[StBernard] Road Home grants slowed

[Westley Annis]

Road Home grants slowed amid fed-backed changes, spokeswoman says

 
BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) - Louisiana's Road Home program won't hit its March
goal for doling out grants, partially because hundreds of homeowners are
canceling appointments amid confusion about federally backed changes to the
hurricane housing grant program.

Over 200 homeowners canceled grant closing appointments over the weekend
alone, and many are refusing to schedule appointments at all, citing the
changes in the way aid will be distributed, Road Home spokeswoman Gentry
Brann said Wednesday.
 
"We would love to see homeowners continue to close," Brann said.
 
Louisiana officials agreed to make disbursement changes to the Road Home
program, handing out grants in a lump sum check to homeowners without
mortgages, rather than piecemeal through escrow accounts administered by
lending institutions. 
 
Whether the program will make changes, and what type of changes, for
homeowners with mortgages still is being worked out.
 
Those changes for homeowners without mortgages begin April 2, coming after
the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development said it would require
lengthy and expensive environmental reviews if the state didn't change its
disbursement procedures. HUD oversees the $7.5 billion in federal aid used
to pay for the Road Home.
 
When they agreed to make changes, state officials had said they didn't
believe the adjustments would slow down the Road Home program.
 
But Brann said many homeowners seem to expect a better deal or an easier
process because of the changes, even though the final amount of aid they
receive and the process required to calculate that figure isn't slated to
change. Many homeowners want to wait to receive their grant in one check,
she said.
 
The latest delay, combined with computer software changes in early March
that also slowed down closings, will keep the Road Home from meeting its
goal of handing out 6,200 grants in March, Brann said.
 
"We'll be several thousand short," she said.
 
Of the 119,000 who have applied for aid, 4,373 have received grants through
the Road Home since it began, according to the latest data provided.
 
Homeowners seeking aid from the Road Home must determine if they want to
rebuild or take a buyout. Grants range up to $150,000. If homeowners choose
buyouts and plan to move out of Louisiana, they face penalties to their
grant awards.
 
The disbursement changes stemmed from a HUD decision that if homeowners were
required to get aid through escrow accounts, the Road Home would be deemed a
federal rehabilitation program and would be subject to the environmental
inspections required for such rehab programs.
 
It's still unclear how the Road Home will deal with homeowners with
mortgages, expected to still be required to have some sort of "disbursement
account." The Louisiana Recovery Authority, Gov. Kathleen Blanco's recovery
panel, was working out those details with banks and other lenders, a
spokeswoman said Wednesday.
 
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Oh I love this.  It seems they are going to punish the homeowners for things
THEY should have done in the first place!!
 
JLY