Ask the Architect

Storm victims giving money back?

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Q. I was reading about the state of New York trying to get millions of dollars back from storm victims who are raising their homes or even just repairing them. How is it happening that so many people got much more than they were supposed to? Part of it seems like fraud, but isn’t the state responsible to check things out before giving people money? It seems that a lot of people didn’t even get enough to do the whole job and aren’t going to be able to fight giving money back. Why and how is this happening?

A. This is a pretty serious problem for many people, partly because of the effect it has on individual households, and partly because of the impact on the local economy. The same government that bolstered local construction spending, a leading economic indicator on the national level, is now about to seriously impact the economic well-being of entire communities. The state may want to take a closer look at the process of taking back funds. Not that everyone who received funding was eligible for everything they claimed, but I can give you many inside scenarios on what some people have been doing, from the state and consumer perspectives.

For example, people don’t want, for the most part, open pier foundations, where a house sits on legs, or stilts, up in the air. They’re willing to pay the difference for closed foundations. A few smaller communities passed regulations requiring closed foundations. The largest ones didn’t. I’ve been getting NY Rising calls, for example, to resubmit plans to them showing open foundations, even though the closed-foundation plans are already filed for permits with the local building department. I’m told that the NY Rising funding approval will be held up if I don’t. The kicker is that I’ve been told that the homeowners will get more money if I show an open foundation.

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