29 Apr 2016

EDITORIAL: Sandy victims don’t deserve FEMA

Posted by Mary Colleen Robinson with - in 2016 Read More →

Lawmakers are asking for the deadline to be pushed back so that more people can learn about and be persuaded to sign up for a review of their Sandy flood insurance claims.

The Hurricane Sandy Claims Review Process was put in place by FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) in response to widespread claims of victims being cheated on their insurance payouts. Reports of falsified engineering reports and other scams by insurers had politicians raging and officials scrambling to give victims an outlet to appeal underpayments.

Now it turns out the entire review process was itself largely a fraud, at least according to whistleblowers who have stepped forward to expose a systematic effort to cheat victims once again. One of those whistleblowers, Jeff Coolidge, a former FEMA contractor, detailed the abuses Thursday at a press conference called by Rep. Tom MacArthur, who represents Ocean County.

Coolidge described a cynical, corrupt process in which he was ordered to forgo thorough review claims and adjust estimates to fall within a prescribed dollar range determined by a software program. The entire system was designed to underpay victims and affected about 1,000 claims Coolidge said he handled.

Hollywood could scarcely do a better job whipping up a stereotypical cold-hearted insurer sticking it to some hapless customer.

Augie Matteis, a lawyer with the law firm Weisbrod Matteis & Copley representing about 1,300 home and business owners affected by Sandy, summed it up perfectly: “The review itself is just a second round of massive fraud.”

28 Apr 2016

EX-FEMA contractor says agency shortchanged Superstorm Sandy victims

Posted by Mary Colleen Robinson with - in 2016, Latest News Read More →

WASHINGTON — A former contractor for the Federal Emergency Management Agency said Thursday he was told to deny or underpay claims exceeding certain ranges in deciding compensation for Superstorm Sandy victims.

Those decisions were made as part of FEMA’s Hurricane Sandy Claims Review Process, which was put in place following allegations of fraud in the initial claims process.

Jeff Coolidge, a former manager for OST Inc., said at a news conference he was required to deny or underpay almost all of the roughly 1,000 Sandy claims he handled during the four months he worked as a flood manager supervising a team of case workers on the claims review task force.

“I left the Sandy review process because it is a sham,” he said. “I was literally losing sleep because I didn’t want to be a part of that fraud anymore.”

Coolidge said his supervisors told him not to thoroughly review claims and to tailor his damage estimates to fall within an expected dollar range, dictated by a software program, no matter what. That program gave “artificially low numbers,” he said.

“If I or one of my reviewers recommended that FEMA pay more on a claim than the threshold predicted, FEMA would not approve it and told us to change our estimates,” he said. “FEMA applied this threshold systematically, creating a process designed to underpay the people it insured. I left because I think it’s wrong. It is time to expose this systematic fraud and cynical manipulation that victimizes further the families who are hurting after disasters like Hhurricane Sandy.”

FEMA asks some Sandy victims to return aid money

Coolidge and other former contractors who worked on the FEMA review process submitted affidavits to Weisbrod Matteis & Copley, a law firm representing 1,300 homeowners and business owners affected by Sandy. He made his comments at a news conference held by Rep. Tom MacArthur, R-N.J., who is calling for a congressional hearing and the resignation of FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate.

FEMA spokesman Rafael Lemaitre said in a statement that most policyholders who filed claims after Sandy were satisfied with how their claims were handled, but many were underpaid by their insurance companies.

“Survivors always come first, and that is why we’ve set up an unprecedented process to review these claims and pay out every penny owed to policyholders under their policies,” he said. “Already, more than $50 million has gone to policyholders and we’re working as quickly as possible —literally in shifts — to continue to make things right. Even as we do that, we’re continuing to overhaul the Flood Insurance Program to make sure the companies we partner with share our values of putting policyholders and survivors first.”

25 Apr 2016

Millions of tax dollars lost in Sandy contractor fraud | Di Ionno

Posted by Mary Colleen Robinson with - in 2016 Read More →

The money came and the money went, and nobody was watching.

Now, it’s a police problem.

That is the abridged version of the hurricane-related contractor fraud that has left thousands of homeowners stuck in the “disaster after the disaster” known as the Sandy recovery.

No place is it worse than sprawling Ocean County, where the storm left the most damage over the largest area.

“The government wanted to get recovery money into the hands of the people who were devastated as quickly as possible,” said Ocean County Prosecutor Joseph D. Coronato. “Unfortunately, there are people out there taking advantage of other people’s misery. They were victimized a second time.”

