Affordable housing remains a challenge across the Gulf Coast post-Katrina. But in a city where 54% of homeowners were renters prior to the storm, Mayor Ray Nagin voiced his criticism of the Road Home Program Thursday before a Congressional subcommittee and said the city could do a better job handing out recovery money to its own citizens.

WWL-TV

Nagin appeared before a Congressional Subcommittee Thursday and lobbed criticisms at the lack of progress by the Road Home Program.

Nagin, New Orleans City Councilman Oliver Thomas, Governor Kathleen Blanco and HANO representatives addressed the Congressional Subcommittee of Housing and Community Opportunity at a public hearing on the campus of Dillard University.

Committee Chairwoman Rep. Maxine Waters (D-California) said New Orleans and the Gulf Coast region were in a housing crisis, prompting the need for a pair of public hearings: one in New Orleans, followed by another meeting in Mississippi.

Nagin testified that 3,000 rental units were needed immediately to bring residents back home and added that the city would do a better job of disbursing funds for New Orleans residents.

"We need to insure that as we move forward, there's a phased redevelopment of public housing, that we upgrade all the units and whatever units are available to be repopulated are put back on line," Nagin said.

The mayor said the housing problem has been compounded by the slow trickling of relief money from the federal government to the state level in order to be disbursed on the local level.

Gov. Blanco addressed her own problems with the Road Home Program. The crowd booed as she said only 782 homeowners have received their money, but stressed that this was unacceptable. ICF, the contractor placed in charge of the program, had promised the governor to have 2,300 closings in the month of February.

She asked for the subcommittee's help in appealing to Congress to cut through the red tape to get federal funds to the state quicker, as well as exempting Road Home awards from tax penalties.

Blanco did address the main topic of the hearings, but took more of a middle road, asking for both the redevelopment of public housing in New Orleans but also pleaded with the panel to bring back residents immediately.

"Let's rehab as many as possible to allow immediate occupancy while we are proceeding with long-term development plans. We must repatriate our citizens and this means affordable housing now, as quickly as we can do it,” Blanco said.

Rep. Waters promised to keep in touch with Gov. Blanco about the Road Home Program and said she would like the program to work as Congress intended, but was concerned that no applicant had received the maximum amount of $150,000.

A couple of public housing residents testified about the need to return, while a HANO spokesman said it would be more cost effective to demolish thousands of units in four housing developments now than to just clean up those units.

"We are in this fight solely to provide a better tomorrow for out New Orleans residents repairs may be cheaper and more expedient in the short run, where costs are measured in dollars, but in long run, where costs measured in lives, they are too great,” said HANO spokesman C. Donald Babers.