Home rebuilding program in Louisiana has faced struggles, five years after Katrina

Five years after the flood caused by the failure of the levees in New Orleans, tens of thousands of homeowners remain displaced. The Louisiana Recovery Authority says that as of August, its Road Home program had spent over $9 billion to help homeowners rebuild. It was the largest disaster recovery operation in US history. Zoe Sullivan has more about the problems with the program and lessons that could be learned for the future.

TRANSCRIPT:

The New Orleans City Council Chamber was near capacity during recent hearings on the Road Home program. The state officials testified and residents told stories of frustration and anguish. In this exchange, the Chair of the State Legislature Select Committee on Hurricane Recovery, Neil Abramson, challenged Disaster Recovery Unit Deputy Director Lara Robertson on whether -- five years after the storm -- residents would finally get money to rebuild.

LARA ROBERTSON: ...we've about gone through every regulation that we possibly can, and the pipeline is going to open up.

NEIL ABRAMSON: I haven't seen the pipeline open up if we have 12,000 people stuck in the pipeline. I think we're looking at this as the traditional hurricane recovery program. That's the problem -- the traditional recovery programs haven't worked. Let's be untraditional and get one that works.

Many residents have struggled to get funding through the program including Vanessa Billiot, a lifetime resident of Plaquemines Parish, the southernmost part of Louisiana. Her home was flattened by Katrina.    

VANESSA BILLIOT: They short-changed a lot of people. Now they're talking about sending it to the different parishes. Honey, if they send it to my parish, we won't see it.

Billiot and other residents have encountered problems with one of the most controversial aspects of the Road Home program: the decision to use the lower value of a home before the storm or the cost to repair it.

BILLIOT: I appealed my pre-storm value repeatedly. We have to go with the lesser of the amount. But my problem is the pre-storm value isn't going to help me with the re-building cost.

When the Road Home program was first rolled out, it would award up to $150,000 for rebuilding or repair costs. In August 2006, the program adopted the lower-value calculation. According to the research group Policy Link, this change left about 80% of New Orleans homeowners and nearly 70% of homeowners elsewhere in the state without enough money to rebuild. A federal judge issued a temporary injunction on August 16th halting the use of this formula. The court said that the impact of the formula was likely discriminatory, a point that could support a lawsuit filed by housing advocates against HUD, the Louisiana Recovery Authority, and the initial Road Home contractor, Virginia-BASED ICF International.

State officials argue that this injunction doesn't represent a final decision on the case. Robin Keegan is the Executive Director of the Louisiana Office of Community Development, which has been responsible for the Road Home program since Governor Jindal took office in 2008. Keegan criticized the Stafford Act, which regulates government disaster response.

ROBIN KEEGAN: The rules at the federal level do not work for catastrophic disasters, and they don't need to be implemented. We need new tools, we need new rules….We've been fighting for years for multiple changes within the Stafford Act.

While Keegan placed blame on federal policy, advocates have also criticized her agency, and others responsible for implementing the program. One of the most vocal critics is Melanie Ehrlich, a professor of biochemistry at Tulane Medical Center. Ehrlich lives in Gentilly, one of the neighborhoods hardest hit by the floods. Seeing her neighbors wrangle with bureaucracy as they tried to rebuild prompted Ehrlich to co-found the Citizens' Road Home Action Team or CHAT.

Ehrlich said Road Home applicants were often mis-informed or forced to provided the same documents multiple times. She said that to improve management of disaster recovery programs, the federal government has to be involved.

MELANIE EHRLICH: What needs to be done is to make government work for the people. And for someone in the federal government, because this is federal money, to take charge and say, "Yes, we will exercise oversight." The HUD Office of the Inspector General has investigated complaints -- a tiny number of complaints -- of applicant fraud. They have investigated nothing about the scandalous treatment of tens of thousands of Road Home applicants.

Officials at the hearings said that at least 12,000 people are still waiting to get funds through one segment of the Road Home program.

Across the city, about 50,000 empty homes and lots still blight New Orleans' landscape.

Zoe Sullivan, FSRN, New Orleans