Concerned that survivors of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita could lose out
on federal funds for rebuilding their homes, POGO sent letters to the
Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) Inspector General
(IG) and Members of Congress.
The volunteer-run Citizens’ Road Home Action Team
(CHAT) brought to our attention the issues with HUD's The Road Home
program, which is designed to compensate homeowners affected by
Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita. CHAT has compiled hundreds
of egregious stories of applicants being given the runaround from ICF International —
the former contractor managing the program — and from Hammerman & Gainer Inc. — the new
contractor — such as being denied copies of their files and facing
extraordinary delays. For example, Road Home applicant John Lange
summarized his appeals process in a May 20, 2009
email to Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA) and other Members of Congress:
This process is coming up on three
years now. It has been filled with countless phone calls and letters
never answered. When you did get someone on the phone, they were almost
always totally incompetent and never helpful. Employees of the Road
Home were not allowed to respond in writing to any requests and often
denied having made statements in previous conversations. Total
deniability.
POGO asked the IG, as part of its audit of the program,
to contact some of the Road Home applicants who can provide detailed
accounts and documents about the extensive problems they encountered
when trying to access the funds HUD allocated to help them rebuild
their homes and lives in the wake of the two hurricanes.
POGO asked several Members of Congress who have jurisdiction over HUD
to hold off from approving the Louisiana Recovery Authority’s request
to divert the half- to one-billion dollars of uncommitted funds away
from The Road Home program.
We
recommend that no decisions about future uses of Road Home funding,
such as diversion to potentially worthwhile projects like hospital renovation and mobile health clinics,
should
be made until the results of the IG’s audit are publicly
released. We also recommend one way to ensure that all Road Home
applicants are awarded fair compensation for their loss: applicants’
appeals should be re-opened so they can be heard by Administrative Law
Judges, who at one point were the third-tier review panel for The Road
Home Program.
We’ll keep you posted on what we hear back from the IG and Congress.
-- Ingrid Drake