N.O. style reimbursement never done before.

Hurricane aid reaching homeowners: "

Our belief is that this has never been done in this country, and certainly not on this scale, said Walter J. Leger Jr., a New Orleans lawyer who serves as chairman of the Louisiana Recovery Authority's housing task force.

Mary C. Comerio -- a professor of architecture at the University of California, Berkeley, who has studied housing after disasters -- agreed that the level of direct assistance to individual homeowners is unprecedented.

This is a dramatic shift in government policy, she said."