Katrina Aid Program Is $2.9 Billion Short

Didn't see this posted, sorry if a dupe

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/11/AR2007051102366.html?hpid=topnews

NEW ORLEANS, May 11 -- The massive federally funded program for rebuilding Louisiana homes is short nearly $3 billion, administrators told a state legislative panel here today, leaving uncertain for now how the owners of roughly 100,000 flood-wrecked houses here will be compensated.

The report represented the latest crisis for the aid effort initially created to distribute $6.9 billion in federal money to the owners of homes destroyed or damaged by Hurricane Katrina who lacked enough insurance money to rebuild.

More than 20 months after the Katrina catastrophe, tens of thousands of houses remain vacant, in part because of administrative delays in the aid program, the largest single source of direct federal help for homeowners. To date, only 16,000 of 130,000 applicants have received money.

Now, ICF Consulting, the Fairfax firm hired to administer the claims as part of Louisiana's Road Home program, projects that the allotted aid budget of $6.9 billion will fall $2.9 billion short of the claims from homeowners who have been promised checks.

The report set off a flurry of negotiating and political posturing over the origins of the shortfall and source of the additional money for the program.

(end snip)

Almost two years out, and people are still waiting. It really boggles the mind.

unused trailers, shipping ice to Maine, and assorted other idiocies . . .

After Katrina, someone here posted the approximate amount of money people in the NOLA area had paid in premiums and other extra costs to the large insurance companies...good money in the event of a major flood or other catastrophe...billions of dollars paid in over years. Some of these people had paid in for 30 plus years...never to press a claim...only with the promise that if something terrible happened, that someone would look out for them. Then came the booooshie bail-out.

The flood of contractor money and promises of even more gave the insurance companies an out. The federal government all but gave them the cover to play the bullshit games of wind damage vs. water damage and other tricks that have added to the misery of many in that region...the same people who paid those premiums without question and should have gotten this matter resolved within in weeks if not months of the storm. But why bother...when there's a promised federal bail-out down the road...just hang onto the money cause it'll be the taxpayers who will eventually be holding the bag.

And of course, Joe Liebermann sees nothing wrong here. How dare those ingrates on the Gulf coast want an investigation...what do they think they are? Dirty FUckin' hippies????