Sunday, the T-P’s Hammerman checked in with another good installment covering the Home Elevation Grant boondoggle. It is a long story that I will not rehash today but the bottom line Hammerman found a bit of silver lining to homeowner protections belated added to the program by the Jindal Administration. I will not dispute the silver lining part but there was one part of the story where a huge red flag was raised and I say that as someone who knows a thing or two about construction finance. Let’s highlight it:
Of the 12 busiest elevation contractors, only the two with the richest share of the grants — Orleans Shoring and J-Con/Davie Shoring — have managed to get final payments on more than 80 percent of their projects. The state has signed off on nearly 500 jobs done by Orleans, and on 439 for J-Con/Davie.
The next closest is Coastal Shoring, with 290 jobs that received advance grant payments. But fewer than 60 percent of Coastal’s jobs have received final payment, and there’s a warrant out for owner Jerl Kershenstine’s arrest on contractor fraud charges for allegedly collecting grant money to lift a Kenner house, failing to do the job and refusing to let the owner change contractors. Kershenstine is arguing it’s a false arrest.
More troubling is that Coastal is far from the only firm taking more than six months to finish lift jobs after getting 80 percent of the money up front. The state considers more than a third of the 242 contractors with active, grant-financed jobs “noncompliant” because more than half of their projects are still unfinished six months after they were paid the advance. Continue reading “Puttin’ the Hammer down: Home elevation horror stories and rumored happy endings (Updated)”