Superstorm Sandy destroyed Lenny DeVirglio's home on West 12th Road in Broad Channel, Queens. Now he says the Build It Back program is destroying his hopes.
NEW YORK (MYFOXNY) -
October 10th, 2014
Superstorm Sandy destroyed Lenny DeVirglio's home on West 12th Road in Broad Channel, Queens. Now he says the Build It Back program is destroying his hopes.
The retired schoolteacher, wife Sophia, and 11-year-old daughter have been living in a rental house. He cannot fix his home because a contractor cheated him and Build It Back wants him to repay an SBA loan that he says he never received.
The DeVirgilios are not the only ones. More than 9 out of 10 homeowners who applied to Build It Back, some 93 percent, have not received any help from the program.
Retired firefighter Palmer Doyle did not wait for Build It Back. He spent all his savings and used credit cards and his daughter's college fund to rebuild. In deep debt, he has not gotten any money from Build It Back, although he is on the city's hurricane council and meets with the head of Build It Back, Amy Peterson. Doyle said Build It Back asked he get his receipts notarized. Even the IRS doesn't ask for that level of proof.
The city's Department of Investigation examined the Build It Back program looking for corruption and found overlapping bureaucracies, slowing down the process.
DOI Commissioner Mark Peters concluded that Build It Back has not lived up to its mandate to help homeowners. But he said he expects a turnaround in six months. He would not say if he has encountered corruption.
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