LA (Katrina) Recovery Program Is Running Short of Money

[Rage for Order]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070503/ap_on_re_us/hurricane_buyouts

Louisiana's $7.5 billion program to buy out homeowners or help them rebuild is going broke, the governor is warning in another crisis in the long-mired effort to rescue neighborhoods smashed by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. More than 130,000 applications for aid have been submitted under the troubled, federally funded Road Home program — about 30 percent more than initially expected.

Gov. Kathleen Blanco and Road Home officials now say they expect a shortfall of up to $3 billion, mostly because the grants that have been doled out for rebuilding so far are running much higher than originally projected.

Blanco urged calm, saying state and federal officials have time to find more money. "We will be looking to Congress to make up the difference," she said. Susan Aspey, a spokeswoman for Don Powell,
President Bush's Gulf Coast recovery chief, said it was too soon to say whether the White House would seek additional aid for the program. "Just because there is a need does not necessarily mean that the federal taxpayers should be meeting that need," Aspey said.

Under Road Home, homeowners can get up to $150,000 to repair their houses or walk away from them. At least 12 percent of the homeowners applying for aid want to take the lump sum and move away, according to data released last week. State officials said that is about the rate they expected.

More at the link and posted in Reply #1....


This is ridiculous. If we can spend $500 billion on Bush's war in iraq, surely we can spend at least half that amount rebuilding Mississippi and Louisiana. It gets worse though...see reply #1


edited for spelling

[Rage for Order]

1. More....

The state is screwing up the aid disbursement big-time. The non-profit Road Home Corp. was setup as a state-chartered corp, and the Louisiana politicians are turning it into a boondoggle. To wit, from the article:

Moreover, the state has yet to fully set up the nonprofit corporation that will take ownership of as many as 15,000 bought-out properties under Road Home. The corporation has no executive director or staff, and the rules for handling the wrecked houses and other ruined pieces of property have yet to be spelled out. Altogether, as many as 15,000 crumbled, moldy homes and overgrown lots are expected to become state property. Then it would be up to the state-chartered Road Home Corp. to transfer the properties to the local governments and redevelopment authorities that are overseeing the rebuilding of the ruined neighborhoods.

Because of the slow processing of claims, New Orleans-area planners are still waiting to find out exactly which properties will be handed over to them. In addition, more than a year after the Legislature authorized creation of the nonprofit corporation, the rules to guide those transfers have not been written, and the staff to manage the process has not been hired.

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, a longtime critic of Road Home who sees the slow pace of aid disbursement as a major obstacle to the city's recovery, said Thursday that the lack of a policy for disposing of the bought-out homes is a major worry. In spite of "verbal commitments" from state officials that there shouldn't be a problem with transferring properties, "there's nothing in writing that we have found, and that needs to be solidified," he said.

Road Home Corp. has taken ownership of only a small number of properties — 75, according to the latest available statistics — but the count is expected to grow substantially in the coming months. Local planners and community groups need to know which properties they will receive, in order to make all sorts of land-use decisions, such as whether to redevelop lots, sell them to private developers or turn them into green space.



Edit to add: More than a YEAR after being authorized by the state legislature, the Road Home Corp still has no Executive Director or staff, no written rules on the transfer of the properties that are bought out, and no staff to manage the process. What the hell are they doing in Baton Rouge that they couldn't find the time to hire the staff for this project and develop a set of written rules for it sometime over the past YEAR???

[HCE SuiGeneris]

2. Government Gone Wrong

"A blight on the country and its people..." Authored by GWB and his neocon script writers.

The darkest days of the U.S. so far, are here and now.

[Rage for Order]

3. Don't want to edit yet again, so...

"Don Powell, President Bush's Gulf Coast recovery chief, said it was too soon to say whether the White House would seek additional aid for the program. "Just because there is a need does not necessarily mean that the federal taxpayers should be meeting that need."

While I disagree with him and think that the federal gov't should fund in the range of at least 70-80% of the rebuilding, I do have to say that there shouldn't be any more money allocated to this program until Louisiana actually has rules written for property transfer and people in place at the Road Home Corp. to do the work.