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What they don’t mention is the farse that is the supposed promise of money from the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program (HMGP). There has been much fanfare about HMGP and many people promising that money will be available under the HMGP to assist in rebuilding homes to comply with the current FEMA guidelines. What nobody is mentioning that HMGP won’t pay for any work that was already started or completed. FEMA must approve the project in advance and will reimburse the homeowner only after the work is done. They will not pay for completed mitigation work even if it was done in total compliance with the NY State and FEMA building codes and not started until after the disaster declaration.

Irene came to Long Beach on 08/29/12. No funds have been awarded under the HMGP from that disaster declaration over 18 months later. So what are homeowners supposed to do wait years before they start to rebuild for money that they may or may not be granted? They have not even started the promise with submitting projects to FEMA from Sandy five months later so how long will it take this time around . The restriction on retroactive payments was waived after Katrina and Rita in 2005. We need to urge all our lawmakers now to ask FEMA to make a commitment to the people that it will waive the no retroactive payments rule so that the rebuilding process can be expedited and homeowners would be encouraged to rebuild better and stronger knowing that they can at least apply for a grant in the future rather than waiting years to even start in hopes to get some reimbursement that may or not come in the end.

Here are some reference sources for you:

Here are the published notes from a Meeting Long Beach NJ had with FEMA regarding HMGP

http://www.longbeachtownship.com/images/FEMA_Haz_Mi_Grant_Prog_Instructions.pdf

Here you can download FEMA’s Hazard Mitigation Assistance Unified Guidance, see page 16 Section D.2 “Ineligible Activities”

http://www.fema.gov/library/viewRecord.do?id=4225

From: Hundreds of Long Beach homes need to be rebuilt

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