Coronato’s office has already secured 49 indictments involving Sandy-related fraud, and there are another 50 active investigations. Several small cases were previously adjudicated through restitution or the pretrial intervention, Coronato said, but the bigger cases are now being lined up for trials or pleas.

And while those numbers don’t seem staggering, the contractors are alleged to each have victimized an average of four to five homeowners. Several are accused of defrauding 20 to 30 clients. When you do the math, that’s thousands of people left holding the bag – a bag of empty promises and emptied of cash.

That’s just in Ocean County – it doesn’t even include another hundred or so cases in that are being handled by local police in the county.

Contractors under investigation Ocean County have allegedly walked away with over $5 million.”

03 Mar 2016

N.J. extends rental assistance for Sandy victims

Posted by Mary Colleen Robinson with - in 2016 Read More →

TRENTON — Sandy victims whose rental assistance was about to run out can now breathe a sigh of relief: the state has agreed to extend the program for an additional year.

The New Jersey Housing and Mortgage Finance Agency board agreed to extend temporary rental help for an additional year for residents who have been forced to pay rent while they are rebuilding their homes. That means eligible homeowners can receive up to 21 months of rental assistance.

Rental assistance is available to homeowners in the Reconstruction, Rehabilitation, Elevation and Mitigation (RREM) and Low- and Moderate-Income (LMI) Homeowners Rebuilding programs. Homeowners can receive up to $1,300 a month for rent payments.

“The state is taking positive steps to meet the ongoing need of homeowners in the RREM Program and LMI Program for temporary rental assistance as they complete the construction and, in many cases, elevation of their Sandy-damaged homes,” said Department of Community Affairs Commissioner Charles A. Richman, who chairs the HMFA Board.

The HMFA, which is an affiliated agency of DCA, administers the Rental Assistance Program.

The decision to extend the program came on the same day that 42 nonprofit groups and legislators wrote a letter to Richman, saying that without rental assistance many families would not have enough money to get back home. More than three years after Sandy struck, 69 percent of families in the RREM program are still not back in their houses, the letter said.

04 Feb 2016

What to do if HUD agents knock on your door

Posted by Mary Colleen Robinson with - in 2016 Read More →

TOMS RIVER – What should you do if an agent from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development comes knocking on your door?

Don’t panic.

“Don’t be afraid of someone knocking on your door,” Heather Yannello, Assistant Special-Agent-in-Charge at HUD, said Thursday. “They’re there to make sure your tax dollars are working the way they should.”

Yannello said property owners should ask HUD agents an important question: “Am I the target of this investigation?” Agents are obligated to tell the homeowner if he or she is being investigated.

ASBURY PARK PRESS

Plan to ban Sandy foreclosures for three years vetoed

Agents will often ask homeowners for receipts from rebuilding work or other documents. Yannello said homeowners can ask the agents to return on another day, so they will have time to gather the necessary paperwork.

Yannello spoke at the monthly meeting of the Ocean County Long-Term Recovery Group, an umbrella organization of more than 80 nonprofits that has worked to provide money and volunteer labor that helps fill gaps between a homeowners’ resources and the actual cost of rebuilding.

Group members had requested that someone from HUD attend this month’s meeting after questions arose last month about agents from the agency approaching Sandy victims and demanding to see receipts for rebuilding work.

Yannello said that HUD has three Newark-based agents and two in Philadelphia who have been investigating potential fraud cases. The main focus of their work has been finding people who received Sandy grant funds but were not primary homeowners.

03 Feb 2016

Lessons of Sandy: Raising homes paid off for some

Posted by Mary Colleen Robinson with - in 2016, Latest News Read More →

Sharon Stabley

HE ELEVATED: Larry Johnson is happy he raised his Ocean City home after Sandy. It used to sit as low as his neighbor’s. In January, water intruded only in the garage, which was built to withstand it. ‘My first floor is 15 feet off the ground, so there’s no issue there,‘ he says.

Larry Johnson got 2 inches of water in his Ocean City home in Hurricane Sandy, just enough to force him to rip out all the flooring and 2 feet of the walls and treat the house for mold.

But when January’s nor’easter hit New Jersey, he didn’t worry about any Sandy reruns — even as he watched water flow down his street “like a river, almost” from a storm that set high-tide records farther south in Cape May County.

After Sandy, Johnson and his wife, Maria, ripped down their old rancher and rebuilt. Their home now sits on top of marine-grade piling that kept everything but the garage high and dry in this flooding.

