de Blasio and Build it Back - Still playing catch up in 2017!

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40% of homes damaged by Huricane Sandy still not fixed after de Blasio promised to repair all by end of 2016.

By ERIN DURKIN

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Monday, January 2, 2017, 4:00 AM

After admitting it would not meet Mayor de Blasio’s pledge to fix all Hurricane Sandy-damaged homes by the end of the year, the city has now completed work on 60% of homes in the Build It Back program, new stats show.

The number, out of 5,349 construction projects, is up from 44% in October, when de Blasio confessed it would not be possible to wrap up the program by the end of the year.

Of the 8,374 homeowners still in the program, 90% have seen construction start or received a check to pay them back for work they funded themselves, in line with the lowered year-end goal that officials set in October.

The number of program participants has fallen from 8,585 since then, continuing a long decline as people drop out in frustration or are unable to meet the city’s rules and deadlines.  

There were 20,000 applicants when Build It Back started, but many ended up not being eligible.

For single-family homes where the city is managing construction, 75% are now complete, according to data released in response to requests from the Daily News.  

Some 93% of the 3,719 such homes have started construction.

That also hits the more modest year-end target de Blasio set in the fall. 

“The team has been hard at work completing hundreds of projects and getting families home for the New Year. Every home and family is unique. This is painstaking work,"said Amy Peterson, director of the Mayor’s Office of Housing Recovery Operations.

“We intend to continue to push the pace throughout the winter." 

Other categories of homes, like multi-family projects and houses where the homeowner is managing construction, are farther behind. Overall, 81% of construction projects have started, up from 68% when the October report was issued.

Build It Back is now completing 75 homes per week, triple the rate it was moving at in October, officials said. Some 840 projects have been completed since then.

The administration has not set a new deadline for completing all work under Build It Back. The troubled program saw its budget balloon by $500 million, encountering problems like increasing ballooning construction costs and a shortage of architects and contractors to do so many projects at once.