Take the Long Road Home

One of the questions most frequently asked by critics of the New Orleans recovery is "what happened to all that Federal money?" David Winkler-Schmit, in this week's Gambit Weekly, answers part of that question with a meticulously reported piece on the less-well-known half of Louisiana's Road Home program (the compensation for homeowners half is well known, and widely derided for slowness and bureaucracy).

The "Small Rental Property Program," supposedly designed to deal with the peculiarity of New Orleans rental housing -- most landlords own four units or fewer -- has instead become a Kafkaesque nightmare, teasing people with the illusion of almost enough assistance to begin rebuilding, while, in fact, giving them nothing: no payments occur until the owner has secured financing, rebuilt, and re-rented to a low-income tenant, with reams of paperwork to document every step.

Rest easy, there will be no fraud: so far, not one New Orleans landlord has received an SRPP check.

Comments

[brooklyncitizen]

Remind me again why we pay taxes...we are currently carrying the heaviest tax burden in history...what the hell for?

[Liberal2]

Harry,

As you appear to be responding to posters remarks, regarding government action and inaction, I have received a letter from a government agency you will be interested in. I would like to mail (or e-mail or fax) a copy to you.
HARRY SAYS: You can email it to me at
[e-mail]

[Halsey]

Harry...great post, as usual..and interesting comments from all...(well.most)..

question: Doesn't it irk you beyone irkdom that the democratic and yes..repub debates never have a moderator ask about New Orleans and Katrina and how the debacle is an in your face example of our crumbling infrasture...no mention of the bridge in Minneapolis either..which...will probably be fixed in time for the repub convention... NO SHOULD have fought tooth and nail for the repub convention!!!...it would have, by now, be restored to its former grandeur..I'd bet paris hilton's bottom dollar on it!

[ChiGuy]

This is one of those situations where conservatives always complain about the lack of "good" news reporting coming out of New Orleans.

To date, not one single story I have heard or read about government programs promised by Bush and FEMA, has been positive. Every one has been a tale of ridiculous qualifying restrictions, bureaucratic bungling, and daunting mountains of paperwork obviously created to deter people from taking advantage of the programs supposedly available.

On the scale of massive governmental failures, New Orleans is second only to Iraq, and it is 100% due the the biggest failure in presidential history.

[Beatitudes]

Book I in the New Orleans Trilogy, The Beatitudes, is based on Dante's Purgatorrio.
Book II is almost finished and is entitled The Book Burners. After reading about this, and not only the abandonement but utter cruelty of the powers in this country, I now know that I was right to base this book on Inferno. The third book would have to be based on Paradisio. But lord, I suppose I'll have to switch to Paradise Lost!
Lyn LeJeune - The Beatitudes Network- Rebuilding the Public Libraries of New Orleans
*Mr Shearer - I sure would like to send you a copy of The Beatitudes - [e-mail]

[azureblue]

Some nice facts & quotes:
Bush didn't ask a single question during the final government-wide briefing the day before Katrina struck on Aug. 29 but assured soon-to-be-battered state officials: "We are fully prepared".
A report on fraud & abuse:
http://oversight.house.gov/story.asp?ID=1097

Donald Powell, recovery czar for the Gulf Coast, publicly made this statement regarding the survivors of the federal levee breaches. He said, "...the federal government is responsible for this hurricane damage because of the failure of the levee system...."

This is the very first statement ever out of the White House that accepts responsibility for the failure of the federal flood protection system in Louisiana.

Powell made this statement regarding Louisiana's Road Home payments to homeowners who suffered only wind damage implying that only flood damaged homeowners deserved compensation. Nonetheless, this statement by a representative of the White House is the very first that admits responsibility for the flood protection failures.

