The Authentic Eccentric

Fourteen months after Katrina, the pace of rebuilding has slowed to a crawl. As I noted in my earlier post, there remains a significant difference between the “photo op” spots of New Orleans versus what residents of New Orleans are actually experiencing.

Today’s NYT has an update on the Road Home program designed to help New Orleans homeowners to rebuild. The numbers don’t look encouraging:

Though nearly 79,000 families have applied to the program, called the Road Home, only 1,721 have been told how much grant money they will receive. And just 22 have received access to the cash [emphasis mine], which was provided by federal taxpayers and is being distributed by the state.

In some of those 22 cases, the grant amounts were far less than the value of the property:

Michael M. Homan, a professor of theology at Xavier University, is among the few who has been told how much he can get to repair his badly damaged house in the Mid-City neighborhood. But Professor Homan thinks the amount he was offered, about $64,000, is too low.

That is because the program assigned a prestorm value to his house of $146,000, less than he paid for it in 2002 and about $40,000 less than the appraisal when he refinanced his mortgage the next year. So he has appealed, and is hoping that his grant will be increased. Because he writes about his experiences on the Internet his results are being anxiously watched by other applicants.

Much of New Orleans still lies in ruins. Federal and state programs can only help if you have access to them, and the amount and pace of funds flowing into New Orleans isn’t helping those who need it most.

I urge you to take a moment and contact your representative in Congress about the pace of funds flowing into the Gulf so that those who want to return, can.