New Orleans – Like so many other home owners whose properties were left in ruins by Hurricane Katrina, Wanda and William Mason wanted badly to have their house repaired so they could get on with their lives.
But after paying a $16,000 deposit to a contractor to begin work on their home in the Gentilly neighborhood, they got their second harsh blow in one year: The contractor disappeared with their money after less than a week of work.
“I can’t figure out how I didn’t see this coming,” said Wanda Mason, 58. “I want to kick myself because I know better. But we were so desperate, trying to get home.”
Complaints against fraudulent contractors have skyrocketed since Hurricane Katrina, according to Louisiana state officials, city government and local attorneys.
“It’s a huge problem in the greater New Orleans area, and outside,” said Cynthia Albert, a spokeswoman for the Better Business Bureau of New Orleans.
“There are very good contractors but also a lot of bad ones, more so than before. A lot of them are very, very new to this industry, but they see that this is a very lucrative opportunity and have taken advantage of it.”
Charles Marceaux, executive director of the Louisiana State Licensing Board for Contractors, said most of the grievances his agency has fielded since Katrina hit have involved charges of shoddy or incomplete work by out-of-state and unlicensed contractors.
Marceaux said that, in Katrina’s aftermath, the board had issued about 3,500 citations to contractors for lacking state licenses or for substandard work. Before the hurricane, between 1,500 and 1,800 such citations were issued a year.
“It’s awful,” said Bradley Elizabeth Black, a staff attorney at Loyola University School of Law, which established a Katrina law clinic to help residents tackle post-storm legal issues. “People have been waiting for a year. They finally get their insurance money. They get a contractor. And then they get screwed.”
