Since my election to Congress back in November, I have been closely following the Asbury Park Press investigative series regarding the Federal Emergency Management Agency seeking total or partial repayment of funds from some superstorm Sandy victims (”Pay it back! Superstorm victims told to return aid,” Nov. 30).

While all taxpayers would support FEMA recouping funds that were acquired via fraud or deception by people trying to game the system, the APP’s reporting leaves me deeply concerned that the monstrous FEMA bureaucracy could be targeting innocent people who rightfully received FEMA monies in the wake of Sandy and have neither the need nor ability to repay those funds.

FEMA’s enforcement actions should be targeted at those who knowingly and intentionally tried to abuse the system, not innocent people who applied for and received monies they believed they were entitled to. Monies, by the way, that have likely long since been expended as part of rebuilding their homes, businesses and lives.

If you are one of these innocent victims I want to hear from you. That’s why along with Berkeley Township Mayor Carmen Amato, Legal Services of New Jersey and the Ocean County Long Term Recovery Group, I will be organizing a free legal clinic for Sandy survivors in Ocean County on Saturday, Dec. 13, from 10 a.m. to noon at the Berkeley Township Recreation Building (630 Route 9, Berkeley).

As the new representative from the 3rd Congressional District, I will stand with any victim of Sandy who believes they are qualified recipients of this money and are now being asked to repay it unfairly. I will request that FEMA provide clear and convincing legal evidence to the contrary before delivering another crushing financial blow to people whose lives were turned upside down by the storm.

TOMS RIVER – When Catherine Tango opened the letter from the Federal Emergency Management Agency in late October, she began to panic.

Homeless after the storm flooded the Ortley Beach condominium she was renting, Tango, 61, relied on FEMA for assistance to pay her rent and living expenses at an apartment she rented in Howell. But the letter she received in late October demanded repayment of $15,500 — and threatened to garnish her monthly Social Security disability check if she doesn’t pay it back.

“When I found out I could get FEMA help, it was a blessing,” Tango said. “Now it’s like a nightmare.”

Jill Belloff and her husband lost their Waretown home in Superstorm Sandy and has lived in a rental house since. Now FEMA wants them to pay back some of what they received in rental assistance. STAFF VIDEO BY PETER ACKERMAN

TOMS RIVER, N.J. — When Catherine Tango opened the letter from FEMA in October, she began to panic.

Homeless after Superstorm Sandy flooded the Ortley Beach condominium she was renting, Tango, 61, relied on assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to pay her rent and living expenses at an apartment she rented in Howell. But the October letter demanded repayment of $15,500 — and threatened to garnish her monthly Social Security disability check if she didn’t pay it back.

“When I found out I could get FEMA help, it was a blessing,” Tango said. “Now it’s like a nightmare.”

FEMA says 1,200 New Jerseyans have received what it refers to as a recoupment letter. The agency is seeking $8 million in repayment from people it now says shouldn’t have received that money in the first place.

Such a letter was addressed to Jill Svelling Belloff’s Forked River rental home, not the lonely mailbox that fronts the empty dirt lot in Waretown where her Sandy-soaked home once was, and where a new house someday will stand. The demand letter arrived just a couple of weeks before her husband underwent open-heart surgery.

“I’m paying a mortgage, I’m paying rent, I’m paying storage fees, and now my husband might not be able to work — he’s self-employed — and we don’t even have a building permit,” Svelling Belloff, 54, said. “I can’t even express how frustrated I am with how this has all been handled.”

TOMS RIVER – The people who recently crowded into St. Andrew United Methodist Church on a rainy night were on a desperate search for information.

Most were Sandy victims, and many still are trying to rebuild their homes more than two years after the superstorm struck. The meeting, presented by the Ocean County Long-Term Recovery Group, was intended to give these people one of the things they need most — information to navigate the state’s Reconstruction, Rehabilitation, Elevation and Mitigation (RREM) program.

“You’re not in this alone,” Sue Marticek, executive director of the long-term recovery group, told the crowd. As she often does, Marticek cites some sobering statistics from Hurricane Katrina, which devastated parts of Louisiana and Mississippi in 2005.

Katrina “is the best crystal ball” for the recovery in New Jersey, Marticek said. If so, the aftermath of that storm is sobering: 18,000 homes are considered not in compliance by U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and HUD is seeking $522.2 million back from those homeowners.

Only six homes in NJ done through RREM program

The homeowners received grants through Louisiana’s Road Home program, but have failed to properly elevate their homes, HUD claims. Many homeowners were defrauded by unscrupulous contractors, while others used the money to pay their mortgages or did not receive enough grant funds to rebuild and elevate. Now they are stuck in a kind of bureaucratic limbo.

Marticek does not want that to happen here.

LITTLE EGG HARBOR – As homeowner Scott Ingold saw the price tag to lift his 2,475-square-foot home gradualy climb above $200,000, he wondered how it could be so much higher than the agreement he nearly signed with the same contractor months earlier — outside the authority of New Jersey’s largest homeowner initaitive — for nearly half the cost. Just as puzzling, Ingold said, was that the people in charge that he asked about it didn’t see anything wrong.

JOIN THE CONVERSATION: What is life like two years after Sandy? Share your stories with APP journalists at 2 p.m. today.

“You see all these houses in this area, they’re knocking down their houses and they’re selling the land because they’re not getting accepted into the (Reconstruction, Rehabilitation, Elevation and Mitigation program),” said Ingold’s wife, Jessica.

“How many of those houses could have been lifted if this (program) was administered correctly?” Scott Ingold said. “If this house was done for $100,000 that left $50,000, (which) could have lifted a small house.We’re up to ($218,000 now) you could have lifted two more small houses for that.”

Superstorm Sandy: Two years later

The Ingolds contacted the Asbury Park Press late this summer to raise their concerns that the RREM program, the state-run, federally funded initiative designed to lead the rebuilding effort, was being wasteful. Through RREM, eligible homeowners can receive up to $150,000 from a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development disaster grant.

There’s no proof that anything nefarious was going on in the Ingolds’ case, and it simply may be a reflection of the cost of doing business with the government and its layers of protective measures.

“After we got married in 1990, we rented the house I grew up in,” said Quinn, who has owned and lived in her home on Bay Stream Drive for more than 20 years, “so renting to us is like a whole new concept.”

People like the Quinns have jumped in and out of the rental housing market since Superstorm Sandy, revealing the meager supply of apartments and rental homes on the Jersey Shore and constricting it even further.

First, countless residents displaced by Sandy who sought apartments ended up couch-surfing with friends or family, hoping their story would draw some empathy from a landlord or real estate agent with an opening.

TOMS RIVER – Margaret Quinn responded to 32 online ads, spoke with 14 real estate agents, went to 10 open houses, called four apartment complexes, asked FEMA for a trailer and sought advice from Gov. Chris Christie on how she could find a short-term rental for her family when it came time for her rebuilt house to be elevated.

“After we got married in 1990, we rented the house I grew up in,” said Quinn, who has owned and lived in her home on Bay Stream Drive for more than 20 years, “so renting to us is like a whole new concept.”

People like the Quinns have jumped in and out of the rental housing market since superstorm Sandy, revealing the meager supply of apartments and rental homes on the Shore and constricting it even further.