Three Stories/Columns Worth Reading

Posted by  mark

Here are three stories/columns worth reading:

Story in the Times Picayune on Denise Thorton and Beacon of Hope, the neighborhood group helping put Lakewood back together again…Click HERE for the story.

Two columns by Clancy DuBos in this weeks (9/5/06) Gambit Weekly…
“Commentary” and “Politics“.

The Road to Frustration Program

Posted by  mark

I have talked about the Road Home program before. It is tremendously important for homeowners to afford to rebuild and help compensate us for the losses we have incurred. Because of the enormous lack of leadership in our city and our state we are very late at putting together a plan to get money into individual homeowners’ hands. After completing an application months ago while still in Austin, I found out that a 2nd application is required to be completed that asks almost all of the same information. This one asks questions that should have absolutely no bearing on an individual’s grant, such as the amount of money in their savings and checking accounts, and whether they have a lawsuit pending regarding the hurricane. And when I called the toll free number and gave my address so that I could receive the application before I decided to fill one out online, the woman asked me how to spell “New Orleans”. We are in BIG TROUBLE.

Governor Blanco says that the reason we don’t have a system in place until now is that we didn’t know how much funding we would have. Why didn’t she ask for the creation of the system while waiting to hear about the amount of funding and create a plan that is based on “x” amount of funding, “y” amount of funding, or “z” amount of funding so that it could have been in place months ago before a new school year started.

If you are one of the 90,000 plus people who completed the application previously, and haven’t completed the new application, go to www.road2la.org so you can waste more of your limited free time.