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“We found many things that were not right. When we are in an emergency situation, things sometimes cannot be perfect, but this certainly could have been much better,” stated Valdivieso.

EL CAPITOLIO – The Joint Commission on Special Reports of the Comptroller addressed this Thursday the draft evaluation by the Office of the Comptroller (OCPR) of the Tu Hogar Renace program, which was the subject of controversy and dozens of complaints over deficiencies in the repair work on residences following the 2017 hurricanes.

Comptroller Yesmín Valdivieso noted that the report does not constitute an audit, but rather a monitoring effort to determine the scope and veracity of the complaints that had been discussed in the media since the program was established after the disaster caused by the cyclones.

“We found many things that were not right. When we are in an emergency situation, things sometimes cannot be perfect, but this certainly could have been much better,” stated Valdivieso, while confirming that the draft was discussed in 2018 with then-governor Ricardo Rosselló; the former secretary of the Department of Justice, Wanda Vázquez Garced; and the rest of the anticorruption component formed by that administration.

The draft, sent in February 2020 to the then-secretary of the Department of Housing (DV), Luis Fernández Trinchet, was prepared in mid-2018. A group of 226 auditors visited 1,000 homes corresponding to the cases selected for evaluation, in which they found that most of the program's work was not performed or was done defectively.

Of the total homes visited, 949 of them qualified for Tu Hogar Renace and had a work order. The evaluation revealed that for 67 percent of the orders, totaling 5.8 million dollars, Housing paid for all the work included, even though there was work that was unperformed or deficient.

Likewise, the OCPR observed that orders that included unperformed work, by contractor, ranged between 43 percent and 80 percent. The total cost per contractor of the orders with unperformed or deficient work ranged between 202 thousand dollars and 1.2 million dollars.

The Tu Hogar Renace program was implemented in October 2017 when the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) authorized the use of public assistance to create a pilot program aimed at carrying out minor emergency repairs on single-family residences, with the goal of making them habitable and addressing the need for shelter that arose.

FEMA established an estimated cost of 1,680 million dollars for the development of the program, under which 75,000 homes in Puerto Rico affected by Hurricane María could receive repair services.

“When you look at their evaluation, and when you go out into the street and visit the houses that were left destroyed after the hurricane and we see how they still are, we know the program was not used well; that it was used deficiently; that the money was not invested well and it doesn't even seem that those in charge knew what they were doing,” denounced representative Ramón Luis Cruz Burgos, chairman of the commission.

“We were unable to be effective and efficient in giving people what they needed, deserved, and what we were given the money for. That is unacceptable,” added the legislator.

The Comptroller detailed during her appearance that, among the most relevant results of the analysis, the orders of the evaluated cases had problems with safety, waterproofing, cleaning, structure, and the electrical system.

According to the evaluation, most of the safety situations are related to the replacement of aluminum windows. In some cases, instead of installing the window, the contractors installed the operators, and in others the finishes were deficient. To administer the program, the DV awarded seven contracts totaling 350 million dollars to seven contractors to carry out the improvements to the residences.

Meanwhile, the analysis detected that in 37 waterproofing work orders, the accumulation of water on the roof persisted despite the work carried out to mitigate the situation. Although minor repairs were made to the roofs in another 188 orders, they continued to have leaks.

Regarding cleaning, most of the situations have to do with disinfection and the application of mold control on the exterior or interior of the residence, which represents 96% of the unperformed cases. In other cases related to the electrical system, the residences had unenergized areas and walls where electrical current could be felt to the touch.

Attorney Yarliz Ríos, chief of staff at Housing, acknowledged along with Valdivieso and the chairman of the commission that Tu Hogar Renace did not meet the expectations set by the federal government. As a result of the multiple deficiencies, FEMA closed the program in 2019.

“If you were the ones who had to pay out of your own pocket for this work we have seen in this report, if you were responsible for disbursing the money, would you pay for work like this in your home?” Cruz Burgos asked the attorney.

“Not in my home, nor with the funds we are currently administering at the Department of Housing,” stated Ríos, who attended the hearing on behalf of secretary-designate William Rodríguez.

Housing assured that it shares the concern of the OCPR, FEMA, and the Legislative Assembly over the program's shortcomings. The agency noted, on the other hand, that the current head learned of the draft this past May 11 through a public hearing held in the Senate, since the document was not part of the transition process with the previous secretary.

As it was not an audit, the document is not of public scope on the OCPR's official website. However, the official did not rule out continuing an analysis to formalize an audit of the program.

“This was only a working tool for us to have firsthand information when we began our audit. Whether we will look at this or not will be determined during the audit planning because programs keep being added, money keeps being added, and the federal government has already settled this one (Tu Hogar Renace),” explained the Comptroller.

Cruz Burgos, who represents District 34, labeled the program's scope a “disaster” and announced that the commission will summon former Housing officials to “identify those responsible.”

“Things like these cannot be repeated because they have dire consequences for the country. What bothers one the most is that I know there were people in need who had nowhere to sleep,” stated the chairman. “We are going to continue the investigation, and many people who bear responsibility must come through here and have to give many answers.”