Long Beach to expedite NY Rising payouts

Homeowners could see final reimbursements six weeks earlier

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Len Torres, president of the City Council, with his contractor, Edwin Verastegui, right, outside his elevated home on East Market Street last week.
Len Torres, president of the City Council, with his contractor, Edwin Verastegui, right, outside his elevated home on East Market Street last week.
Anthony Rifilato/Herald

In an attempt to ease a reimbursement process that Hurricane Sandy victims and local officials have long described as sluggish and complicated, the city announced last week that it had reached an agreement with NY Rising to expedite payments to hundreds of homeowners who are elevating and rebuilding their homes.

NY Rising was launched in April 2013 to help homeowners fill the funding gaps left by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the U.S. Small Business Administration and their insurance policies. The program, tasked with distributing $1.7 billion in federal Sandy aid money allocated to the state, began releasing grant awards that year, a process that residents and elected officials alike said was daunting and often unfair.

“People were getting tortured so much that we as a city are trying to help them get through those processes as fast as possible,” said Scott Kemins, commissioner of the city’s Building Department. “Our goal from day one was to get everybody home and what they need, and that’s why we’re doing this.”

Four years into the program, many homes can be seen going up — mostly in the West End and Canals — and Kemins and other officials say that the pace of the program has picked up, though many issues remain and residents are relying on their final payouts to cover the cost of the work.

To date, of the 11,000 homeowners on Long Island initially enrolled in the program, 4,502 are still at some stage of work on their homes and have not requested a final inspection, a spokeswoman for the Governor's Office of Storm Recovery said. Nearly 60 percent, however, have completed the work and "closed out."

“It’s taken a long time, and there are still a lot of things that are terribly wrong, but once you’ve started, you do have the opportunity to move forward,” said Kevin Reilly, a Canals resident who co-founded the Facebook page Long Beach Rising in 2014, to provide residents with resources, and lobbied for changes to the NY Rising program. “If the Building Department is able to move any paperwork through New York Rising faster it’s a bonus for everybody — the Building Department has been superb. If you look at other towns, they’re way behind.”

Under the new agreement, once a job is completed and the Building Department issues a certificate of occupancy, the paperwork will be emailed from the city to the LiRo Group, the Syosset-based engineering firm tasked by NY Rising with reviewing rebuilding documents. Previously, homeowners had to wait until they received a CO before making an appointment to submit the paperwork to a caseworker.

“Before, the homeowners had to get the paperwork from us,” said Kemins. “[NY Rising] staff kept leaving, case managers were replaced two or three times, paperwork was getting misplaced and there was no continuity. Sending the paperwork direct takes their players out of the mix and the paperwork gets there that much quicker.”

City officials said that the streamlined procedure expedites the final payment from NY Rising by up to six weeks and “removes a significant bottleneck in the reimbursement process.”

“As someone whose family went through the early incarnation of New York Rising, I know all too well how difficult this process was to navigate,” City Council Vice President Anthony Eramo, a West End resident, said in a statement. “This new, streamlined procedure developed alongside New York Rising is a critical improvement that will allow the city to help residents rebuild their homes and receive reimbursement in a faster and less stressful manner.”

FEMA conducted 2,755 post-Sandy home inspections in Long Beach, and determined that 860 homes were more than 50 percent damaged and would have to be raised or demolished.

Those residents were required to elevate their homes to meet new FEMA height requirements, and others who sustained less damage had the option to apply for funding to raise their homes and avoid hefty flood insurance premiums. Generally, the maximum award is $300,000.

Council members and other elected officials pushed NY Rising two years ago to change its 50-50 payout plan, and Kemins said that the agency now reimburses homeowners 50 percent of the funding up front, with an interim payment of 40 percent after substantial work has been completed and the final 10 percent after construction and a closeout process are finalized.

"The city of Long Beach has worked hard to get people safely back into their homes so they can get on with their lives," a spokeswoman for the Governor's Office of Storm Recovery said in a statement.

Building Dept. breaks it down

According to Kemins, the Building Department has issued 816 certificates of occupancy since the storm, 329 permits to build new homes and 479 for elevations, while 46 applications for new homes and 259 for elevations are still pending.

“The pending number is very fluid, because every day we get more applications,” he said. “We have to do an inspection of the whole property, review the plans and survey and elevation certificates to make sure everything matches and that the house meets code, and once all that’s done we issue the C of O.”

NY Rising deadlines loom

For homeowners who are elevating and rebuilding, deadlines to complete the work are looming.

The next important deadline for those in the optional elevation program is Sept. 1, when, officials say, those homes must be “in the air” and pass interim inspections.

According to NY Rising, a final deadline for completion for homeowners has not yet been established, but the agency said that it expects each home to be finished “as quickly as possible.”

For those who are repairing their homes, the project must be under way by June, and requests for final inspections must be made by December.

Homeowners who are elevating were required to file a Request for Scope of Work Change Itemization 6100 form — a six-page document listing all the materials they needed — by March 1. However, homeowners can file a 6100 form for additional funds if unforeseen circumstances arise during construction.

Many say that there is a sense of urgency among residents to finish elevating and rebuilding on time. “Contractors — a lot are spread very thin and aren’t getting the work done as quickly as it should be,” Kemins said.

He added that the elevation process typically takes at least six months, depending on the contractor and available funding.

“We’re in the waning days of New York Rising, and there are a lot of people now who are scrambling to get contractors on board to lift their houses before they lose the opportunity to have New York Rising fund their project,” said Reilly, adding that contractor fraud remains an issue. “Now it’s the deadlines — the problem that homeowners are having right now is getting a contractor in place to do the work in time. If you’re not already set up with a contractor and you’re just starting to look now, you may have a problem finding someone who’s qualified.

“[The deadlines] put undue stress on people, especially if they have to be out and up in the air by Sept. 1,” Kemins said.

Hoping to get in soon

City Council President Len Torres, who opted to elevate his home on East Market Street, said that he and his wife, Beth, expected to return home next week — four years after they enrolled in NY Rising. Torres said he was granted $265,000, but only received about 60 percent of that after NY Rising deducted his reimbursement by FEMA and his insurance for repairs, what the agency called a "duplication of benefits."

He was forced to dip into his retirement savings to cover rebuilding costs that NY Rising did not, and began renting in September, while his two-story bungalow was being elevated.

“We started this process in 2013, and it took a long time,” Torres said, adding that he received help from the Building Department’s Residential Rebuilding Assistance Program.

Like many residents, Torres challenged FEMA’s initial damage assessment of his home, which took on four feet of water during the storm. “[FEMA] low-balled the evaluation … it was more damage than they assessed,” he said. “We fought them, and they gave us the difference, but once that was settled, NY Rising held the funds for five months.”

Edwin Verastegui, owner of Ed’s Home Improvements, said his company had completed six home elevations in town, including Torres’s.

“We probably could have had this home up two months ago,” Verastegui said last week. “The biggest issue for homeowners was the delay of payments from NY Rising. Some have to struggle, and can’t move in because they’re not getting the CO because your subcontractor isn’t getting paid.”

Torres said he recently received a temporary certificate of occupancy and that the final paperwork — and payout — will be processed soon.

“Then we’ll be done with New York Rising,” he said.