56.0°,
Overcast Vacant homes plague Seaford Harbor
Hurricane Sandy may have hit Long Island three and a half years ago, but its presence is still felt in the Seaford Harbor neighborhood. Many homes are under construction, but others remain vacant and neighbors worry that in many cases, the owners have simply walked away.
Jason Rylander, who lives on Ocean Avenue, contacted the Herald after reading a story in March about a vacant home in the Seaford Manor neighborhood. He noted that the problem with abandoned homes is much worse south of Merrick Road, where residents dealt with the one-two punch of Tropical Storm Irene and Hurricane Sandy in consecutive years.
“The town or the state should step in and help the people that need assistance,” he said, noting that the rebuilding process was frustrating for many.
Seaford Harbor has been a hotbed of construction activity since the storm as people rebuilt at different paces, based on their own financial resources and how quickly they were able to obtain financial assistance. Contractor vehicles remain a regular sight. Homes have been raised, others completely remodeled, and some torn down and rebuilt from scratch.
“I really worked hard and I had the finances to do it,” he said, noting that he was back in his home two months after Sandy. “A lot of people weren’t in that position.”
Rather, it’s the abandoned homes, in which owners have no intention of returning to fix up their properties, that concerns Rylander and other Harbor dwellers. He explained that while those houses only make up a small percentage of the neighborhood, it’s still enough to leave the remaining residents in the uncomfortable position of having vacant homes on their streets with no certainty that they will ever be fixed up.
Rylander pointed to a cluster of homes on Ocean Avenue that are abandoned. At 2542 Ocean Ave., the first house after the White Whale restaurant, there are doors and windows boarded up, orange fencing around the property and a sign from a contractor advertising home knockdowns.
Another house, at 2601 Ocean Ave., there is missing siding on the south side as well as signs posted declaring the structure unsafe. Behind the vacant home at 2596 Ocean Ave. is a garage that is visibly tilting.