And all it took to fix that was a power-washer.

“I know where I live, and I know when there’s tidal flooding, I’m at risk,” he said. “But my first floor is 15 feet off the ground, so there’s no issue there.”

Flooding varies by storm, and Sandy’s worst-hit areas fared better in many cases than southern Cape May County towns did in this storm.

But another difference between the two storms is that after Sandy, many homeowners went through the complex, confusing and expensive process of having their houses raised, or knocking them down and starting over higher.

Others couldn’t or didn’t navigate the forms and funding frustration it took to elevate their homes.

19 Jan 2016

New concerns in New Jersey’s superstorm recovery for 2016

Posted by Mary Colleen Robinson with - in 2016, Latest News Read More →

New challenges are arising for Sandy-impacted homeowners till trying to rebuild from the October, 2012 hurricane.

Sue Marticek, executive director of the Ocean County Long Term Recovery Group (OCLTRG), said some residents who were forced to knock down their homes or took advantage of free municipal demolition programs thinking they were saving money, are now having difficulty getting additional funding from their National Flood Insurance Policy (NFIP) claims.

“We have a big challenge trying to fight for them for their foundations because they don’t have the house anymore,” said Marticek.

Marticek explained that proving Sandy damaged the foundation is difficult for those who may not have had photo proof or an independent engineering report as evidence.

“There was never any clarity to these homeowners from day one. You have one government agency telling you to do one thing, you have another government agency telling you do do another. The lack of clarity for these homeowners from the start has really cost them a lot,” Marticek said.

Marticek added that asking people to go back more than three years to show evidence again to justify a case for additional funding is difficult.

Sandy survivors are dealing with three major obstacles at this stage in the recovery, according to Marticek.

“One is again, dealing with the NFIP review process; two is still navigating and closing out of the RREM [Reconstruction, Rehabilitation, Elevation and Mitigation] program; and then three is contractor fraud and disputes. Those three issues are basically the biggest stumbling blocks in this recovery,” said Marticek.

Marticek said workshops covering those three areas will be needed this year, in 2016 with professionals who can get to the bottom of the cases and help clients.

“The amount of contractor fraud and contractor disputes that are out there is phenomenal, and when the dust settles, I think that is going to be, if not the biggest obstacle that hit New Jersey, it’s going to be up there in the top three easily,” Marticek said.

Marticek added that when a homeowner gets ripped off or they’re in a dispute, they’re recovery comes to a complete halt.

The OCLTRG has been working with the Volunteer Lawyers for Justice and the Community Health Law Project to create a Sandy task force to review each case individually.

Marticek pointed out that she thinks non-profit builders will have a more significant role this year.

“I think they are truly are going to be the last hope for a lot of people,” added Marticek.
Read More: New concerns in New Jersey’s superstorm recovery for 2016 | http://wobm.com/new-concerns-in-new-jerseys-superstorm-recovery-for-2016/?trackback=tsmclip

23 Nov 2015

Monmouth and Ocean County briefs

Posted by Mary Colleen Robinson with - in 2015, Latest News Read More →

BRICK

Township officials and Brick police are now participating in Nixle emergency alerts. Residents can sign up to receive local emergency alerts on their phones by texting their ZIP code to 888777. The service is free. For information, visit www.nixle.com.

Amanda Oglesby

BERKELEY

The Bayville Volunteer First Aid Squad’s cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) training classes are available for interested individuals and businesses. The classes include basic CPR for adults, children and infants, as well as the use of automated external defibrillators (AEDs) and how to identify and help people who are choking or having breathing problems. The cost of the class if $30 per student, with a minimum of three students and a maximum of nine students per class.

Classes are held at the squad’s building or can be held at interested businesses. For more information or to schedule a class, contact the squad’s CPR instructor at 732-267-1754 or send an email to bayvillefirstaidsquad@outlook.com.

Jean Mikle

TOMS RIVER

The Ocean County Long-Term Recovery Group will host a workshop Dec. 1 for Sandy victims who need assistance with the state’s Reconstruction, Rehabilitation, Elevation and Mitigation (RREM) program, as well as those who have reopened their flood insurance claims and need additional help. The workshop will be held from 6 to 8 p.m. at the First United Methodist Church, 129 Chestnut St.

For more information, call 732-569-3484, ext. 24.

