Sandy victims to rally in Island Park and Long Beach

The “Walk a Mile in Our Shoes” rally, organized by the group Sandy Victims Fighting FEMA, will take place on Saturday, March 29 at 10 a.m. The walk will start at Island Park Village Hall, 127 Long Beach Rd., and continue to the Long Beach boardwalk.

Organizer Michele Mittleman said that too many displaced residents remain homeless and in need of help from NY Rising, Build it Back and RREM throughout the South Shore of Long Island, Queens, Brooklyn, Staten Island and New Jersey. Long Island residents will be walking at the same time as those in other areas of New York City and New Jersey, "to stand in unity and show the world the shameful lack of progress 17 months after Hurricane Sandy."

"It’s basically to highlight the fact that all of the programs are broken,” said Mittleman.

The rally will be held just a few weeks before the April 11 deadline to apply for the NY Rising Housing Recovery Program. The program, tasked with distributing billions in federal Sandy aid money allocated to the state, began releasing grant award letters last October. The program was announced a year ago as a way to help homeowners fill the funding gaps left by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Small Business Administration and their insurance, a reimbursement process that residents and local officials described as sluggish and complicated.

The Governor’s Office of Storm Recovery, the state agency in charge of managing and distributing aid to victims of Hurricane Sandy and Tropical Storms Irene and Lee, hosted a public meeting in Mineola on March 5, a condition of the $2.1 billion of Community Development Block Grant money it was allocated last November by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. This second appropriation of Sandy aid money, bringing the total in CDBG funds awarded to New York to $3.8 billion, was meant to help continue to fund the state’s ongoing recovery programs for home and business owners as well as municipalities.