New Orleans – The owners of the sagging, flood-stained home aren’t in. Above the front door, a banner explains their absence and the lack of progress: “Allstate paid $10,113.34 on this house for storm damage.”
Like the home next to it and the one after that, the house was disemboweled nine months ago by Hurricane Katrina. The force of the gushing water punched the refrigerator into the kitchen wall, and it still sits leaning through the house’s broken rib cage. Inside, mud has hardened into a crusty carpet, covering a designer sofa and a leather swivel chair.
“I want people to drive by my home and decide for themselves: Could I repair this for $10,000?” asks Eric Moskau, the home’s exiled owner who had more than $1.2 million in coverage on the 3,000-square-foot home.
Even New Orleans’ affluent homeowners, who thought they had done right by properly insuring their investments, are finding that technicalities are keeping them from securing enough from insurers to rebuild.
The insurance industry says it has settled more than 90 percent of its Katrina claims.
Insurance modeling firm ISO estimates Louisiana had $24.3 billion in insured losses. The state department of insurance says only $12.5 billion had been paid out as of April 30, the last month for which figures were available.
Without enough money from insurers to rebuild, homeowners must give up and leave, or rebuild by hand, using their savings for labor and materials.
