Welcome to chatushome.com

from the volunteers of the Citizens' Road Home Action Team (CHAT)!

We have been advocating since Sept. ‘06 for fairer treatment of applicants in the state-run and $10.4 billion, federally funded Louisiana Road Home Program (RH) for homeowner-victims of the Hurricanes Katrina & Rita & the linked flooding due to faulty levees

CHAT Accomplishments - Some of what we did to help 10,000’s of the ~140,000 applicants

 CHAT Media Appearances  - Links to about 60 news articles mentioning CHAT leaders and the Road Home Program

To find an item at our website: press both “Ctrl” & “f” keys; release; then, in the pop-up box, type key words

To Get Our Free Email Newsletter: send an email to chatlra@yahoo.com  and write “Join CHAT” in the subject & your city in the email

 

New Items

v                         The Incredible Saga of Secrecy, Public Documents, and the Louisiana Recovery Authority (LRA)

Ø     The founder of CHAT, Melanie Ehrlich, will describe her attempt to obtain public documents about Road Home Program (RH) rules, expenditures, and surveys of applicants

Ø     The requests were directed to the LRA, which has oversight of the RH

Ø     This attempt to get some transparency in the RH involved the Louisiana Public Records Request law

Ø     It took one-and-a-half years from July 1, 2008 to Dec. 20, 2009

Ø     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

Ø     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

 

Ø     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

Ø     Chapter 2: Empty assurances from LRA to fill my requests before I filed for a hearing on the LRA’s disregard of the Louisiana public records law

·              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 the 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

· One of the documents provided was a description I had already received about the timeline for State Appeals

o       The State Appeal Panel is the final appeals that LRA allows applicants

o       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             So 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

Mr. Rees sent a letter on Mar. 2, 2009 to my lawyer with some of  the missing documents requested on Oct. 20, 2008

·         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 Executive Director 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.bayoubuzz.com/News/Louisiana/Katrina/Rebuild/Louisiana_Road_Home_ICF_Investigation_Needed__6028.asp;

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”

c)       Dozens of media articles railed against ICF.

Just one example is the Op Ed article “Lose the attitude, not the paperwork”, By Jarvis Deberry, Times-Picayune Editor, October 28, 2008

“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

 

v          Recent CHAT Newsletters:

HMGP News from LRA, News from Applicants  

FEMA documents about mitigation grants

(complicated stuff; 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          

Road Home & the Law:

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    See our CHAT Blog for news: http://www.chatushome.com/blog/?p=64

v         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

v    The Far Too Long and Winding Road Home Program”

v    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

v    Their blog posting was done after an investigator from the Wash. D.C.-based organization studied CHAT documents, including:

v    CHAT’s complaint to the HUD Inspector General

v    CHAT survey information from hundreds of applicants

v    Summaries of reports and documents with links to the originals

v