Jean Mikle

Asbury Park Press11:14 p.m. EST November 23, 2015

http://www.app.com/story/news/local/2015/11/23/monmouth-and-ocean-county-briefs/76251642/

30 Oct 2015

6 ways to avoid the ‘next Sandy’ | Di Ionno

Posted by Mary Colleen Robinson with - in 2015, Latest News Read More →

A look at Union Beach destruction caused by Hurricane Sandy in 2012, and how the area looks three years later. Pictured is a house at 705 Front St. (Aristide Economopoulos | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com)

Aristide Economopoulos | NJ Advance Media, for NJ.com

Three years ago this morning, millions of people in New Jersey woke to a gray-sky dawn and the residual breezes of Hurricane Sandy, which rumbled through the state under the darkness of night with the straight-forward power of a slow-moving freight train.

The storm’s wide swath of destruction unveiled itself in the gathering light. The images are impossible to forget.

The roller coaster in the water.

The home in the bay.

Beachfront mansions, broken and toppled, reduced to piles of shingles and cedar shakes.

Bayfront bungalows tossed like Monopoly houses.

Boats marooned on highways. Kayaks and canoes used for transportation along city streets.

Utility poles snapped and hanging in a jumble of wires – at the Shore, in the suburbs, in the cities.

Trees in the mountain areas sheared by the hundreds of thousands, snapped by the invisible hand of a howling wind.

From Highlands to the Highlands, this was what New Jersey woke up to.

No electricity, broken water mains and ruptured gas lines, including gas lines above ground, as fuel became scarce. The state woke up to a full-blown, catastrophic disaster.

Then came the long and ongoing recovery, or what many critics call the “the disaster after the disaster.”

Many critics call the Sandy recovery ‘the disaster after the disaster.’

29 Oct 2015

NJ’s Sandy Recovery Three Years In: Progress Made, But Lessons Left to Learn

Posted by Mary Colleen Robinson with - in 2015, Latest News Read More →

When Sandy made landfall in Brigantine, NJ, late on the evening of October 29, 2012, it was immediately clear that the state’s recovery would be a long-term process. As state officials wrote in their action plan applying for aid from the federal government, more than 40,000 primary homes and 15,000 rental units had sustained “severe” or “major” damage from the storm. Boardwalks up and down the coast were replaced by piles of rubble, and damage estimates totaled tens of billions of dollars.But despite the scene, many storm victims remained cautiously optimistic that things would work out in the end, and that the end wasn’t too far over the horizon. People trusted that flood and homeowners insurance would kick in to cover their losses, and that aid money from the state and federal governments would come through to help them rebuild and get back on their feet.

Three years later, while some storm victims are back in their homes, many thousands more are still waiting to complete the process, amid being shortchanged dramatically on their flood-insurance claims, facing problems with banks and contractors, and sustaining lengthy delays in getting recovery checks from the state.

On this, the third anniversary of the storm, here’s a look at where the recovery stands and some of the key lessons it’s taught for how to handle future storms.

Current status of the recovery

“Three years since Sandy made landfall, the NJ Department of Community Affairs remains as hard at work as ever on the recovery effort,” said spokeswoman Lisa Ryan.

“When it comes to the more than two-dozen recovery programs funded with [federal Community Development Block Grant] Disaster Recovery monies, which DCA administers, these programs have been set up, are underway, and are progressing toward their goals. We’ve built partnerships with many federal, state, and local governments; fellow state agencies; numerous nonprofit organizations; and with many in the private sector to advance New Jersey’s recovery. We are also continually assessing the operational effectiveness of our recovery programs and improving our performance. This has resulted in positive and measurable progress that we anticipate will continue in the months and years ahead.”

Though just 2,000 of the 8,000 families in the state’s largest homeowner-grant programhave completed construction and are back in their homes, that number has doubled in the past six months, and the vast majority of participants have received at least an initial payment. In addition, Ryan said the process continues to gather steam, with about 50 homes finishing construction and $7 million now being distributed to homeowners in an average week.

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EDITORIAL: Sandy victims don’t deserve FEMA

EX-FEMA contractor says agency shortchanged Superstorm Sandy victims

Millions of tax dollars lost in Sandy contractor fraud | Di Ionno

N.J. extends rental assistance for Sandy victims

What to do if HUD agents knock on your door

Lessons of Sandy: Raising homes paid off for some

New concerns in New Jersey’s superstorm recovery for 2016

Monmouth and Ocean County briefs

6 ways to avoid the ‘next Sandy’ | Di Ionno

NJ’s Sandy Recovery Three Years In: Progress Made, But Lessons Left to Learn

Current status of the recovery

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