5 years later, they’re still waiting

NEARLY FIVE YEARS after Hurricane Sandy, they’re still living in limbo — instead of in their homes.

Their stories stand out amid the backdrop of Hurricane Harvey’s recent devastation, showing how a new breed of nightmare can take hold once a monster storm’s soggy debris gives way to mountains of dry, tedious red tape.

They are the more than 1,000 New York City residents whose homes are still uninhabitable, boarded up, torn down or undergoing some form of reconstruction.

Tom Doyle, 55, stood outside his boarded-up home in Staten Island’s hard-hit South Beach neighborhood on Thursday and shook his head in disbelief.

A warning sign on his once tidy, twofamily brick home read “Under Construction.”

“Under construction? That’s a joke. There hasn’t been any construction here since we left,” he said with exasperation. “It’s frustrating.”

The father of four and grandfather of three recalled going to work as a sanitation department borough chief in Brooklyn when Sandy hit.

“My wife called me and told me the water was rising up. There was no way she could get everyone out of the house. They went upstairs,” he said.

He worked a 12-hour shift, spending some of that time rescuing people, then returned to find 6 feet of water in his newly renovated first floor.

“It destroyed everything,” he said. “Everything we had, all our money we saved and borrowed for the renovation, was gone in a day.”

The family had flood insurance, but it only paid about $34,000 - nowhere near enough to cover gutting and restoring, he said. They did what they could and moved back in temporarily.

He breathed a sigh of relief when the city’s Built It Back program said he qualified.

“A lot of people were waiting to get in. We got accepted right away. We thought, ‘Great, we are lucky,’” he recalled.

The process was slow at first. Then he was told things were about to start “moving fast” last year, so the family transferred to a rental on Aug. 15, 2016.

Officials ultimately decided that Doyle’s house had to be torn down because of structural damage, he said. Then for some reason, the first contractor assigned to his project dropped out. The second one did too.

The family handed over the keys during the process and was told not to enter the property. would no longer be getting a new

They were visiting a relative wood structure built on-site. Instead, next door when they realized the they would get a modular radiators had frozen and burst, home largely built in a factory setting. sending new flooding through the ghostly structure. Doyle said he hasn’t seen any

Doyle said he later got a images yet and has a new raft of $2,500 water bill for the incident worries about safety and resale that still hasn't been resolved. value.

“The entire first floor is moldinfested He said his family is “very now,” he said. “So even if grateful” for the city’s assistance, I wanted to drop out of Build It but the delays and miscommunications Back at this point, I couldn’t afford have taken a toll. it. The house would have to “I’m not looking for a mansion. be gutted to the bone, which I just want to go home,” he costs money I do not have.” told The News.

The latest setback came when Doyle said his best advice for Build It Back said the family Harvey victims displaced from homes during reconstruction is to be relentless. Take more pictures than you ever think you’ll need, save every receipt and try to visit your property as often as possible, he said.

His regular visits uncovered the burst radiators and at least three attempted break-ins, he said.

Hurricane Sandy hit Oct. 29, 2012 and quickly became one of the worst natural disasters in the city’s history. It left tens of thousands of people immediately homeless and drained the life savings of countless New Yorkers.

In June 2013, the state created the Office of Storm Recovery and the city launched Build It Back. Within months, an estimated 20,000 families applied for city aid.

As of last month, 97% of the 8,313 homeowners who qualified for Build It Back received either financial reimbursement or a construction start, officials said.

Of the 5,166 cases involving construction managed by either the city or the private homeowner, 4,056 have been completed, they said.

Brooklyn residents Kathy and Dan Ene said Build It Back initially turned them away, claiming they didn’t qualify. But they didn’t give up.

“They had said that we didn’t have enough damage. The fact that our house was on the water didn’t matter much to them. It was all a numbers game,” Kathy, 60, told The News.

She said the threshold to qualify was 50% damage, and the city decided her home on Gerritsen Beach was only 40% damaged.

“We had to fight. Everything was a fight and a struggle,” Dan, a 49-year-old volunteer firefighter, said.

The couple stood outside their