Rebuilding mired in red tape

NEW YORK’S home rebuilding effort after Hurricane Sandy is under water — and so is one Brooklyn family who found their home flooded again four years after it was ravaged in the storm due to missteps by the city program.

Amber and Jim Sullivan have been waiting for a year for the Build It Back program to finish work on their Gerritsen Beach home so they can move back in. They encountered delays after the city decided regulations required them to install a sprinkler system in the home.

They were finally planning to move home this weekend — and then workers inadvertently triggered the sprinklers, causing the home to flood. Now, they say the bottom floor has to be gutted, and they don’t know when they’ll be able to return.

“It’s a hot mess, is what it is,” said Amber Sullivan, 40.

“I just don’t get it. It’s been over a year,” she said. “It’s incompetence. That’s what it is when I think about it.”

The case is just one example of the stumbles that have thrown Build it Back off track, leading Mayor de Blasio to admit last week he would not fulfill his promise to finish the program by the end of this year.

Only 44% of homes in Build It Back are finished. The city says that by the end of the year, 90% of program participants will either have construction underway or have received a check to pay them back for work they funded themselves.

Officials have not set a new deadline to get the entire program, which now includes about 8,500 homes, completed. Meanwhile, the program has gone $500 million over budget, which city taxpayers are on the hook to make up.

Sullivan and her family paid out of pocket to fix most of the damage themselves after Sandy flooded the home in 2012. But they turned to Build It Back for help to elevate the house for storm protection to avoid skyrocketing flood insurance premiums, in addition to fixing a bathroom.