Homeowners Will Have Long Wait on Homeowner Grants

Homeowners Will Have Long Wait on Homeowner Grants: "The process will take time. The MDA says it will soon start sending out as many as 500 notices a day and that will take at least 34 days. It is the closing meetings that will take time. Homeowners have to appear in person at the closings to sign documents. If the MDA can handle a hundred closings a day, and each takes 15 minutes, which is an optimistic speed, it will take at least eight months to process all the claims. It is likely that many homeowners will not see a check any sooner than well into next year."

I suppose I'll take a break from rushing to the mailbox....

"Meanwhile, the state has said that they would use whatever is left of the money from the grant program to help Katrina-devastated cities. Money that would help them pay local matching money to received federal reconstruction grants."

The fact that they are planning on having money leftover from a program that will admittedly leave even the thousands that it will 'help' without enough funds to fully recover smacks of something more than mere 'inefficiency'. When the almost 4 billion was allotted to help homeowners without flood insurance (mostly due to the faulty federal flood maps) - I remember politicians stating it wouldn't be enough for everyone. Then the portion for the homeowners' was shaved down to 1 billion. The number of those eligible went from 30,000 to 25,000 and finally to 16,500... 101,000 people still living in FEMA trailers and we can't manage to help them with 4 billion dollars. I think someone could if that were the plan.. But it seems the plan is to follow the precedents set regarding relief funds coast-wide: Shove it at the municipalities rather than handing it over to the people who need it.

351 days since Hurricane Katrina and still working on our looming mental health crisis.