No help for Rita victims

This really pisses me off.

Two years after Hurricane Rita pushed deep into East Texas with devastating force that damaged or destroyed an estimated 75,000 homes, the state has spent less than one-tenth of 1 percent of the federal grant money set aside to repair or replace many of them.

Local and regional officials say the state has been slow in loosening the purse strings. State officials blame restrictive federal rules and a lack of money compared to Louisiana and Mississippi. Advocates of storm victims contend the entire process has been broken from the start.

"It really appears to me that the state has had an overabundance of caution to prevent fraud and abuse," said Walter Diggles, executive director of the Deep East Texas Council of Governments. "Every time we talk to them they say, 'Look, we don't want a Katrina,' or fraud with individual distributions."

The state and three regional councils of governments, or COGs, have distributed less than $200,000 of the more than a quarter-billion dollars available in two separate allocations of federal housing assistance. And more than $210 million has sat frozen for months while a state agency seeks to hire a private contractor, which isn't expected to have initial disbursements done until next summer.

[...]

The issue isn't whether the government should subsidize housing repairs for storm victims. That was decided in the months after the storm when Congress and President Bush allotted two large Community Development Block Grants to the Gulf Coast states. Gov. Rick Perry assigned Texas' share -- $74.5 million in the first round and $428.6 million in the second round -- to the state Department of Housing and Community Affairs.

Of that, $250.7 million was earmarked for housing -- $40.3 million was released in 2006 and $210.4 million this year. The larger sum is awaiting management by a contractor, who could be hired next month.

Last summer, it sounded like money was imminent.

"Housing assistance is now available for emergency repairs, rehabilitation and new construction," Beth Anderson, chairwoman of TDHCA's governing board, declared in a July 2006 press release. "We are certain that the COGs will move quickly to move these funds and help those who need it most."

Since then, only $183,428 had been spent from the first grant as of mid-September, 14 months after Anderson's statement. Thirteen households had been assisted out of 423 that have qualified.

Michael Gerber, the department's executive director, said he empathizes with the poor, disabled and elderly East Texans who have been waiting for the grant money. But he said the state must comply with rigorous federal eligibility guidelines while ensuring that taxpayers don't get defrauded.

"There's no doubt about it that we've been able to draw down these dollars for some period of time," Gerber said in referring to the first round, adding the state must take extra care because it's having to make do with far less than its neighbors to the east.

The difference, Gerber said, is that Mississippi and Louisiana have disbursed more than $4.5 billion between them because they received more resources and are simply writing up to $150,000 checks to individuals.

Texas went a different route, choosing to work directly with contractors who will do repairs or rebuilds rather than give out money without supervision.

"I believe that in Texas we have higher expectations of accountability and program performance," he said. "Those clearly weigh on this program as well, and given the challenging population to serve and a very challenged housing stock, there's just a lot of moving parts to this. It's made it tough to get those dollars out as quickly as I would want."

This is ridiculous. Certainly, we want to be prudent with the funds that have been allotted, but we've lost perspective here. If two full years after Hurricane Rita we've barely spent one percent of the money to help its victims, then we're too focused on the possibility of fraud, and not nearly focused enough on getting people back on their feet and into their houses. What exactly are our priorities here?

It's so frustrating. This is exactly the kind of thinking that led to the insistence by some Republicans on six-month renewal periods for CHIP. To prevent one ineligible kid from getting benefits, they'd let thousands more who were eligible fall off the rolls. We need to strike a better and fairer balance between those two needs.

Keith Billingsley, a former state trooper who now acts as Diggles' eyes and ears as an inspector for the Deep East Texas COG, said time and further damage -- especially through this rainy summer -- is making bad problems worse.

"I tell you what is frustrating is seeing a house that would have cost $5,000 to fix 30 days after the storm will now cost $30,000 to fix because it's just steadily deteriorating," Billingsley said.

Increased damage also has victim advocates worried that the $40,000 cap on the second round of assistance won't fix the problems.

The words "penny-wise but pound-foolish" don't quite do this justice, do they? Amazing.

One more thing: Where are the elected representatives for Newton County, where this story is set? Where are Kevin Brady, Tuffy Hamilton, and Robert Nichols? (I should include Todd Staples in that list, since he was the State Senator for Newton County for a year after Rita.) Maybe they have been busy working on behalf of these constituents of theirs, but if so you can't tell from the story. At the very least, someone should be asking them about this.

Posted by Charles Kuffner on September 23, 2007 to Hurricane Katrina