The Sun Herald | 07/07/2006 | Homeowner checks to start being mailed next week

The Sun Herald | 07/07/2006 | Homeowner checks to start being mailed next week: "The governor's office expects the first of thousands of Katrina homeowner-grant checks to be mailed starting next week, in spite of opposition from mortgage companies and watchdog groups who say the program is ripe for fraud.

'I'm guessing the process will take several weeks, but this is the beginning of the closing process,' Buddy Bynum, spokesman for Gov. Haley Barbour, said Thursday. 'Our position is we're moving forward until every nickel of this money is in the hands of an applicant that needs it desperately.'

In an unprecedented, nearly $4 billion program approved by Congress and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Mississippi is providing federal grants of up to $150,000 each to homeowners who lived outside the federal flood plain but lost their houses to Katrina's water. Louisiana is conducting a similar grant program.

The Mississippi Development Authority, administering the federal HUD grants in this state, began taking applications in April. More than 16,500 have applied.

Payouts had been delayed in recent weeks because of opposition filed with HUD from the Mortgage Bankers Association, Citizens Against Government Waste, Catholic Charities USA and numerous other organizations.

They say by giving the money directly to homeowners instead of going through mortgage companies, recipients will be more susceptible to con artists and scammers and the arrangement will mean many hard-hit neighborhoods won't be rebuilt."

So if they give the money to us directly there is the possibility that we may fall victim to scammers or con-artists... but if they give the money to the mortgage companies then it's not just a possibility - it's a given.