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WWL-TV helps disabled homeowner vexed by city program

The inspector wrote "need to resolve" in his report, but Richardson said she didn't hear back from the city after that until WWL-TV got involved this week.

NEW ORLEANS -- A largely successful and lesser-known city program for disabled homeowners has turned into a yearlong pain for Patricia Richardson.

But the widow received some good news this week after WWL-TV questioned city officials. The new administration of Mayor LaToya Cantrell is promising to move quickly to rectify the problems after the Mitch Landrieu administration spent almost $16,000 on handicapped-accessible improvements to Richardson’s Algiers home under the city’s Home Modification Program.

“Every day, when I sweep my kitchen, I’d see that gravel,” Richardson said, pointing to grout popping up in her kitchen between the ceramic tiles just installed last year.

“They had told me something about my house wasn’t level,” she added, wringing her hands about the lumpy subfloor in her bathroom, exposed after some of the recently installed tiles cracked. “Well, it probably isn’t level from the hurricane.”

That hurricane, of course, is Hurricane Katrina in 2005, which caused tens of thousands of Louisiana homeowners to elevate their houses on piers, usually using federal grants. The Home Modification Program, or HMP, became necessary when many disabled and elderly residents found themselves feeling like prisoners in their own homes after they were raised off the ground.

But Richardson’s case appears to be an anomaly for the HMP, a program created by disability advocate Charles Toubre and launched by the nonprofit Advocacy Center in partnership with the city in 2013, shortly before Toubre’s death.

HMP has used nearly $2.1 million in taxpayer money to help 103 homeowners with electric lifts, ramps, handlebars and other improvements totaling $2.1 million, an average of nearly $20,000 per home. Another 20 houses are already in the pipeline for this year’s round of funding and there’s more available to help new applicants.

The city and the Advocacy Center said there are only three clients who have experienced the kind of ongoing problems Richardson is facing.

Kevin Hurstell manages the HMP for the Advocacy Center, along with a similar new program that also uses city funds called Aging In Place. Both were created to keep lower income elderly or disabled homeowners in their homes as they encounter accessibility problems, such as getting upstairs, into bathtubs and rolling walkers or wheelchairs.

“You have people getting up in age and they acquire a disability or age requires them to use a wheelchair or rolling walker and now you’ve got all these elevated houses and their own home becomes inaccessible to them,” Hurstell said.

“I just think it’s a great program, I feel very lucky to work with it. I think it’s an example of good government,” Hurstell added. “I think the ripple effect of the good that it causes, it’s not only for the homeowners, but the caretakers and the families and the adult children and grandchildren and neighbors.”

But Kerry Romain, the city’s Construction Administrator for the Office of Community Development, said Richardson’s case has been tough.

“You know, we called for the ceramic tile,” he said. “In doing so we tried to prescribe something we felt would be the most durable, that would last the longest period of time, thinking the tile. But we didn’t know about the underlying conditions.”

The piers holding up Richardson’s house have been moving, Romain said. That’s a typical problem with raised houses in New Orleans, and the movement often causes more rigid flooring like ceramic tile to shift or crack.

Romain said it’s not the contractor’s fault. He was only following the process devised by the city, which should have prescribed a more forgiving flooring material, such as vinyl or laminate, Romain said.
But Richardson’s problem worsened when she had trouble getting anyone to respond to her complaints.

“I call, I get voicemails, or the mailbox is full,” she said.

The city acknowledged that key personnel had family issues that kept them from addressing Richardson’s case as they should have. A city inspector finally came out to take pictures in April, a year after the initial work was done. The inspector wrote “need to resolve” in his report, but Richardson said she didn’t hear back from the city after that until WWL-TV got involved this week.

Romain went to the house personally on Friday.

“We do have intentions of going back to try to assist her or straighten out this issue for her,” he said.
Romain said the city will hire a new contractor for Richardson’s house at its next bid day, possibly as early as next week.

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