News/PresvAlerts/CharityHospital/FHL-RMJMResponse12-22-08.pdf
v The LRA and Gov. Jindal
should have made sure shortchanging mistakes were corrected
v by re-opening appeals to those shut out
of it
o For Progress in this regard as of Feb.
2009, see http://lra.louisiana.gov/index.cfm?md=pagebuilder&tmp=home&pid=106
o The LRA website (but not more visited
Road Home website, despite our requests) states the following:
“ For many months we have heard of people who believe their Road Home
appeal was lost in the shuffle, or that they were never able to exercise their
right to appeal because their case was stuck in the "resolutions"
process, which ended earlier this year.
In
order to ensure that all applicants received fair treatment under the Road Home, the Louisiana Recovery Authority and the Office of Community Development
will review these cases to ensure that homeowners received due process under
the Road Home and that cases did not fall through the cracks.
For
your case to be considered, you can do one of three things:
v Appeals need to be made fair,
independent, and governed by explicit standards
v All applicants who ever unsuccessfully
disputed their grant amount need to be told that:
o they can get a copy of their file & use
the new LRA option to re-open appeals
v Applicants need and are entitled to a
full copy of their file (including JIRA notes) sent in a timely fashion
·
so that
they can find the source of any shortchanging in this maize-like
set of rules and appeal it under a fair system
Legislators’ Attempts To Stop The Abuses of
Road Home Applicants by the Contractor,
ICF Emergency
Management Services, LLC (ICF)
For
a list of Road Home-related bills and legislation from the Louisiana
legislature, click
here
An Inaccurate Explanation for HUD Rejecting LRA Action Plan
Amendment #28 Based on Act 872
In a Jan. 13 letter to
Gov. Jindal signed by a HUD official, the LRA Action
Plan Amendment 28 was rejected
This action plan amendment would have fixed a
major inconsistency in Road Home (RH) administration
It was mandated by Act 872, signed into law on July 9, 2008, in which
the Louisiana legislators called for reform of the Road Home Program
http://www.legis.state.la.us/billdata/streamdocument.asp?did=504663
§ The bill passed unanimously in the Senate and
by 93 votes for vs. 4 opposed
in the House although LRA (Louisiana Recovery Authority) and OCD (Office of
Community Development) argued against it
§ Road Home stated that it “Provides
the applicant with the highest available pre-storm value” http://road2la.org/Docs/policies/Homeowner_Program_Policies%20v5.2_5-6-08.pdf
(p. 22/30)
§ From many applicants’ reports and staff reports,
we know that grant values were downsized from original determinations by later
PSV's that were lower.
§ Choosing the highest PSV was supposed to be an
antidote to choosing the lower of the two values of PSV vs. estimated cost of
damage in grant calculations
§
ICF
seems to be padding its bills with redundant PSV's and then often downsizing
grant amounts by choosing low values for grant calculation
§ Most importantly, HUD
allows RH to give applicants the highest ICF-calculated PSV in their file upon
appeal
§ So this law would let
applicants who have not had a chance to appeal get the same treatment as those
who do
§ Amazingly, the letter arrived at a
judgment about Action Plan Amendment 28 inconsistent with the words of the
Amendment
§ The amendment is not about pre-storm home
valuations “20% higher than the next nearest estimate,” as stated in the letter
§ Nor is it about any 20% rule as the letter
states
§ It is about ICF's multiple, often
inaccurate & wasteful determinations of pre-storm value (PSV) for grant
calculation
The State (Office of Community Development,
OCD) admitted in the fiscal note for RH reform bills in 2008 that it would cost
something like $0.5 billion to give applicants the highest of multiple
ICF-determined PSVs in their file
The statement below comes from
LRA’s Action Plan Amendment & the yellow highlighting is theirs to indicate
their change in rules that was called Amendment 28. http://www.doa.louisiana.gov/cdbg/dr/plans/Amend28-PUBLIC-COMMENT-Appraisal-Determination-08-08-08.pdf
Pre-Storm Value
To accurately calculate compensation, the Road Home Program must base assistance on a fair and equitable pre-storm value of the home. The pre-storm value is based on one of four methods listed below. If more than one method of determining pre-storm value is available, the pre-storm value used in the Road Home calculation will be based on the method with the highest value, regardless of any di