City Controller launching audit of Build it Back Hurricane Sandy home re-building program

After only six homes have been rebuilt with 20,000 Hurricane Sandy victims on the program’s waiting list, Stringer plans on putting the Build it Back program under the microscope.

BY LISA L. COLANGELO 

The City’s troubled Build it Back program, which has only served a handful of Hurricane Sandy victims since the 2012 natural disaster struck, is going under the microscope.

City Controller Scott Stringer is launching an audit of the program as part of his office’s new Sandy Oversight Unit, the Daily News has learned.

“It disturbs me greatly there are 20,000 people on a waiting list and six homes have been rebuilt,” Stringer said during a visit to Rockaway on Wednesday morning. “This has gone on way too long.”

Stringer said he will hold town hall meetings in Rockaway, Coney Island, Staten Island and lower Manhattan to take testimony from frustrated homeowners who say the program has failed to help them.

“It will not work unless we are in the community listening to residents,” said Stringer.

“Everybody knows the horror story post—Katrina. I’m not suggesting we are anywhere near that but the goal here has to be that we don’t have people hit twice — once by the storm and once by bureaucracy and government inefficiency.”

Then Mayor Michael Bloomberg launched Build it Back in June 2013, promising it would be an easier way to funnel federal disaster funds to Sandy victims who needed help rebuilding their homes.

But people who have applied for assistance have complained that the paperwork is daunting and that inspectors are slow to act.

Of the nearly 20,000 homeowners who sought help, only six had begun construction and just three more had received reimbursement checks as of March 31.

“It was a bad experience,” said Patricia Andre, who showed Stringer her empty bungalow in Rockaway.

Frustrated by the snail’s pace of the city program, she turned to the organization Friends of Rockaway, which dispatched volunteers to help rebuild her home.

“We couldn’t do it by ourselves any more and we couldn’t wait for Build it Back,” she said.