In June 2006, ICF International and its team of subcontractors was selected to manage the implementation of The Road Home Housing Program, a federally-funded initiative of the State of Louisiana that was developed to assist homeowners and rental property owners in rebuilding following the devastation of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
With more than 123,000 homes and 82,000 rental units in Louisiana damaged or destroyed, a housing assistance program of the scope and complexity required by Louisiana had never before been attempted, anywhere. |
 |
The Road Home program was announced in February 2006 and officially approved in July 2006, more than ten months after Hurricane Katrina, with federal funding for the program approved in June 2006—more than nine months after the storms.
Even before the program got underway, many Louisiana homeowners were understandably frustrated by the delay. We therefore moved quickly to design and build from scratch the extensive infrastructure to administer the program:
- finding and hiring more than 2,000 people needed to operate the effort
- setting up customer service centers throughout Louisiana and in Texas
- developing procedures to interview and keep track of more than 100,000 applicants
- cataloging and verifying hundreds of external data sources to prevent the duplication of benefits and fraud, as required by the federal government
Our contract reflected this level of complexity, with an initial agreed completion date for a projected 100,000 homeowner closings as of January 2009 (30 months) worth an estimated $5.9 billion.
However, the actual requirements of the program were greatly expanded. Within the orginally planned timeframe, (by January 1, 2009), we closed over 121,000 grants, valued at over $7.6 billion.
This higher volume and faster progress was accomplished despite the implementation of nearly 150 program policy changes that were directed by state and federal government. Significant changes were necessary in this first-of-its-kind effort, but achieving an accelerated result, despite numerous structural adjustments along the way, is even more noteworthy.
ICF’s contract to manage and implement the Road Home ended as of June 11, 2009, as it was limited to a three-year term by state law. At that time, a few thousand of the most administratively complex cases remained to be processed by firms hired for that purpose. Despite a challenging and politically charged environment, the fact remains that ICF and its team exceeded the expectations in its contract by delivering nearly $8 billion in grants to deserving homeowners in a shorter period of time, despite many obstacles encountered along the way. We are proud to have implemented the largest housing recovery program in the history of the United States.
|
