Homeowners still stranded after Sandy: Opinion

By Julie O'Connor/The Star-Ledger 
on November 24, 2013

A year after Sandy, Joanne and Steve Gwin are still not back in their home in Toms River.Andrew Mills/The Star-Ledger

First came the destructive floods, then the waves of bureaucracy: One year after Hurricane Sandy, thousands of desperate storm victims still aren’t back in their homes — and have no idea if they’ll ever be.

They are entering their second holiday season stranded. As they couch-surf or rent with dwindling FEMA dollars, they’re fighting their insurance companies over payouts too measly to rebuild. Many say that without a state grant, they might never get home. But they have little clue where they stand in the process.

“We are going to be like the Katrina people,” said Kathleen Givens of Ocean City, who fears she’ll trip up on her mortgage before she gets a grant. “By the time they help us, I’ll be homeless.”

The head of the state agency in charge of the rebuilding program, Richard Constable, wouldn’t speak on the record for this story. Gov. Chris Christie has blamed federal red tape for the delays. That’s surely a factor, but it doesn’t explain why Sandy victims are spending hours chasing around the most basic information about their status, getting bounced from office to office, and being denied grants without any clear reason. Or why the state officials in charge have refused to answer to legislators or the public.

Until last month, no one had received any money through the state’s rebuilding program, named for its intended purpose: to reconstruct, rehabilitate, elevate and mitigate (RREM). 

Public anger flared around the storm’s anniversary, and the state has since reported significant inroads: About 4,300 home­own­ers were approved for grants to rebuild, and of those, about 575 completed their grant signings. That adds up to about $60 million that people can count on, out of a $600 million pot. 

At last, that’s progress. But thousands of others still don’t have their approved grants, or are stuck on a waiting list. The state is seeking federal permission to divert $110 million from a small business program to get 1,100 off that list, on which more than 8,700 linger — without knowing if they’re closer to the top or the bottom.

That’s a help, but before adding millions more to this program, why not explain how it’s running now?

Christie said the federal government was at fault for the delays in getting money out, because it requires piles of documents to prevent fraud and property-by-property inspections.

There’s some truth to that. The feds are trying to be more proactive after the mishaps of Hurricane Katrina, and federal law requires environmental reviews.

But the state was aware of those rules when it got its federal aid. And many of the biggest complaints have little or nothing to do with the feds: The lost applications, the phone calls never returned, the home­own­ers getting the runaround — first assured they’ll get a grant, then told that they will not.

The feds had no involvement in picking the contractor, Hammerman & Gainer Inc., that appears to be bungling this effort — that’s on the administration. The state says it took the lowest bidder, but there’s no excuse for mistakes when people’s lives hang in the balance.

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And even if the pace of grant distribution is now on target, “it still doesn’t answer the question about whether or not it’s transparent — whether people know where they are in the program,” said Marc Roy, former chief of staff for FEMA’s Louisiana operations after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

Housing advocates sued the state for information on its process, and it’s just starting to trickle out. Adam Gordon, staff attorney for the Fair Share Housing Center, says some Sandy victims can now find out more about their status from his nonprofit’s website, where it’s posting the documents it receives, than they can from the state.

“They’re saying, that’s interesting, nobody ever told me they thought my application was incomplete, or they were going to put me on the wait list,” he said. “We are a five-person nonprofit and we can provide this information on our website — and the state, with a $68 million contract, cannot?”

That frustration is showing up in the polls. A Monmouth University survey released last month found that 75 percent of people severely impacted by Sandy now feel forgotten by the state’s recovery efforts. Maybe that’s because they have little idea what they’re supposed to do to access this relief money.

Yet the administration refused to send anyone in charge of the state’s Sandy response to four legislative hearings attended by storm victims to answer public questions.

Sen. Bob Smith (D-Middlesex) says he’s still considering subpoenas after the two senior state officials responsible — Constable, commissioner of the Department of Community Affairs, and Marc Ferzan, the so-called Sandy czar — ignored his repeated invitations.

“We had witnesses coming in and saying that people didn’t understand the program they were administering,” Smith said. “And not having those in charge willing to come to the Legislature to tell us what’s going on or to answer questions about it — how much more defensive and nontransparent can you be?”