Show me the money!

Sandy victims rally for ‘adequate’ NY Rising funding

Residents still waiting on grants; state says money to flow soon

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When Long Beach resident Kevin Reilly, a civil engineer who lives in the Canals, received his NY Rising award letter recently, he immediately noticed that something was wrong.

Reilly and his wife, Kristie, are relying on NY Rising funding to cover the cost of elevating their Barnes Street home, which sustained more than 50 percent damage in Hurricane Sandy.

The NY Rising program, tasked with distributing $1.7 billion in federal Sandy aid money allocated to the state, began releasing grant award letters in October. The program was announced in April as a way to help homeowners fill the funding gaps left by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Small Business Administration and their insurance, a reimbursement process that residents and local officials described as sluggish and complicated.

After the Reillys hired a public adjuster, they were reimbursed by their insurance company for the cost of repairs and replacement of the home’s contents before they applied to the program, but it could cost them about $160,000 to elevate.

The Reillys said they were eligible for a $58,000 grant from NY Rising, but after their insurance payout was deducted, it was reduced to $5,000, and they were told that it was a duplication of benefits. And if they accept that money, Reilly said, it will be reduced even further, since they are eligible for a $30,000 grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Increased Cost of Compliance program to pay some of the costs of elevating their home.

“The program is skewering the award so that the homeowner is losing out,” said Reilly, who applied for the program in April. “We got the house back to the way it basically was. Once we got accepted into the program, sometime in June, it said ‘Stop all Work.’ What NY Rising is doing is saying that these repair activities are not eligible — their answer is that it’s a duplication of benefits. But they were fully aware in March that people like myself were doing these repairs — and they did nothing to take that into consideration.”

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