[StBernard] Middle/Upper Income may be out of Grant Money process

[Westley Annis]

>From WWL-TV's website and Lord let's hope it doesn't come to this.

JY
 
Middle and upper income homeowners could be left out of grant money if State
doesn't get more from Congress
 
BATON ROUGE-- Only low-income homeowners or those who lived outside the
flood plain would be eligible for rebuilding grants and buyouts under Gov.
Kathleen Blanco's housing program, if the state doesn't receive the extra
hurricane aid under discussion by Congress. 
 
Also, the housing program would let the state choose which ruined
neighborhoods could rebuild by limiting assistance to buyouts in areas where
most homeowners apply for buyouts rather than rebuilding dollars. 
 
Those are among the details included in the formal proposed plan unveiled
Wednesday that will be available for public comment and submitted to
lawmakers and federal officials for approval. 
 
Still, Rep. Ken Odinet, who attended the briefing on the formal "action
plan," said the document didn't give the information displaced homeowners
really cared about: a timeline for when they should expect to get a check
that might help them rebuild and return. 
 
"They're waiting on this ... You think I could bring this (document) home to
them? That doesn't tell them any more than they knew six months ago," said
Odinet, D-Arabi, whose entire home parish of St. Bernard was flooded by
Hurricane Katrina. 
Andy Kopplin, the executive director of Blanco's Louisiana Recovery
Authority, said he thinks the first grants will go out by "late summer at
the earliest." 
 
The governor's plan would provide money to repair or rebuild damaged homes
or provide buyouts to people who choose not to rebuild in their devastated
neighborhoods, up to $150,000 per house. For those who don't want to
relocate or rebuild in Louisiana, the plan would buy them out at 60 percent
of the pre-storm home value. 
 
Homeowners must have uninsured damage of more than $5,200 to be eligible.
Insurance proceeds and FEMA assistance would be deducted from the maximum
amount they could receive. Homeowners who were inside the flood plain and
didn't have flood insurance would have a 30 percent penalty taken off what
they could receive. 
 
But there's a lot of process before any of those dollars will be doled out. 
The public has 10 days to comment on the plans. The LRA is planning April 12
"open houses" for comments in New Orleans and Lake Charles. 
 
The Legislature and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
must approve the governor's housing plans. A private company must be hired
to manage the program, which Kopplin said he hopes to have in place by the
end of the month. That company will take applications (about 50,000
homeowners have pre-registered for the program). 
 
After the application period ends, Kopplin said the management company will
review applications to determine how many people would be eligible for
grants and whether the grants need to be adjusted because the eligibile
amount exceeds the money for the program. 
 
Then, the checks will start going out to as many as 122,000 homeowners who
may be eligible, according to LRA estimates. 
 
The type of program offered depends on the money the state can spend on it.
The Blanco administration says it can do a $4.7 billion assistance program
with the federal dollars currently available to Louisiana -- or the $7.5
billion housing program it wants to do if Congress approves extra funding
currently up for debate in Washington. 
Kopplin said he expects Congress to approve the extra dollars. 
 
Without it, the housing grants and buyouts would only be available to people
whose damaged homes were outside the federally-recognized flood plain and to
poorer homeowners inside the flood plain, where the majority of the state's
damage was. 
"We expect to get funding that will allow us to take that cap off," Kopplin
said. 
 
While the formal housing plan is detailed in the assistance offered, it is
more vague in the state's role in determining which neighborhoods will be
rebuilt. 
 
The document says state and local "authorities" could only allow buyouts and
relocation grants in areas where large numbers of homeowners are choosing
not to rebuild, but it doesn't specify who would make those decisions or
how. 
 
Kopplin said if a large majority of people want buyouts on a specific block,
the state should give that information to local governments determining a
rebuilding plan for their area. When repeatedly asked whether state
officials would determine whether a neighborhood could rebuild, he said, "At
the end of the day, the state ought to retain that authority." 
 
(Copyright 2006 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)