First the City, Now the State
The LRA board and OCD have their ears open as never before. Tens of thousands of applicants know they have been left dangling. There is no need to prove a
- problem with communication between the RHP and applicants,
- with the closings occurring at a rate that will kill the goal of the program,
- with a mess of the rules,
- with well-founded fears about how the land will be used by the Road Home Corporation.
The press knows, the applicants know, ICF and LRA and OCD and the Governor know. There is a huge set of problems.
The LRA Board heard it from CHAT’s Executive Boards’ statement. Frank Silvestri and I made critical input into it in the wee hours of Friday morning. Please find the time to help now!
New Orleans Councilman Arnie Fielkow, after reading our statement, has offered to help us. New Orleans Councilman Oliver Thomas, who attended the LRA Board meeting, and Lee Zurick of WWL-TV news both told me at the end that this statement that I read to the LRA Board was important and necessary for the Board to hear. The man quoted in the T-P article about the LRA Board meeting said as his first statement, “I want to tell you that everything that lady just said is true.” The woman after him said that a University of Michigan study showed that 85% of Road Home Program applicants interviewed had trouble making contact with RHP staff.
4 Comments | No Trackbacks |
comments feed  |
Many road home applicants received SBA loans to cover the gap where insurance did not cover rebuilding. Since Road home is supposedly concerned with closing the gap, then why can’t the Road home make a blanket rule that if you received an SBA loan then your funds will go to pay-off the real estate portion of your SBA loan. Many homeowners are in a worse position because we have our 1st mortgage and now a second SBA mortgage. SBA has already determined that there was a gap. SBA & the Road home program is requesting exactly the same information!! After gathering all the deeds, insurance information, etc – homeowners have to do it all over again. Have these agencies ever heard of sharing information or working together? If the Road Home would start with paying the SBA loan for real estate they could quickly fund thousands of applicants.
I can’t believe the slow pace of road home money. But then again, I can…..
Government greed, graft, misappropriations and no-bid contracts have cost the effected people of Katrina billions of earmarked dollars that could have helped rebuild the region.
Instead, this business-as-usual Government continues its assult on the poor, weak, and unconnected. With questions of Road Home land use hitting home in conjucuntion with the ULI reports of last year, it seems the power elite is proceedng according to its stated lines.
Default Greenspaces have taken over the lower ninth ward. Vital City services have been diverted from “red dot” areas of the city. Nearly half the population has not returned (The poor, mostly black half that is). Crime is out of control.
Brothers and Sisters it is time now, more than ever, to revolt against the oppressors that seek to redefine your culture and Disney-fy your world! Rise up! Speak your mind! Get together with your neighbors! March on City Hall again and again, until they FINALLY do listen! Don’t give up! Your time will come!!!
I’d like to get a walking tour of the software shops that are cobbling together all these nonsense awards. Must be a horror.
Did anyone notice that Michael Byrne had to “eat his pledge to push 500 awards a day”:http://www.nola.com/newslogs/tpupdates/index.ssf?/mtlogs/nola_tpupdates/archives/2007_01_10.html#223997 in January?
ICF consistently underestimates what the job will take – at every stage, there is simply not enough. Overwhelmed, they couldn’t imagine what 100,000+ destroyed homes means, while we unfortunately have had almost 17 months to understand it.
It’s slow, but it is moving. What I truly fear is the program grinding to a halt when the “grant letters generated” sum hits the $7 billion mark. Hope the accounting system can handle that one.
By the way, their attorney said that Road Home properties, resulting from Options 2 and 3, will be made part of the public record at the time of the closing.