ICF International Blocked From Sending Katrina Victims To Collection Agency

ICF International, a private corporation, was contracted to administer the Road Home program by the Louisiana Recovery Authority. The Road Home program is the largest single housing recovery program in U.S. history funded with over 10 billion dollars of taxpayer money. It was created to help Homeless Katrina victims get back into a home quickly and fairly as possible.

For many however, things didn't work out that way. While ICF made millions, ICF has frustrated many Louisiana residents with long delays processing applications for the program, slow and inefficient hiring, delays and other problems with disbursement of awarded funds, and an inability to achieve state-mandated goals for application processing. And they're missing a lot of government money.

ICF said they can't account for millions because they paid some individuals too much for replacement homes due to their poor accounting standards and were going to turn program members over to a collection agency.

The state of Louisiana, doesn't buy it. If the ICF accounting standards are so bad, how do they know who owes them money if anyone?

Paul Rainwater, executive director of the Louisiana Recovery Authority, said the state will establish a panel to hear the cases of people believed by ICF to owe money. The panel will review the documentation of applicants who believe they owe no money, Rainwater said. The panel will not include a representative of ICF International.

"An 85-year-old woman who may have received too much, are we going to actually go out and collect money and have a collections agency hound that person?" said Rainwater. "I don't think that's the right thing to do, and neither did the governor think that's the right thing to do."

ICF and subcontractors stand to earn $912 million for running Road Home, though state audits have repeatedly found grant miscalculations and other mistakes.