‘It’s a hot mess,’ displaced family fumes
The elevation was done quickly, and the couple and their teenage daughter, who have been renting an apartment in Marine Park, Brooklyn, expected to return home in April.
Then red tape got in the way: Officials decided that because of the elevation, the house now counted as three stories, so regulations required a sprinkler system to be installed, Sullivan said.
“We fought them and fought them and fought them on the sprinkler system. They finally said if you stop fighting, you’ll get in faster,” she said. “We finally just threw up our hands.”
Work dragged on for months, for reasons the family says were never fully explained.
“There’s really been no explanation for our delays,” said Jim Sullivan, 40.
The sprinkler requirement has been one of a slew of regulatory mandates that threw up hurdles to completing the program. Also slowing things down: the need to get permits for demolition, make elevated homes wheelchair accessible, clear up preexisting problems like lead paint and asbestos, and resolve discrepancies with certificates of occupancy
On Thursday, the City Council passed legislation to allow homes to be demolished without the usual permit, and to let repair and elevation work to begin without first resolving unrelated building code violations, in another effort to speed up the process. Some of the troubles plaguing the Build It Back program: Builders faced a slew of regulatory requirements, including the need to get permits for demolition, sprinklers, install make elevated homes wheelchair clear up accessible, preexisting problems like lead paint and asbestos, and resolve discrepancies with the certificates of occupancy. With so many homes moving forward at once, there was a limited pool of qualified architects, contractors and workers capable of doing the work, which created a bottleneck. Costs rose across the construction industry, with New York City building costs at more three times than the average for other large cities. Complicated elevation and rebuilding projects have been especially expensive. Homeowners have been unable or unwillling to move out of their homes by the deadlines set by the city, back the pushing start of construction on many homes.
Besides regulations, the program has faced a bottleneck because officials tried to move so many homes forward at the same time, but there was only a limited number of architects and contractors who could do the work. Meanwhile, construction costs surged across the industry.
At the Gerritsen Beach home on Melba Court, the Sullivans were finally seeing light at the end of the tunnel when a construction crew putting finishing touches on the home set off the sprinklers, sending water cascading through the floor of an upstairs bedroom into the ground level.
City officials say they quickly got to work repairing the damage, including removing the downstairs ceilings and insulation, and the family should be able to move in by the end of next week.
“We’re working expeditiously to fix that and put them back in their house,” said Build It Back spokesman Matt Viggiano.
The family is skeptical, saying they’ve been given false deadlines before.
“At the rate they’ve been doing work, it could be months,” Jim Sullivan said.
He now regrets even going to the program for help.
“In retrospect, I kind of wish I had just taken out a loan on the house or something and hired my own guy,” he said. “With all the aggravation, the stress, the actual impact on my family’s lives — in my opinion it was a mistake.”