Finding the ‘Road Home’ in Louisiana

Louisiana officials expect 123,000 homeowners with damage from hurricanes Katrina and Rita are eligible to receive grants from the state’s $7.5 billion “Road Home” housing aid program,
The Associated Press reported. Aid is capped at $150,000 per homeowner and can be used to repair a hurricane-damaged home; rebuild a hurricane-leveled home; buyout and relocate elsewhere in Louisiana; or buyout and move to another state.

Homeowners who choose the last option will only receive up to 60 percent of their homes’ pre-storm value, up to the grant cap.

A pilot program has begun to determine the assistance available to 400 homeowners who pre-registered for the Road Home program. That will be expanded when housing assistance centers open in 10 locations around the state to process applications. The path to a grant is lengthy; it begins with pre-registration at 1-888-ROAD-2-LA or www. road2LA.org.

Decisions are pending about which neighborhoods can be rebuilt, and it is unclear what will be done with any property bought out through the program. The scores of hurricane damaged properties expected to be bought by the state will be received by a newly created nonprofit corporation that will decide what to do with them.

The properties will be packaged and redeveloped by working with local officials, said Andy Kopplin, executive director of the governor’s Louisiana Recovery Authority, which developed the Road Home program. But local redevelopment plans aren’t yet defined in New Orleans and St. Bernard Parish, two of the hardest hit areas, for example.

Copyright 2006 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Topics Louisiana Hurricane Homeowners