As grant awards are increasing so have the number of disputes and complaints. ICF the contractor overseeing the program has had to taken additional steps to address the issues. The following report from the Times-Picayune discusses some of disputes and measures being taken by ICF.

Road Home grants are often contested

Firm beefs up staff to handle complaints

About a quarter of the 26,000 homeowners who have received final Road Home award letters are challenging the calculations on those coveted yellow sheets of paper, forcing the contractor running the program to dedicate more staff to complaints.

State contractor ICF International tracked about 7,200 called-in complaints before Jan. 11, with more than half of those remaining unresolved, according to state figures released this week. The complaints are about everything from underestimated pre-storm home values to inadequate storm-loss estimates to the lack of resolution of previous complaints.

A homeowner can file more than one complaint, but ICF officials believe the number of applicants seeking a resolution isn't much lower than the total complaints filed.

Some of those lodging complaints are applicants who have been told they will get no money. The number of Road Home award letters saying applicants will get nothing to fix their homes is nearly three times greater than the number who have received their grant money, the latest state count shows.

As of Jan. 18, 587 of 26,212 final award letters granted no money, while 215 homeowners had gone to closing with a title company to collect awards averaging $54,993.

Not surprisingly, some of the rejected applicants aren't taking the news well.

"Their evaluation of the property wasn't even the price of the lot," said Damien Regnard, president of Group Direct, an international marketing firm, whose final award letter informed him he would get no aid to fix his flooded West Lakeshore home.

According to Regnard, a private appraiser told him that his lot alone is worth more than the $317,833 pre-storm total property value Road Home used to calculate his nonexistent award. His home took on 4 feet of water, but Road Home set his total damage at $76,650. It cost him half that much to fix the air conditioning, he said.

Sad surprise

Meanwhile, applicants are reporting new problems. Mary Ann Cardinale, a medical insurance sales agent from Lakeview, got a call from ICF on Wednesday at 8 p.m. -- 12 hours before her scheduled closing -- saying her award was being reduced by $41,000. Cardinale had been a defender of the Road Home program, which appeared to be making her whole, albeit slowly. No more.

"I don't know what could have happened between Nov. 3 (when she got her final award letter) and 12 hours before the closing, and they had no information for me," she said Thursday.

ICF spokeswoman Gentry Brann said she couldn't address specifics in Cardinale's case because of privacy constraints, but acknowledged that "we did have some evaluations that had to be redone."

She said ICF would look into Cardinale's case and work with her to address her concerns. Brann said ICF is working out details of a new state policy that would allow people in Cardinale's situation to close and collect an initial amount without forfeiting their right to appeal for more money. ICF has provided additional training and shifted more than 130 employees into a new system for resolving issues, Brann said. The company is rolling out a three-level problem-resolution system, has vowed not to use voicemail and promises to keep better track of complaints.

Adding agents

Until recently, 25 agents have been assigned to resolving problems whenever applicants call (888) ROAD-2-LA and select prompt No. 6.

On Jan. 18, ICF started a second-level resolution team with 25 additional employees. The next day, ICF checked how many people hung up the phone while on hold, and decided to double the team to 50 agents by Wednesday, Brann said.

On Thursday, those agents resolved about 20 percent of the calls, Brann said. Whenever that team isn't enough to resolve the problems, ICF will use a new computerized issue tracker database and a staff of 82 to handle the complaints.

But for people like Cardinale and Regnard, the problem isn't with the employees answering the phones or calling them back. Both said agents they spoke with were local homeowners facing their own Road Home problems.

Officials at ICF like to point out that 75 percent of its employees were affected by the storms, and the company makes such employees go to one of the 11 offices they don't work at to avoid any possible conflicts of interest.

"I was really harsh on the phone, but they were very good, and it did not escalate," Cardinale said. "So, I can only think it (the problem) goes all the way to the top. The girl who called me said she thought our damage assessment changed, but she wasn't sure. I mean, how do they put these people in a position to make a call like this and not arm them with information?"

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