Katrina Victims May Have to Repay Money

[unapatriciated]

NEW ORLEANS — Imagine that your home was reduced to mold and wood framing by Hurricane Katrina.

Desperate for money to rebuild, you engage in a frustrating bureaucratic process, and after months of living in a government-provided trailer tainted with formaldehyde you finally win a federal grant.

Then a collector calls with the staggering news that you have to pay back thousands of dollars.

Thousands of Katrina victims may be in that situation.
A private contractor under investigation for the compensation it received to run the Road Home grant program for Katrina victims says that in the rush to deliver aid to homeowners in need some people got too much. Now it wants to hire a separate company to collect millions in grant overpayments.

A private contractor under investigation for the compensation it received to run the Road Home grant program for Katrina victims says that in the rush to deliver aid to homeowners in need some people got too much. Now it wants to hire a separate company to collect millions in grant overpayments
The contractor, ICF International of Fairfax, Va., revealed the extent of the overpayments when it issued a March 11 request for bids from companies willing to handle "approximately 1,000 to 5,000 cases that will necessitate collection effort."

They want people to pay for their incompetence and their mistakes. What they need to be is aggressive about finding the underpayments," he said. "People relied, to their detriment, on their (ICFs) expertise and rebuilt their houses and now they want to squeeze this money back out of them."

The prospect of Road Home grant collections comes less than two weeks after the Louisiana inspector general and the legislative auditor said they were investigating why former Gov. Kathleen Blanco paid ICF an extra $156 million in her waning days in office to administer the program. With the increase, ICF stands to earn $912 million to run Road Home, a contract that also sweetened its initial public stock offering, and helped it buy out four other companies. It now reaches into government contracting sectors that include national defense and the environment.

http://www.comcast.net/news/articles/general/2008/03/29/Katrina.Collections/

One more Fuck up for this Administration. I think ICF should have to pay this out of their $912 million earnings.

[MadMaddie]

1. Hell yea...these corporations have not been held accountable

Congress needs to implement prosecution of these companies.

[Suich]

2. This is outrageous!

I missed this thread last night...just saw it in the paper.

ICF Int'l has been grossly inept in administering Road Home grants. To ask for more funds to pay for their negligence is unreal. It's been over three years and people are still waiting for their grant applications to be processed.

:mad:

[mac2]

3. Are the private contractors going to pay us for their fraud and

robbery?

[Firespirit]

4. K&R

The repukes never stop screwing these poor people, do they?

:grr: :grr: :grr:
:nuke: