in wake of lost grant program, pointing fingers: Why did Lafourche run out of time on housing rehabilitation project?

Lafourche Parish Government’s inability to spend federal grant money on low-income housing rehabilitation within a three-year span was due to an apparent difficulty in finding and selecting qualified applicants.

But public records show dozens of low-income residents did apply. While the vetting process disqualified many, at least six homeowners eligible for the program’s assistance were left out due to parish government tardiness. The current program manager said the failure arose from disorganization left by her predecessor, who in turn contended she left the program in a position from which it should have been completed.

In April 2010, Lafourche was allotted $500,000 in federal Housing and Urban Development funds through the Louisiana Housing Corporation. The contract stipulated that the parish rehabilitate roughly 20 homes owned outright by low-income residents over a two-year period. The parish asked for and received a one-year extension through June 30 this year, but was unable to complete work on more than 14 houses.

In May, the LHC shut down the program, later denying Lafourche’s second request for an extension. This has cost the parish $151,000 in rehabilitation funds and, to this point, six homeowners the improvements to their homes they were promised. Parish officials continue to say they’re researching alternative funding opportunities to complete the project.

The Lafourche Parish Sheriff’s Office, at the request of parish government, is conducting a criminal investigation into the parish’s management of the housing rehabilitation contract, Deputy Brennan Matherne confirmed to the Tri-Parish Times. The spokesman said he could not answer questions about the ongoing investigation.

This isn’t the first time Lafourche Parish has lost a needy-aiding grant program. In February 2012, the parish council relinquished control over the embattled weatherization program to St. Mary Parish. Low-income parish residents are still receiving the services, but that grant carried administrative monies that were used on employee salaries, and Lafourche no longer has oversight on how its people are served. It is not likely the parish will recover that program any time soon, according to Joni Tuck, Lafourche’s director of Community Services.

The Tri-Parish Times has reviewed thousands of pages of documents relating to the program, obtained through public-records requests with Lafourche Parish Government and the LHC. Lafourche, citing the investigation, withheld some information, including internal emails.

Management of Housing Rehabilitation

The parish’s Office of Community Action managed the housing rehabilitation program, which granted up to $25,000 in home improvements and refurbishments to qualifying homeowners in order to help them meet federal housing quality standards. Examples of applicable work include upgrading roofs, plumbing, electrical systems, insulation, flooring and other structural defects.

Among Lafourche’s responsibilities were to: accept applications to the program – available to homeowners living at or below 80 percent of the median area income; collect all required documentation for submission to the state; coordinate with state inspectors to conduct cost analyses on prospect homes; and pay contractors for work on the homes.

LHC, after receiving a prospective list of homes, contracted title and scope of work inspections, the latter in essence becoming a worksheet for parish-chosen contractors. If the total amount of work required to bring the home to federal quality housing standards exceeded the $25,000 cap, that home was disqualified. In this way, LHC had the final say on what houses could move forward, though the agency only inspected homes submitted by Lafourche.

Over three years, three different Lafourche employees served as the point of contact for LHC: Frank Alexis, former assistant director of Community Action who was laid off when the parish lost weatherization; Freddia Ruffin-Roberson, director of Community Action until she was fired last September; and Tuck, whom the parish council appointed as director of Community Services in July 2012. Lafourche’s point of contact at the state level also changed midway through the contract.

Last month Parish President Charlotte Randolph said in a printed statement that “past management” of the program had gone awry. An internal review, she said, turned up instances of managers “improperly engaging contractors without licenses, failing to obtain relevant building permits, the lack of a transparent homeowner selection process, and missing documentation, among several other issues.”

Tuck, who began immersing herself in the program last September, told the Tri-Parish Times the parish wasn’t able to adhere to the timeline, despite an extra year, because so much time was spent trying to locate, organize and understand the work her predecessors had done, namely creating a comprehensive list of applicants from which to select and all the required supplementary documentation.

“I think the issues that were drawn out in the written statement that were made, about the lack of a transparent process, a lack of process – that will derail anything, really, truly,” Tuck said. “Turnover on both ends wasn’t helpful, but, you know, that’s not the end of the day.

“It has been an incredible challenge. We had to sort through individual offices to try and just pull any scrap of paper related and figure out if we have everything. The requirements of the grant are pretty stringent. … There is a lot of work that goes into all the gateways to get (homeowners approved), so it is a time-consuming process. Losing two years on the front end didn’t help.”

Ruffin-Roberson, who now works as a clerk for the parish council’s internal auditor, bristled at the notion she wasted time or left the office in disarray upon her termination. She took credit for navigating the 14 completed homes through the application process, which she said is the more difficult component of adhering to the grant.

