Mark's Notebook


	If you believe everything you read, better not read. - Japanese Proverb

Slow Home Grants Stall Progress in New Orleans

New York Times

Saturday 11 November 2006, 1:38 pm
Keywords: Katrina Hurricane Relief , News Articles

By Leslie Eaton; Published November 11, 2006

NEW ORLEANS — The $7.5 billion program to rebuild Louisiana by helping residents repair or replace their flooded homes has gotten off to a slow start, frustrating government officials and outraging many homeowners who say they are still in limbo 14 months after Hurricane Katrina hit.

Though nearly 79,000 families have applied to the program, called the Road Home, only 1,721 have been told how much grant money they will receive. And just 22 have received access to the cash, which was provided by federal taxpayers and is being distributed by the state.

“I don’t know of anyone who has actually received any money,” said Cassandra D. Wall, who is active in a group of homeowners from the eastern part of New Orleans. Ms. Wall said she planned to attend a protest Nov. 17 in Baton Rouge, the state capital, “to go public with the outrage and the outcry.”

The city’s mayor, C. Ray Nagin, is so dissatisfied with the pace of the program that on Nov. 1 he announced that the city was developing a plan to lend money to people waiting for their Road Home grants.

Officials announced on Nov. 6 that Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco had ordered the contractor managing the program to calculate 10,000 awards by the end of the month.

“It’s time to kick into high gear,” said Walter Leger, a lawyer and a member of the Louisiana Recovery Authority, which devised the federally financed Road Home program. “It’s time to forget the reasons and excuses” for the slow pace so far.

In some ways, the program’s low-speed beginning reflects an urgent need to avoid the kind of waste and fraud that plagued federal programs after the hurricane. The government, among other things, is demanding that applicants produce details of insurance policies and payouts, proof of title to a house, and, if possible, official assessments of a home’s prestorm value. Many New Orleans residents lost such paperwork in the flood, or never had it in the first place.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/11/us/11louisiana.html?th&emc=th