HUD OKs $4.2B for La. rebuilding program

[brooklynite]

NEW ORLEANS - The federal government will pay $4.2 billion into a program to help Louisiana residents rebuild or sell houses severely damaged by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, officials said Tuesday.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development also announced it would provide $1 billion for hurricane-related housing needs in Mississippi, Texas, Alabama and Florida, and called on those states to apply for the additional money.

Louisiana's $4.2 billion will be added to federal allocations the state had already received to fully fund its more-than-$9 billion "Road Home" program for hurricane recovery.

"It was clear to me that Louisiana desperately needs this additional funding to implement its plans to bring its citizens back home," Deputy Secretary Roy A. Bernardi said in a joint federal and state press release. "HUD will work very closely with Gov. Blanco and the Louisiana Recovery Authority to help pave the road home for thousands of residents desperate to rebuild their own lives."

Bernardi planned to announced the grants at an afternoon briefing with Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco in New Orleans.

The "Road Home" program is intended to provide Louisiana residents up to $150,000 to rebuild or sell houses severely damaged by the storms, using grants to cover repair costs above what was covered by insurance policies and FEMA grants.

About 123,000 home owners and owners of about 80,000 apartments are eligible for the program, state officials have said. About 90,000 have already signed up, officials said.

Blanco has said that the Louisiana Recovery Authority, which oversees the program, expects eligible homeowners to begin getting checks by late summer.

"Never before in American history has any state been forced to rebuild so many homes so quickly," Blanco said. "This $4.2 billion means homeowners have real options — options to repair, rebuild or sell their homes."

Apartment shortages, combined with increasing insurance premiums for people who own buildings in areas hard-hit by Hurricane Katrina on Aug. 29 or Rita on Sept. 24, have also created hardships with rents rising 20 percent or more in many cases.

For people who sell their property and can demonstrate continued permanent residence in the state, the grants cover the difference between a home's pre-storm value and post-storm insurance settlements and FEMA grants.

Owners who take the "sell" option and have moved out of Louisiana state can only get 60 percent of their home's pre-storm value.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060711/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/katrina_housing_2

9/11 response - 10 days

Katrina response - 10 months

[BOSSHOG]

1. Less than what we are wasting in Iraq in a month

[partylessinOhio]

2. "Road Home" sending my red flags up! More money for Halliburton &

all those illegals who are working while the Katrina victims don't have jobs.

Pay the victims directly with no strings attached. Let them spend their money the way they see fit. Most of them will make good decisions and some will screw up but big brother & Halliburton need to stay out of it.

[KamaAina]

3. Road Home program has major flaws

I actually analyzed it on behalf of an emerging neighborhood organization for which I have been cyber-volunteering:

http://www.pnola.org

Basically, the program has separate types of grants for owner-occupants and for owners of rental units. Trouble is, much of New Orleans' housing stock consists of "double shotguns", houses built to fit on long, thin lots, then divided down the middle. Originally, back before AC, the idea was to have the kitchen all the way at the back, as far from the living area as possible. Typically, a family will buy a double, live in one side, and rent out the other. Herein lies the problem with the Road Home program. It essentially forces such a family to choose between getting a grant to rehab the side they live in, or the side they wish to rent out; it explicitly forbids them from getting both. This will present major problems for homeowner-renters in many of the older neighborhoods in the city, and obviously also for the neighborhoods themselves.

[pitohui]

6. don't make the best the enemy of the good

this gets at least some people back in their homes that otherwise could not afford it

[KamaAina]

9. Well, we should at least ask for a "Road Home: Shotgun Edition"

this gets at least some people back in their homes that otherwise could not afford it

True dat. But, the people it doesn't get back in are largely the lower income, and the African American ones. You've just got to wonder how all those months of planning could have been expended to come up with something like this that ignores the basic housing structure of the city that it is largely designed to help rebuild.

