WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 2009

Third part of Recovery Corps' unique series examining Louisiana's housing crisis focuses on key insurance barriers

BATON ROUGE, La. -- The Louisiana Family Recovery Corps released the third installment of its unique five part series entitled Broken Homes: First-Hand Accounts of Living Through Louisiana’s Housing Crisis. The report focuses on key insurance issues that create barriers to rebuilding for families and individuals impacted by disaster, specifically hurricanes Katrina, Rita, Gustav, and Ike.

The Broken Homes series focuses on real stories from Recovery Corps clients. The third installment of the series includes anecdotes from families and individuals that the Recovery Corps served in its two most recent home repair programs. The report can be viewed and downloaded here.

“In serving disaster-impacted families throughout the state of Louisiana, the Recovery Corps has seen first-hand how various issues dealing with insurance have slowed the ability for families to recover, even to the point of halting progress altogether,” said Dr. Monteic A. Sizer, President and CEO of the Recovery Corps. “Many of these issues were unforeseen by the homeowners until a critical time in the recovery process. Our goal is to offer solutions to these barriers to recovery, some of which will require simple forethought and preparation while others will require meaningful change to systems and the way insurance companies and federal insurance programs operate.”

More than four years following the landfall of hurricanes Katrina and Rita, many Louisiana residents are still trying to rebuild their lives, their property, and their communities. For a significant number of those residents, issues such as unaffordable insurance, unavailable insurance, wind/water damage determinations, and the underpayment of claims by insurance companies have proven to be severe barriers to recovery.

This newly released report takes a look at all of those issues and also discusses some positive changes already undertaken in Louisiana and a national push to protect both policy holders and insurance companies in the wake of another mega-disaster in the United States.

The initial report of the Broken Homes series focused on the lack of affordable housing stock in Louisiana and how it has negatively impacted recovery in the state. The second installment focused on Louisiana’s vulnerable populations – the elderly, the disabled, and families with children living in poverty – and the many issues they faced in the wake of the recent hurricanes.

The fourth part of the Broken Homes series will focus on fraudulent contractors and their impact on recovery in Louisiana.

ABOUT THE RECOVERY CORPS
The Louisiana Family Recovery Corps is a non-profit 501(c)(3) corporation based in Baton Rouge, La., and formed in the wake of hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005. The Recovery Corps’ mission is to facilitate human recovery for the State of Louisiana in the aftermath of disaster, both natural and man-made. The Recovery Corps has partnered with human service and non-profit organizations throughout the state and the country to deliver assistance as effectively and efficiently as possible, allocating more than $80 million to recovery efforts and assisting more than 30,000 households since January 2006.