NY Rising extends deadline for home elevations

Officials, residents said Sept. 1 deadline was ‘unrealistic’

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Hurricane Sandy victims who were required to raise their homes by Sept. 1 under the New York Rising program can breathe a sigh of relief — for now.

The Governor’s Office of Storm Recovery, which administers the program, announced last week that it was extending the deadline for homeowners who opted to elevate their homes to June 1, 2018.

Residents and elected officials alike said that the Sept. 1 deadline, established earlier this year, was unrealistic, adding that hundreds of Long Beach homeowners who opted into the program were at risk of losing vital federal funding. The homes were not required to be completed, but had to pass interim inspections and be lifted on wooden cribbings, the first step in the elevation process.

“The people who are still searching for contractors and were not up in the air by Sept. 1, the letter they received said that they would have to return the money,” said Liz Treston, a Wyoming Avenue resident who is raising her home and has advocated for residents in the NY Rising program. “Some of those first checks were for $50,000, $60,000, and that was for design fees, architects and to begin to get a contractor to come to your front door. That money is spent; it’s gone. [The deadline] was totally unrealistic.”

On March 1, State Senators Todd Kaminsky and John Brooks, along with Assembly members Brian Curran and Melissa Miller, sent a letter to the GOSR requesting that the deadline be extended. Kaminsky said he sent a follow-up letter on May 30, detailing specific hardships that were beyond residents’ control, and that the GOSR agreed to extend the deadline “for homeowners who can provide documentation of good-faith efforts.”

“I speak to families who are still displaced, or living in partially repaired homes, who are in dire need of assistance,” Kaminsky, a Democrat from Long Beach, said in a statement. “They are working as hard as they can to comply with governmental regulations, and I am glad that GOSR has realized that, at no fault of the homeowners, the elevation process is lengthy and cumbersome. This extension will enable families to get the money they need to safely elevate their homes — which is the entire purpose of the NY Rising program.”

On June 8, the City Council and City Manager Jack Schnirman sent a letter to Kaii Torrence, the GOSR’s director of intergovernmental affairs, also requesting that the deadline be postponed, especially for residents who are awaiting building permits and trying to find temporary rentals.

“We aggressively advocated for this modification, and we are thrilled that it is being implemented to allow extra time for residents who are in the process of elevating their homes,” Councilwoman Chumi Diamond said in a statement.

Under the change, if there is a chance that a home will not pass an interim inspection or is not in the process of being raised by Sept. 1, NY Rising will extend the deadline if the homeowner can provide documentation no later than June 30, the city said. The documents include a permit from the local building department to commence elevation, a receipt documenting an application for an elevation permit, or the most recent correspondence from the building department showing that an elevation permit was submitted, the city said.

But on Wednesday, residents from across the South Shore called on Gov. Andrew Cuomo, NY Rising and the GOSR at a rally in Hempstead to eliminate or loosen the deadlines and pushed for more time for residents to submit building permit applications beyond June 30, and for bulkhead and housing repairs. They also called on officials to address contractor fraud and other issues.

Many people said that the deadlines have added to the emotional toll Sandy has had on residents. “There is this revolving door of case workers and constantly changing requirements and documentation from one week to the other,” said Treston, who is renting while her home is being elevated and has dealt with five case workers since she opted into the program in 2013. “It’s a full-time job.”

According to NY Rising, a final deadline for completion of the home-raising process has not yet been set, but the agency told the Herald in March that it expects the homes to be finished “as quickly as possible.”

Building Commissioner Scott Kemins told the Herald in March that the elevation process typically takes at least six months, depending on the contractor and available funding.

In addition to providing extensive documentation to NY Rising, homeowners looking to elevate must also navigate what can be a lengthy approval process with their local building departments, PSEG and other agencies. “I don’t think NY Rising fully took those things into account,” said Kevin Reilly, who lives in the Canals, co-founded the Facebook page Long Beach Rising in 2014 to provide residents with resources, and lobbied for changes to the NY Rising program. “It’s trying to find a contractor to do the work, approvals to start the work — and finding a place to live while the work is going on. Those three things are really key to what’s holding a lot of people up right now.”

Reilly added that contractor fraud and substandard work remain issues.

“Some may have given the homeowners exorbitant prices because they’re in a panic to get the contractors to do the work — and these contractors don’t have the capacity to do it,” he said. “I’m glad they lifted the deadline, but there’s still no accountability or transparency. I think that [U.S. Senators Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand] need to start paying attention to what local contractors are doing with federal money — and NY Rising is washing their hands of it.”

Both Reilly and Treston lauded the city’s Building Department, saying that Long Beach is ahead of many other municipalities in terms of helping residents rebuild.

“They really make an effort to get your permits and plans looked at, and they want to tell you right way what’s wrong with them and give you the maximum amount of time to fix it,” Reilly said. “In other areas ... there’s a very big backlog to get your plans reviewed.”