Surely you haven't been in the "Great White North" of St. Tammany :rofl: :thumbsup: so long that you can't picture what a block in, say, Mid-City will be like if half of (nearly) every double remains vacant?

[pitohui]

10. mid city will be fine

jeezus, one of my friends said his house in mid city has doubled in appraised value since the storm -- he said a house down the street just sold for $600K, a staggering sum!!!!

every neighborhood won't come back, we simply can't and shouldn't support the same population but mid-city will be fine and many property owners there are going to become quite wealthy if they can ride out the hike in property taxes

of course those people aren't the ones who will be selling their homes to the gov't, because they do have sufficient insurance

it is certain areas in some of the poor areas, say in some of the poorer and lower areas of gentilly, where people won't come back and where they will do just as well or better to take the cash buy-out of 60 percent to move to a different state -- as in the story below of my elderly friend (post # 8)

she just can't be asked to live in a trailer for years and rebuild a home in gentilly at her age, there is no way she could rebuild another house for less than twice the appraised pre-storm value of her old home anyway

many people will be better off somewhere else and we should let them go, especially the vulnerable older people who will no longer have access to sufficient medical care around here

nobody's double is remaining vacant, one of my friends is a gentilly landlord and for the first time ever, as soon as he was able to repair his doubles, he has actually been able to rent them all and have everybody actually pay -- this is a way new thing for new orleans, let me tell you

[onehandle]

4. "home owners and owners of about 80,000 apartments"

Poor folks need not apply.

[pitohui]

7. this is a program to replace homes

what part of that did you miss?

many of these homeowners would drop from the middle or working class to the ranks of the poor, since they are too old now to start over, i'm not sure what part of helping them offends or why it would be in the best interest of the country to keep formerly prosperous and contributing people in trailers and tents forever

for the majority of people in louisiana who couldn't afford insurance, the ONLY possession they ever owned of any value was their home, and if you had seen some of these homes, owned by people who have never seen a dentist in their lives and who have never had health insurance, you would be shocked, not all homes owned in new orleans were owned by the wealthy or middle class, that is a very california assumption

without such a program many of these people would NEVER own their own homes again


so i would consider them poor even if they aren't quite miserable enough for your taste!

hell, some of these homes were prob. valued at all of $35K or so, in other words, you couldn't buy a doghouse for that in some states

[pitohui]

8. i will give an example

one of my friends is a senior who lived in gentilly

her husband died when she was around 30 and as a woman working in those days, she was never able to earn any real money although she never took any welfare either, she had a job but it just paid for food and schooling for her kid, it didn't go to extras like homeowner's insurance, now she is retired many years and in her 70s

her house before katrina was worth about $40,000 -- yes, there were homes on her block that sold for $20K more but she had termites and the ceiling coming down in the living room and, frankly, you'd be amazed, we did a little work from time to time but didn't have the competence for any major jobs (like the ceiling) -- basically she lived there because it was the only home she had ever owned and she couldn't afford to go anywhere else

well she evacuated which is fortunate, because her neighborhood was completely destroyed and some other old people who stayed behind drowned

this woman now has absolutely nothing except a tiny social security check each month based on the tiny income she was able to earn as a female in this country and she is now living w. in laws in another state

the 60% percent of the value of her house that she will get thru this program won't buy her another house but it will least allow her to contribute to her own upkeep and maintain her dignity a little longer, it will do some tiny something to ameliorate the damage caused by losing the only possession of any small value she ever owned after a lifetime of work

yes, this woman was a homeowner -- but to say that she is not poor is fairly ridiculous in my book -- the 60% she can get for selling the home to the fed gov't and staying out of the state will make a difference to her financially

[Joanne98]

5. There's got to be a catch. Jeb was involved in HUD scams....

Back in the 80's. Keep an eye on this one.

This woman accused Bush one of embezzling a trillion dollars from HUD.

She said she did the accounting. Interesting story.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catherine_Austin_Fitts