One week ago, Mayor Ray Nagin reacted angrily to a 4 Investigates report which revealed the non-profit city agency, New Orleans Affordable Homeownership, or NOAH, had used federal funds to gut and board up homes more than a year after Hurricane Katrina.  According to WWL-TV’s research, some of the homes involved did not exist or qualify for the program.

“How is that report helping this recovery?” Nagin asked at a July 22 press conference.  “It is not, and it's hurting this city, and you need to stop it.”

Nagin said Eyewitness News had used an old list for that report, instead of using a new list that he repeatedly said was accurate.

“The list that counts is the list where we paid for services, and that list was provided to you,” he said.

Eyewitness News has spent the past six days combing through the list, which was used by the city to dole out almost $2 million, much of it in federal money.

So far WWL-TV has analyzed many of the 838 properties, checking to see if the new list raises any more questions.

Homeowner Virginia Dean has lived on Hollygrove Street her entire life, but was stunned to find out a contractor received federal money for cleaning up her home.

“I'm shocked.  I'm surprised to see this.  I don't even know who these people are,” Dean said.

When asked whether, in 2007, NOAH contractors had cut the grass and boarded up the home, as the list indicated, Dean said her nephew cuts the grass and boarded up the house.

Also on the list is a house that should be down the street from Virginia Dean, at 1632 Hollygrove.

“There is no 1632,” Dean said, emphasizing that the address doesn’t exist on her block.

On the new list, WWL-TV found many more properties that didn't appear to exist.  Right now, the analysis shows that number at 26.  There is no address in the Orleans Parish Assessor's system for those homes and a visual check by WWL-TV showed no available land where the house should be located.  But for the homes that don't exist, NOAH contractors charged the city, and ultimately the federal government, $86,625 for the work.

Homeowner Greg Hillman says the community group ACORN gutted his home on Arts Street.  But according to the city's spreadsheet, a contractor charged $6,000 for the work on Hillman’s home.  The contractor also claimed to board up the house and cut the grass.

Hillman said no one besides him has cut the grass at his home.

“I'm the only one.”

While there were some homes on the list that homeowners confirmed were cleaned by NOAH, the new list raises many more questions.

For example, according to city records, the owner of a double on Toledano Street is New Orleans Police Superintendent Warren Riley.  NOAH charged the federal government for cutting his grass in the home remediation program, even though Riley likely would not qualify under the program which helped elderly and low income homeowners.

Supt. Riley e-mailed WWL-TV to say he “has no knowledge of the grass being cut by the city."

A lot on Belfast Street had a house for which NOAH billed the city $2300 for remediation work.  The owner told Eyewitness News the city did no work on the home.  Instead, she said she had demolished the house.

In another example, at a home on Pritchard Place, NOAH said its contractor did almost $3,000 worth of work, but the homeowner told Eyewitness News that is not true.

Andrew Lea, 72, another homeowner on Pritchard Place, told a similar story, when asked about the $7100 charge listed for gutting and boarding his house and then cutting the grass.

“No way.  Never happened,” Lea said.

That's because Lea said he was there when his brother-in-law helped him gut the house.  Lea also said he moved back home in June 2006.  The home remediation program started six months later.

Qualified applicants for the program were required to be elderly or low-income, but a person identified by four Mid-City residents as an apartment owner, has three properties on the list. 

WWL also found businesses, Habitat for Humanity, Bayou Title, and a few churches on the list.  The city also points to a house on Foucher Street that is actually owned by NOAH.   Under plan details given to Eyewitness News, renters and businesses did not qualify for this program.

Seven properties have duplicate listings, with the same contractor doing the same work and charging the city the same price twice. 

There's also a listing on 434 Scott St. for $3240.  While Scott Street doesn't exist, S. Scott Street in Mid-City does.  The new list by the city also has a charge for a house on 434 S. Scott, for the same amount of money and same contractor as the house on Scott Street.

Through a public records request, Eyewitness News staffers spent two hours Monday afternoon searching through the files for the home remediation program that Mayor Nagin said would contain detailed information to support the new list.

“There's a list that is backed up by files that have before and after pictures  that are used to justify the charges,” Nagin said at the press conference last week.

But the files raise even more questions.  Many of the properties detailed in this report didn't have any documentation.  The list given to WWL last week by the Mayor’s office had 870 different properties.  After removing duplicates, the number came to 838.  But Monday, Eyewitness News counted a total of 905 folders for properties.

Many of those folders provided little details.  WWL workers inspected about one-third of the 905.  60 of the folders did not even appear on the city's new list.  102 of the folders contained no pictures and only 15 of the ones inspected by WWL had both before and after home photographs.  WWL even found one photograph that was taken yesterday, yet the NOAH program has been defunct for a year.  One folder was for a street that doesn't exist: N. Conti Street.  The homeowner listed in the folder does have a home, however, on N. Tonti.

Very few of the files had any dollar figures in the documentation, so it is unclear if funding for the files and spreadsheet matched.

Still, Mayor Nagin supports NOAH’s program saying WWL-TV’s reporting has been inaccurate, biased and reckless.

“You basically presented something out there that we are misappropriating federal funds and that is just not accurate,” he said last week.

Gentilly homeowner Larry Dupont said he disagrees.  On Monday, Eyewitness News found a folder in the city’s files, for his mother's home on Sere Street.  His mother’s name was listed on a sheet of paper, with no signature, but the home is on the Mayor's list showing cleanup work done after Hurricane Katrina.

Dupont told a different story, saying a woman named Janet Jones with a  North Carolina church group helped with the house gutting.

“Nobody from the city ever came to this property,” Jones said.

WWL-TV tried to get an interview with someone from NOAH on Monday while Eyewitness News staffers were viewing records at the agency’s Poydras Street office, but the agency declined.