Bay Park residents still struggling post-Sandy

Homeowners still looking to rebuild, raise houses

Posted

For the past four years, Debra Orena has waited to rebuild her house, which Hurricane Sandy destroyed. The storm flooded her bungalow, on East Lawrence Avenue in Bay Park, with four feet of water and sewage and knocked the structure off its foundation.

Her home was finally razed in April. Now, while waiting for permits to be approved by the Town of Hempstead Building Department, she is still paying taxes on an empty lot where her house once stood.

“I lost everything,” Orena said, while flipping through a thick folder filled with drawings, construction plans, permits, her letters to the town and a list of officials’ objections to her plans.

Orena moved into her home in 2000. She said she didn’t have flood insurance when the storm hit, and she had already paid off her mortgage before she demolished the home.

According to Orena, she originally submitted plans to raze and rebuild her home — which she said would cost roughly $200,000 — in November 2012. She presented her latest plans to the town in September, she said, and received them back nearly three months later with an objection saying that she had forgotten what she called a few minor issues.

After Sandy, Orena found a place to live in Hempstead, but said she only stayed there for two weeks because the crime rate was so high. She currently lives around the corner from where her house once stood, at a place her friend rented to her in February 2013.

“It’s scary,” Orena said. “All of my friends are back to normal. Everyone is back to normal. I’m not back to normal.” She only expected to live at her friend’s house for six months.

Lou Carnovale, who is Hempstead’s chief plan examiner, said the process takes time because the town first needs to examine homes to see if they fall into a category of being substantially damaged, which means they’re damaged up to 50 percent more than their replacement value. The town had to inspect more than 164,000 homes to make determinations after Sandy. Carnovale said that the town aims to respond to applicants within three weeks, but depending on the time of year and the workload, the amount of time could increase substantially.

“It can get tedious and very time-consuming, and people can get very upset with the town over whether they are substantially damaged or not,” he said. “You can also get an applicant coming in and assuming they’re getting some money from some outside agency, and the rug is pulled out from them and they have to get new plans and are back to square one.”

Orena said she has spent thousands of dollars in fees and permits to have her house rebuilt. When she does receive permission to rebuild, she said the house will be raised eight feet and have only one floor instead of two.

Her neighbor, Sal T., who declined to give his last name, said he has been turned down four times for approval to lift his home. He attributed the struggles to insufficient staff at the town.

“I’m not mad at the Town of Hempstead building department,” Sal said. “I’m mad that they don’t have enough people doing this job.”

Sal, who has been an engineer for 20 years, said he has gone to the department’s headquarters and noticed that there were folders and reports from thousands of people looking to rebuild, repair or raise their homes, all piled up. What bothers him most, he added, is that it can take six months to get a response.

“Six months go by,” Sal said. “In the meantime, I’m waiting and waiting and waiting. [You’re] checking your mailbox every day for a permit, and you’re saying, ‘Today I’m going do the happy dance because I’m going get a permit because I did everything right.’”

John Rottkamp, the town’s building department commissioner, offered, “When people say there’s a delay, a lot of times plans are submitted by their architect and we put them into objections because there are problems with the plans. If that architect or engineer doesn’t get back to us in six months, there’s nothing we can do.”

As was the case with Orena, Sal’s house was hit by four feet of water and sewage. He had to replace all of his furniture, the electrical system, and appliances. Sal said that he would also likely leave New York once his home is raised, and that most of his objections have been simple. “They string you along,” he said. “And they say, ‘Oh, you didn’t do this right.’ Every six months, objections, objections, objections.”

The frustration continues to mount for Orena and Sal as they struggle to have their plans approved four years after Sandy, while others are able to rebuild and return a normal life.

“We were Sandy victims,” Orena said. “We should have come first before somebody’s pool, before somebody’s luxury third floor. We should have been first. We’re going into 2017, and I still don’t have a permit.”

Rottkamp said they have 50 code enforcers assigned to Sandy relief, three full-time plan examiners dedicated to major rebuilding projects and seven others who take on minor issues in the aftermath of the storm. “I understand it’s been four years and people want to get back to normal, but there’s a lot that goes into it,” Rottkamp said.

Comments about this story? Msmollins@liherald.com.