[StBernard] Road Home program falls short ofl Blanco administration goal

Westley Annis westley at da-parish.com
Wed Jan 24 23:15:13 EST 2007


BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) - The contractor running Louisiana's post hurricane
home repair and buyout program will miss a benchmark that Gov. Kathleen
Blanco's administration listed when searching for a company to dole out aid
to homeowners: the calculation of all grants within seven months.

The goal, though not included in ICF International Inc.'s contract with the
state, was listed when Blanco's Division of Administration solicited offers
last spring from contracting firms seeking to handle the $7.5 billion
federally funded program for homeowners.

Dubbed "The Road Home" program, it gives repair or buyout grants of up to
$150,000 to Louisiana homeowners who have suffered damage from Hurricane
Katrina, which struck in August 2005, or Hurricane Rita, which followed a
month later. More than 101,000 people have applied for aid, but only 258
homeowners have received grants so far, according to the latest data
provided by the Road Home.

The administration wanted all applications for housing aid grants to be
verified and all payments calculated within seven months from the start of
the Road Home. ICF's contract with the state, worth up to $756 million, was
signed in June.

However, seven months later, Virginia-based ICF has calculated grants for an
estimated 30,400 homeowners. That's less than a third of those who have
applied and about one grant for every four homeowners expected to be
eligible for the federally funded, state-run aid program for victims of
hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

Suzie Elkins, director of the governor's Office of Community Development,
the agency that monitors the Road Home program, said the expectation that
all the grants would be calculated within seven months wasn't included in
ICF's contract with the state because it wasn't realistic.

Elkins drafted the language in the bid solicitation and said she agreed the
seven month mark shouldn't be included in ICF's contract.

She said that, although the contract was signed with ICF in June, the U.S.
Department of Housing and Urban Development didn't approve the plans to
spend the money until August. The state made wide-ranging adjustments - at
least 30 policy changes - to the homeowner aid program after running a pilot
version of the program in August and September. The first grants in the
reworked program didn't go out until November, she said.
"We really rolled out this program in November for all the homeowners.
That's when it really started," she said, suggesting the program's timeline
should be judged from the November start of the full aid program.

State officials have heaped criticism on ICF for moving too slowly to dole
out aid, saying the company is impeding Louisiana's recovery. And the slow
pace has become a political issue. When President Bush's critics noted that
he failed to mention Katrina or Rita in his State of the Union address
Tuesday night, Republican U.S. Sen. David Vitter said he was disappointed at
but, "I'm not terribly surprised when the federal taxpayer has sent us
billions but it isn't getting to the people who need it because of state
debacles like the Road Home Program."

State lawmakers called on Blanco to fire ICF after reports of inaccurate
appraisals, incorrect grant letters and mountains of paperwork. Blanco said
she was dissatisfied with the pace of awards but didn't want to slow the
process further by restarting the homeowner grant program with a new
contractor.

"Frankly, many are giving up. This promise of help is being strangled. They
feel betrayed by this Road Home Program that was supposed to help them,"
Melanie Ehrlich, with the Citizens' Road Home Action Team, a New
Orleans-based citizens group pushing to speed up the aid program, told
officials with the governor's hurricane recovery authority.

Mike Byrne, director of the homeowner aid program for ICF, repeatedly has
told lawmakers, state officials and residents at public hearings that the
Road Home is making adjustments to speed aid calculations while following a
string of federal requirements for the hurricane recovery aid. Recently, the
company changed home appraisal methods in a bid to quicken grants.

Elkins also defended the company and its work.

"This is going as fast as we can make it," Elkins said. "We meet on almost
every day about ways we can streamline it."

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
If Blanco has any doubts as to why she's going to lose the next election,
here ya go.
JLY





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