Housing counselor Debra Griffins of Beacon of Hope Resource Center places a sign requesting help in finding the owner in front of a home in the 6100 block of Marigny Street in Gentilly that has been abandoned since Hurricane Katrina.
Posted on 05/08/2011 1:30:38 PM PDT by BBell
In 2009 and early 2010, Beacon of Hope, a grass-roots recovery support group, surveyed thousands of Orleans Parish properties and found that as many as a third of those with Road Home grants had not begun to rebuild.
Grant recipients face may legitimate hardships, but few of their neighbors can stomach their getting Road Home aid only to leave a property blighted. When Beacon of Hope released its survey findings last year, founder Denise Thornton blasted the state for “lackadaisical” enforcement of covenants requiring Road Home grant recipients to rebuild and reoccupy their houses within three years. The state Disaster Recovery Unit responded by announcing plans for “more robust monitoring.”
A year after making that promise, and nearly five years after the launching the largest housing aid program in U.S. history, the state has finally begun visible enforcement measures.
For more than 90,000 of the 117,785 Road Home grant recipients who elected to rebuild their homes, the three-year deadline to finish their work has passed. The state is in the midst of assessing how many have complied and if they haven’t, why.
Some owners appear to have absconded with the money. But others were coerced into paying off mortgages or were ripped off by unscrupulous contractors. Some were waiting to start repairs until they collected a separate hazard mitigation grant under another state-run, federally financed program, which didn’t start paying in earnest until late last year. Still others were caught short when the Small Business Administration swooped in at the closing table and intercepted their Road Home grants to pay off SBA disaster loans.
The Road Home itself may be responsible for the biggest group of shortchanged grant recipients. The grant formula gave less money to homeowners in lower-valued neighborhoods, leaving many far short of what they need to cover construction costs. In fact, demographer
(Excerpt) Read more at nola.com ...
Housing counselor Debra Griffins of Beacon of Hope Resource Center places a sign requesting help in finding the owner in front of a home in the 6100 block of Marigny Street in Gentilly that has been abandoned since Hurricane Katrina.
Unintended consequences. Duh!
Any program that gives away taxpayer money has problems.
I wish them luck and success in locating and prosecuting.
Good luck getting the money back! Another welfare scam!
They got the money, hey
You know they got away
They headed down south and they’re still running today
Singin go on take the money and run
.....
Actually they headed up North.
The gm, Cadillac dealership did well also.
No one in their right mind would go back to a home, flooded out in New Orleans, and rebuild. The chance of it happening again is too great and the first time traumatic.
The idea of this program was stupid from the start. I hope some of these people have relocated away from flooding hazards and I’ll wager that many never received any Federal money; it was diverted elsewhere before they could receive any of it.
Someone got rich but I doubt it was the flood victims.
If it were the Amish, all they'd have to do is profess repentance and they'd get away with it, too. It's good that an attempt to track down this money is being made, at least.
Exactly. It's disgusting that my tax dollars were spent to rebuild in a geologically idiotic place for development!
The idea of this program was stupid from the start. I hope some of these people have relocated away from flooding hazards and I’ll wager that many never received any Federal money; it was diverted elsewhere before they could receive any of it.
Exactly right.
Now I have several friends that were not insured and their story goes like this. First they got $28,000 from FEMA, then church groups came to my little town and completely striped the houses down to bare 2x4's (I helped them on a few homes) church groups also cleaned up the property. So all they had to do was rewired the home, put up sheet rock and redo kitchens and bathrooms. Easily done on 28k if you do some/most of the work yourself. Well after the homes were rebuild and reoccupied Galveston County condemns them! WTF? Turns out that if 28k was more the 50% of appraised value the house is automatically condemned, again WTF?
$28,000 tax payer dollars down the drain for no damn reason. But the county will now build all these people brand new homes at a cost of $120,000+ per home. Everyone that was not insured is now getting a brand new free home, all of which are nicer than my old still beat up not one dime of government money home.
I figured the County is just looking for ways to up the property taxes around here, now they get to tax a $150,000 home instead of the $50,000 home.
Well I have learned my lesson, no more insurance for me, I could not get insured anyway, they bought this house once they are not going to buy it again. Guess I am riding on government now, hope they are as generous if we get another hurricane as they have been up till now.
Many of the houses in New Orleans didn’t have clear title. The only way to clear title is to take it to tax sale, and then put it back on the market. After 5 years of no tax payments, you’d think they’d get around to starting the process.
“Someone got rich but I doubt it was the flood victims.”
The truth, nothing but the truth.
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