NYT: Feds raid NOAH offices
Source: New York Times
This broke a couple of days ago:
Federal investigators on Monday raided the downtown offices of a city-chartered nonprofit agency accused of abusing a federally financed program that was created to clean up houses damaged by Hurricane Katrina.
Files were removed by the cartload on Monday from the offices of the New Orleans Affordable Homeownership Corporation.
The agents carted large boxes of files away from the agency, which had been hired by the city to run the $3.6 million program.
The program was intended to help elderly and poor New Orleans residents gut and board up their storm-damaged houses, and to mow their lawns.
Instead, as a series of news reports by WWL-TV and the New Orleans daily, The Times-Picayune, have revealed, money appears to have gone to politically connected contractors who did little or no work on the houses. In some instances, the contractors were paid even when it was volunteers who did the gutting work, according to the reports.
One of the people credited with breaking this case wide open is blogger Karem Gadbois Nice work by her and Sarah Lewis.