After Community Action layoffs related to the loss of weatherization – and the resignation of Community Services Director Thomas Turner III – late in 2011, much of the department’s responsibility fell to Ruffin-Roberson, she said. While conceding she was spread thin, Ruffin-Roberson said the office was not disorganized.

“I had been working with a skeleton crew,” Ruffin-Roberson said. “Somewhere along the lines, something was going to fall apart, eventually. But they kept all their programs while I was there because, guess what, Freddia knew how to run them. That office ran as smoothly as possible. … She (Tuck) needed to learn the programs, first, before she took that position. She didn’t have a clue on what social service programs were. That’s the bottom line.”

Amiss from the Beginning

Days before the original contract period would have expired, Lafourche Parish apparently didn’t have prospective homes beyond 11 on which work had begun, according to an email and parish spending records.

At this time, Ruffin-Roberson had been managing the program for nearly a year after joining the parish in August 2010. Little work had been done on the housing rehab program before she joined, she said.

“Unfortunately, we do not have a complete list of homeowners,” Ruffin-Roberson wrote in a June 21, 2012, email to LHC. “We have some applicants we mailed them applications along with some picking applications up at the office. We will need to have this list to you upon next week. … I know you mentioned the timeline. We had to recruit the homeowners first. As stated in previous emails we did not have a waiting list.”

A handwritten list of roughly 63 applicants, dated “To Be Mailed” from June 21, 2012 through Oct. 24, 2012, was uncovered through the public records request. Because the names and addresses are redacted, it’s impossible to pinpoint whether these applicants qualified and advanced further in the process.

It’s also unknown whether these applicants had applied two years earlier when the grant was initially announced. A public-records request did not turn up a master list of applicants dating back to the grant’s genesis, which is one of the problems Tuck cited.

“This process took months of going through old folders in peoples’ offices and random places,” Tuck told the Tri-Parish Times. “(Applications) were never time-stamped in, there was never a master list, so it’s not like you can put people in chronological order because you just kind of had to guess.”

Ruffin-Roberson, however, emailed a list of 17 new applicants to the state on Sept. 5, shortly before her dismissal. She said this should indicate the program was on the right course.

“We were in the process of getting connected, but (the parish) never did anything after I left with that (list),” Ruffin-Roberson said.

Transition facilitates confusion

At times, particularly around the transition from Ruffin-Roberson to Tuck, it appears no one was certain where Lafourche stood on ongoing projects. Already after the initial deadline was extended, nearly 10 months remained on the clock.

LHC, which had itself put forth a new point of contact only months earlier, on several occasions requested status reports, addresses on which to proceed and realistic timelines detailing how the parish would meet its deadline. One month after Tuck assumed control of the program, meanwhile, she seemed completely lost.

“I have to admit, I am a bit confused by this program and the state of play of our various houses,” Tuck wrote in an Oct. 3, 2012, email to Curtis Ferrara, her counterpart at the state level. “I am concerned that this agency has not been reporting to you in a timely manner where houses are up to, and as a result neither of us has a complete picture of where the program is actually at.”

Tuck’s email was in response to an inquiry Ferrara filed with Ruffin-Roberson a month earlier. In that email Ferrara said 11 houses had money drawn for rehab work and that the parish could likely undertake an additional 10. He also provided a list of 21 homes on file with LHC’s accounting department that had at least received title opinions, but had no money drawn for work. Three homes from this list were ultimately rehabilitated, rounding out the total at 14.

The parish had, overall, submitted 52 houses to the state, according to an email.

Ferrara on Sept. 6, 2012, asked her to pare down the list to “15-17” on which the state could move forward by conducting title searches. The email was sent within hours of Ruffin-Roberson’s ouster. It is also the email to which Tuck later responded with confusion.

Ferrara wasn’t immediately aware of the personnel change, and he continued seeking guidance and documentation for submitted addresses from Ruffin-Roberson. On Sept. 10, he surmised that a total of 16 projects should have been underway. He also said he had a list of 12 additional homes on which he could proceed. “I would suggest we move forward with the 12 homes with pictures,” he wrote to Ruffin-Roberson. “If we can’t find eligible projects than it is suggested that you get pictures of the other 7 homes which I don’t have.”

Though Tuck had been with the parish for three months at this time, she hadn’t focused on the rehab program until Ruffin-Roberson left. When the transition happened, Tuck spent time becoming acquainted with the history in attempt to put forth applicants in a comprehensive and nondiscriminatory manner, she said.

Tuck said there wasn’t a “matrix” in place to use when determining which applicants were most deserving of the work. In addition to developing a “fair” way to select homes to submit as she started fresh, Tuck said she struggled to find all previous applications in order to craft a comprehensive pool, note disqualified addresses and a chronological queue, and make sure the parish could provide all the required supplementary documentation.