[realitytrumpsbull]

I think if they really wanna help Nawlins, then
somebody needs to write to the state government
of Louisiana, and ask them to purchase about
200 truckloads of things like cinder block,
roof trusses, plumbing pipe, window glass,
and whatnot. Deliver all that to city hall
in Nawlins, and start letting people rebuild homes on ELEVATED foundations this time.
If your house is on 10-foot pilings, then
you can have a lot of flood water wash by
and not affect you. IF you go back and
rebuild out of crap like plywood and
fiberboard and drywall and the rest of the
conventional stuff, and don't address the
flood danger in the basic structure of the
house, then you've got another problem waiting
to happen when the NEXT flood rolls in.
Do it right, or don't do it at all.
HARRY RESPONDS: A lot of folks in NO are elevating their homes, a shot of one lifted ten feet up is included in my "
"Crescent City Stories" videos at mydamnchannel.com. The problem is that many people calculated the rate of elevation needed on the basis of the flood maps issued by the Corps, which have now--see other post today--been rendered inoperative, due to the replacement of a plus sign by a minus sign (!). Your Army Corps in action.

[lastams]

Like everything else with the rebuilding process, I guess this shouldn't suprise.
For years now, we have been going toe to toe with the SBA, who approved a loan and distributed 10 thousand dollars before then deciding to cancle the loan ...
Their reasons vary; they seem to come up with a new one each week, each more bizarre than the last.
In July the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship held hearings to investigate 8000 such loans that were wrongly cancled last year. Like all government agencies in this administration, the SBA simply denies wrong doing and refuses to cooperate. As always, the hearings produced a few photo ops and little recourse for those actually affected.
In the meantime we are left with an unliveable house and an additional 10 thousand dollars of debt while being billed for payments on the full 60 thousand which we were promised.
As I'm sure Mr. Shearer and anyone else actually living in New Orleans knows, our story is not unique. In fact it is par for the course.
In Gentilly and East New Orleans where the National Guard still patrols and weeds and gangs have recaptured entire neighborhoods, we are left worse than forgotten, with our own government actively working against us.
We thank people like Mr. Shearer for reminding the rest of the country that things are not well in the Big Easy simply because the River Sliver has been rebuilt and the tourists can drink all night.

[DaveMacaray]

Harry: Let me ask if you're not a little nervous or uncomfortable whipping up all this contempt for federal agencies (and by extension, for the federal govenment itself).

In no way is this a criticism of the substance of your remarks. I'll be the first to say that you've opened some eyes about this. But you've also aroused the libertarian knuckle-heads out there (go back and read their posts) who hate their own government.

I'm a believer in federalism, and have been since I was a high school student. I'm an unabashed fan of the federal government. Not the one that lied to us about WMD in Iraq, but the one that established the first universal free education in the world, won World War II, and sent troops to Little Rock, Arkansas, to integrate their schools.

Giant corporations frighten me way more than the "government" does. And the fact that these very corporations delight in hearing all this anti-government crap from Joe Citizen makes me ill.
HARRY RESPONDS: To me, the problem is that Democrats refuse to make the case for government effectiveness: demanding accountability for agencies (FEMA, the Corps) who have so clearly failed their mission, and standing up for the premise that there are certain functions only government can perform. One can certainly question whether, in the anti-government precincts of the executive branch, failure of government agencies to perform as advertised is viewed as a negative or a positive.

[mae692]

Since SRPP began, it has announced more than $502 million in conditional awards, which was supposed to produce 11,507 apartment units " including 9,975 affordable units for low-income tenants " in a total of 5,939 properties. To date, not one landlord has received any of these dedicated funds.

By contrast, ICF International, the company that stands to make a total of $756 million for running this and other Road Home programs, so far has taken in $16.7 million from the SRPP.

http://www.icfi.com

I don't know if they're connected or not but they seem to be one of those 'consulting' companies the current government can't throw enough money at.

[mae692]

Harry,
it's working exactly the way it's designed to work. They "the governm't" can say "We have a program to address that". The spouses and children of well connected insiders are collecting fat paychecks for 'administering' said program.

And then, surprise, surprise - if anybody ever gets a dollar from the program they're be those same insiders.

[tangerinesong]

Harry,

There is $2 billion in federal tax payer dollars sitting in Louisiana"s bank. Why can"t State and local leaders learn how to fill out the appropriate paper work to disburse this money?

Therein lies the rub.

TS
HARRY RESPONDS: Silly me, I thought the "rub" lay in President Bush's Jackson Square pledge to remove "red tape" to speed the flow of relief money.

[Rumplestiltskin]

Why are you constantly surprised when government organizations are inept? That is the rule, not the exception.

[CAFT]

Thank you for bringing this up and for keeping the spotlight on post-Katrina goings-on in general!