State: No Ike aid if back child support is owed

Hundreds of islanders still are waiting to find out how much help they will get in repairing or reconstructing their hurricane-damaged homes as the city wades through layers of state-mandated restrictions on who is eligible for assistance from federal disaster recovery dollars.

The Texas Department on Housing and Community Affairs, the state agency charged with overseeing housing in the Hurricane Ike disaster recovery program, recently added an additional requirement for eligibility, forcing the city to dig even further into homeowners’ backgrounds to determine whether they have any unpaid child support payments.

Anyone who owes back child support will not be eligible for assistance from Community Development Block Grant disaster recovery money, unless that homeowner is in enrolled in a court-appointed program to pay back the money. Eligibility for assistance now hinges on whether applicants’ owe money in child support or back taxes, how much money they received from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and insurance companies, and how much money they have in bank accounts and assets.

The state housing agency added child support payments as an eligibility requirement, even though the federal government does not include that as an eligibility requirement.

Several state laws prohibit the state from doling out money to people who owe debts to Texas, state housing agency spokesman Gordon Anderson said.

Though state law does not specifically address the matter of child support debt and disaster recovery money, Anderson said the state wanted to be responsible in its dissemination of federal dollars.

When asked whether he thought the additional requirements would slow down the disbursement of money to help hurricane victims repair and rebuild their homes, Anderson said: “I’m sure everyone involved would like to see it go faster, but I think we’re making excellent progress and, in the end, we’ll be very proud that we’ve restored not just housing, but that we’ve also restored the work force an the tax base and made it whole again and that we’ve done so within some very tough rules and regulations issued by the federal government.”

The city’s contractor has determined 82 percent of more than 1,600 applicants are eligible for help from the disaster recovery program.

But Camp, Dresser and McKee has been unable to give homeowners exact figures of how much assistance they will receive because it still is conducting what it calls “third-party verification” of all applicants’ bank accounts, insurance payments and debt.

The city also is awaiting approval from the state on amendments to its plan to spend the money.

The city increased the maximum amount it set to rebuild houses from $125,000 to $160,000, and from $75,000 to $100,000 to repair houses.

The state is expected to review those amendments for approval May 13.

The city will not dole out any money to homeowners directly; instead, the city will hire contractors to do repairs and reconstruction of houses eligible for the program.

The city expects construction to begin on the first house in the summer.

“I’ve heard from a number of folks and a couple of council members that people are frustrated out there as far as the time it’s taking for this process to work through, and I guess the implication is the city is dragging its feet and not doing its job in some way, shape or form,” City Manager Steve LeBlanc said. “We need to help the public understand that this is nothing more than a process that’s involved a lot of red tape.”

LeBlanc pointed out that the city is moving much faster with its recovery program than the state after Hurricane Rita.

“I know people are frustrated, but we are moving as quickly as we possibly can at this point,” he said.