[StBernard] ICF or Incompetent Cheap Frazzlers (for lack of better word)

[Westley Annis]

My mom got her "golden" letter today in the mail and by this afternoon a rep
from ICF was calling about it.  I had not even opened it yet.

I asked the rep what the award amount was and it's a grand total of $28k and
change.  I then asked what the appraised value of the house was *by them*
(emphasis in my voice) and the guy said 80k.  I asked him how they arrived
at *anything* since I still don't have all the requested documents.  He
could not answer.  I told him I still didn't even have the verification from
social security they wanted so how could they calculate whether my mom was
eligible for the no-cost loan.  (with her only income as S.S. she *should*
be below the median income.  He couldn't answer that one either.

So then he asked "so you are going to appeal?"  I said yes because I had a
post storm appraisal of the pre storm value which was over 100k so that
meant THEY were WAY off.  We got 50k from flood insurance for structure plus
the little piddling amount for homeowners (less than 10k) so they were
really reaching up their butts to pull out these numbers.

The only thing I can conclude is that they were fighting to get to the
number of closings they HAD to do this month or face penalties.   I've seen
it before in government, particularly  at VA when calculating awards.  The
idea was "just do the award to get it out and we'll fix it when they file an
appeal."  It helped to get those old claims off the count but did nothing
for the claimant.  Seems it's the same thing here.

John Scurich:  Thanks for the appraisal you did.  The way you did it,
showing similar properties that had sold pre-K will surely help.  I don't
see how they'll be able to argue anything with that type of information
attached.

Jim York