Corruption Chronicles
Judicial Watch
4/4/2013
In yet another example of how the Obama administration blows the nation’s tax dollars, hundreds of millions earmarked for a failed housing program have vanished and the feds aren’t terribly worried about recovering the lost cash.
The missing loot is part of a highly questionable Housing and Urban Development (HUD) program that liberally doled out cash to Louisiana homeowners so they could elevate and protect their houses from storms. The feds came up with this brilliant idea after Hurricane Katrina slammed the region in 2005 because the area, especially New Orleans, got flooded.
Uncle Sam gave Louisiana officials tens of billions of dollars to help residents prepare for future hurricanes and $940.5 million went to a special Road Home Elevation Incentive program that liberally distributed cash to anyone who said they would “elevate” their home. The idea, apparently, was to protect houses from floods though the water level was so high after the storm that no home could have been sufficiently elevated.
Perhaps recipients knew this and figured “why bother?” More than 24,000 homeowners that received up to $30,000 each to elevate their homes pocketed the money instead of making the seemingly useless improvements. That means American taxpayers have been fleeced $700 million, according to an enraging HUD Inspector General report issued this week. No one really knows what happened to the money in fact HUD IG David Montoya admits “your guess is as good as mine.”…
The article continues at Judicial Watch.
