Ask the Architect

Don’t blame the architect

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Q. It’s almost three years since our home was flooded and we still don’t how much we’ll get from NY Rising. Our architect, we were told, was supposed to do the estimate, and tell us, according to our caseworker, but the architect says he can’t tell us the amount we’ll get because the program only talks to us, not him. Is this true? It doesn’t make sense. How can the architect have spent all this time on an estimate and not know what the estimate is? We are ready to switch to another architect who can tell us. What do you understand about this situation?

A. The state program created animosity among people who got involved. I use the analogy that it is like news footage of a starving community being tossed bags of rice from a helicopter. You watch chaos as people struggle to get morsels of food, not even enough to sustain them for a few meals.

The program was set up by an amateur, idealistic management. They did not mean to fail, but the top appointees have a simplistic view of what “design professionals” do, minimal knowledge of construction, the building permit process, or personal finance. Caseworkers give homeowners guidance and hope, contradicting the auditors who were hired to review the estimates of material quantities. The separate divisions were told not to talk to each other. The auditor that reviews every nut and bolt, deleting whatever they deem “not in the program,” every cubic yard of concrete and every board foot of lumber, has no contact with the caseworker who promised you would get everything you needed.

Current caseworkers, replacements for the original group whose consultant contracts ran out and were not rehired, deny that anyone ever told a homeowner they would get the full funding needed to repair or lift their home, but I went to at least a dozen different client and caseworker meetings and heard those promises made, first hand. Architects and engineers are not trained estimators and were not informed of specific program guidelines for the first two years. Dumping this task on them became a disaster-in-the-making.

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