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By Steven Rodas
The sense of disorder that is the natural disaster recovery system may best be summed up by Hurricane Sandy “clawbacks.”
After the storm reshaped New Jersey in 2012, homeowners understandably sought monetary relief in order to recover. Many were encouraged to apply for federal programs to build back homes and purchase essential needs. Not all that money was valid though, the federal government later said.
The reasons varied for the feds “clawing back” funds, in other words seeking repayments. But in many cases it was due to what’s called a “duplication of benefits.”
Depending on the program, storm victims were not allowed to get funds from more than one government source. Some residents were also sent money that was later discovered to be an over payment (a bureaucratic error of sorts).
Headaches tied to clawbacks appear to now be largely in the past.
On Thursday, advocates from the New Jersey Organization Project and U.S. Rep. Frank Pallone, D-6th District, announced a new policy and relief for hundreds of impacted families.
As part of opens in a new windowthe policy, the Department of Housing and Urban Development said it would waive clawbacks for eligible storm survivors, including low- and moderate-income families, people who have been foreclosed upon or lost a loved one.
The specific storm-related programs this applies to are outlined opens in a new windowhere.
The congressman’s office estimated over 900 New Jersey households owe more than $31 million in clawbacks. New Jersey community affairs officials won’t really know that total until they do further vetting.
Thursday’s proposal will send up to $27,000 to qualifying households, Pallone said.
“Everything about this news is a positive development,” Amanda Devecka-Rinear, executive director of the New Jersey Organizing Project, a non-profit that helps storm survivors, told NJ Advance Media on Friday on the phone.
“For a set of Sandy survivors,” she added, about who benefited from the news, “… and actually we think for storm survivors more broadly. I think that it’s clear to all of us that we need disaster recovery that actually serves families, because any of us could experience any kind of disaster at any time.”
She alluded to impacts from the remnants of Hurricane Ida years back, as well as the current Los Angeles wildfires.
The American Red Cross opens in a new windowestimated that Sandy resulted in more than 30 deaths in New Jersey (117 in total) and caused 8.5 million people to lose power across 11 states.
Hundreds of homes were lost in the storm, and in the aftermath, people sought aid from a gamut of programs.
Pallone said he recalls in-person offices set up in New Jersey to help residents navigate those very programs. He was dumbfounded when the clawback notices began to arrive some time after.
“When the federal government came back and said, ‘Well, wait a minute, you can’t duplicate these efforts, and therefore you owe money, because you have money coming from these various federal sources,’ my initial reaction was, you’re the people that told them to do it, right? I was there. I’m not making this up,” Pallone said during a press conference in Union Township on Friday.
“This relief is about justice for those who have endured so much — people who lost everything through no fault of their own — and ensuring they can finally move forward without this unfair financial burden,” added Pallone, who has been advocating for the relief for years.
Officials from the Department of Housing and Urban Development could not immediately be reached Friday regarding how the policy impacted natural disaster survivors nationwide and in the future.
Joe Mangino, board president for the New Jersey Organizing Project, said at the event: “This is major progress for us and low- and moderate-income Sandy families who will see forgiveness, survivors who have had to file for bankruptcy or are in foreclosure, and those heartbreaking cases where Sandy survivors have passed away.”
His group will hold a virtual session Feb. 11 to help storm survivors and supporters during the rollout of the latest policy. To register, opens in a new windowclick here.