Hundreds still wait for homes to be repaired or bought out
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Kim Capizzi, 39, is living in her mother’s attic with her two teen children in Midland, Staten Island as she lingers in Build-It-Back limbo.
Capizzi’s four-bedroom home in the same neighborhood was flooded during Sandy. She and her family had to be rescued by boat.
“We lost everything,” she recalled. “Everything we had was covered in soot. The upper floor was covered in mold.”
For more than two years, the school paraprofessional lived with her mother while her house was gutted and renovated. In April 2015, she finally moved back.
But after another storm struck, she says she came to believe the home was susceptible to flooding and reached out to BuildIt-Back. She says the city at first offered to elevate the home and cover apartment rental and storage fees during construction. Then the dynamic shifted. When Capizzi bought the home in 2003 she says she had bad credit and was forced to put her brother’s name on the deed. At first, she says, Build it Back assured her that would not be an issue. Then the story changed: now, the city said, she was not eligible for rent subsidy or storage coverage because she was technically not the owner of the home.
“I went nuts,” Capizzi recalled. “Had they told me before I handed the keys over then I would have not gotten it (raised).”
Elevation construction began in July 2016 and was supposed to take up to a year. It’s now approaching two years and three months with no end in sight.
Meanwhile, Capizzi pays a $1,600 monthly mortgage and $8,800 annual flood insurance on an empty home. Build It Back has said everything will be done soon.
“They keep on telling me they understand,” Capizzi said. “They don’t understand.”
Even when the city does come through with money, sometimes the contractor it picks to do the job drops the ball.
Dolores Mitro, 65, moved out of her threebedroom home in Gerritsen Beach, Queens, on April 22 as instructed by the city to allow the contractor it hired to elevate her home.
She says she was told the job will take a year, but after she moved out nothing was done for three months. Now Mitro, who is diabetic and uses a wheelchair, is worried about how long she’ll be out of her home.
“I think the city has good intentions,” she said. “But it should be faster. They’ll be there for three days working like crazy and then they don’t do anything for five days.”
De Blasio’s promise of wrapping things up by the end of 2016 seems like a distant memory as 2017 is coming to a close, and the city has not set a new deadline for actually finishing the job.
“For some residents, it seems like the recovery process has been just as bad, if not worse, than the storm itself,” said Treyger, the Brooklyn councilman. “These are working-class people. They live check to check. They’ve emptied out their life savings to make their lives whole again. They are desperately, desperately relying on us.”