“It’s not like we could throw all of these (applicants) aside,” Tuck said. “We’re not going to throw all of those people out and say, ‘Everybody apply all over again.’ That would have been cleaner for us, but it certainly wouldn’t have been fair for them, because they have been waiting, they’ve had an expectation for up to two years in some instances. That’s where the time-consuming challenge was.”

Ruffin-Roberson, before she left, employed a strategy of submitting everyone who applied with the parish, as evidenced by the 52 addresses the state had received before she was fired. This may have bogged down Tuck when she took over, but Ruffin-Roberson said it was the fairest way to handle the program. Once the state vetted what she sent, the sides could plan projects based on anticipated costs, she reasoned.

“We did not handpick anyone,” Ruffin-Roberson said. The parish provided the state with all of an applicant’s information, and then the state conducted the title search and scope of work inspections, she added. “Then the state sends us a notice to proceed.”

To the list of the 11 houses that were receiving work at the time of the transition, three more from the massive lists Ruffin-Roberson submitted were ultimately added under Tuck’s guidance. Tuck would go on to submit four new addresses in February and six in April, though work was never started on these homes.

Time Winding Down, State Pulls the Plug

As early as January of this year, Ferrara seemed skeptical that Lafourche could finish the additional projects on time. “I really would like to know how (Tuck) will finish 6 or 7 new houses by (June 30),” he wrote in an internal email to his supervisor. Two weeks later he began pressing her for a construction schedule, though no new applicants had been submitted.

Tuck maintained optimism that Lafourche could identify, begin and finish an additional six houses within a six-month timeline, but months passed with the parish and state still short of reaching significant milestones to get new work started.

In mid-February, Ferrara made it clear that any homes – including and beyond the original 14 – that were started but not finished by June 30 would have to be completed, but the parish would not be reimbursed for the costs.

A week and a half later, Tuck submitted four new addresses for scope of work inspections, and as late as April, she continued pushing forward, submitting six addresses for title inspections. After doing a title search on the homes, according to Tuck, the LHC opted to pull the plug on any new projects one month later.

“If started and not completed by June 30, (2013) LHC would not be able to make any reimbursement for those projects and the houses would have to be complete at Lafourche Parish’s expense,” Brenda Evans, the state’s program administrator, said in a May 6 letter to Randolph. “At this time LHC can not issue any Notices to Proceed.”

Evans cited personnel changes on both the state and local levels as contributing to the parish’s inability to finish the rehab work. She also referred to a lack of reimbursement requests from Lafourche on the initial 14 homes and little progress in the second batch of homes, insinuating that ongoing delays in submissions to the state factored into her decision.

Last-Ditch Plea

An email sent from Parish President Charlotte Randolph’s account – but signed by Tuck – made a plea for an additional extension. It laid out two options: a three-month extension in which the parish would complete five more homes; and a six-month extension for eight additional houses, which would have required spending about $140,000 of the remaining funds, according to Tuck.

At that point, all of the necessary paperwork had been obtained from the eight homeowners under consideration, and state inspections had been conducted on each of the dwellings. Title searches remained on two of these homes.

“It took us several months to go through a painstaking process of determining what information was required, missing, and on hand for the various applicants who had initially applied for this program up to two years ago in some instances,” reads the email. “This level of preparation was lacking in previous attempts to implement this program, and this new approach is part of implementing some of the lessons learned from that experience.”

In total, about 29 applicants were “still in play” when this plea was made, according to Tuck’s records. Several had been disqualified for various reasons, and the parish was awaiting more homeowner information – such as a driver’s license and proof of income dated within six months – from most homeowners on the list. Five had already been added to contractors’ lists to begin work pending the state’s green light, but the notices to proceed were never granted.

Parish Allowed to Exceed Cap on 9 Homes

The review of records also revealed that the LHC agreed to pay flood-insurance premiums for several homes, even though this meant exceeding the $25,000 per house spending cap for nine of the 14 homes. Only two homes eclipsed $26,000, with the cost of one home totaling $31,537.

According to state emails, this was done to protect the state agency from HUD rebuke in the event homeowners cancelled their insurance after submitting proof they attained it. Over-the-cap costs came from the state’s end and did not impact the $500,000 in available local spending, Tuck said.

“The reason we allow for the payment of the insurance is that it administratively protects LHC,” the agency’s HOME Program manager Robert McNeese wrote in response to questions from Evans. “It is a requirement that the homeowners have insurance (and) if they have not been paying there is the likelihood that they will either not pay or cancel the insurance once we finish the project. While we could go after them that would not be a ‘politically’ expedient move. By our paying the insurance HUD cannot cite us for not following program requirements.”