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By Jerry Carino
POINT PLEASANT – At first, Bob Quaranta thought he was going to have a little water damage in his laundry room. Before long, he realized this was no trickle.
His Point Pleasant neighborhood, just north of the Metedeconk River, was flooding due to Superstorm Sandy. He told his wife Diane: Grab your valuables and let’s go up to the second floor.
“We got stuck there for three days, until the water finally receded from the house,” Bob recalled. “Then we went outside to see the damage and saw a tree on top of our house. Our two cars had been totally submerged. It was horrible.”
That was late October 2012. It took over five years for the Quarantas to rebuild and move back home as they battled recalcitrant insurance companies and the red-tape nightmare of state and federal storm-recovery policies.
“To navigate the storm recovery system is pure hell,” Diane said.
They did it with the help of advocates like the New Jersey Organizing Project, which was founded by Sandy survivors. Two years ago, however, another lightning bolt struck the Quarantas, now in their 70s. This time, it didn’t seep under the laundry room door. It arrived in the mailbox.
“We’re back in the house, we’re fine, we’re on a fixed income — and then we get this letter,” Diane said.
It came from the federal government, and its content nearly knocked her over.
“It said, ‘You owe $80,000,’” she said.
‘We were the guinea pigs’
This is what’s known as a “clawback,” and 12 years after Sandy, it’s a painful reminder for thousands of victims that even now, the disaster isn’t in the rearview mirror.
How did this happen? There are four categories of federal aid, and in the wake of Sandy, with nobody in government offering clear guidance on the matter, displaced homeowners understandably took help from wherever they could get it.
“The problem is when you got money from multiple streams, this question of duplication of benefits can come up,” explained Amanda Devecka-Rinear, director of New Jersey Organizing Project, “even if you used every dollar of your flood insurance to pay your rent while you were out of your house to stay alive, and you thought it was your choice what you did with your flood insurance money, which you were supposed to use to rebuild — and you got this other money and you used that to rebuild.”
As of 2023, the federal government was trying to claw back $70 million from 1,700 homeowners — an average of about $40,000 per homeowner.
“Broadly, nobody I know did anything wrong,” Devecka-Rinear said. “They spent money on storage, they spent money on rent and a mortgage, they spent money to get home and had to pull from multiple sources to do it because it took so long. And then they end up with what’s called a duplication of benefits according to the system federally, and then they are asked to pay that money back.”
Members of New Jersey’s congressional delegation — U.S. Reps. Frank Pallone, Bonnie Watson Coleman, Andy Kim and the late Bill Pascrell, all D-N.J. — all pushed to remove the burden, securing a two-year repayment delay, so that homeowners would not have to repay any money until 2025. That deadline is now indefinite.
On Oct. 1, Pallone urged Secretary Adrianne Todman of the Department of Housing and Urban Development to consider a proposal that would cancel repayment requirements for many Sandy victims.
As 2024 winds down, “the state really is working with people in a way we haven’t seen before to get these clawbacks reduced,” Devecka-Rinear said.
She added that new procedures are being enacted to prevent a repeat of this mess for Hurricane Ida victims, who are still knee-deep in the rebuilding phase after the 2021 storm leveled parts of New Jersey.
“We were the guinea pigs,” Diane Quaranta said. “It’s really bad for so many people.”
Strength in numbers
The Quarantas have advice for the next wave of storm victims.
“Affiliate with a group like NJOP,” Diane said. “We were so lost navigating the system as a couple. One voice is not heeded. A group is needed, and these people know how to do things.”
Their home is raised now, and to date, Sandy is the only flood they’ve incurred in 50 years on the property. As for the clawback, they’re leaning on the New Jersey Organizing Project for guidance.
“The system desperately needs to be reformed so it’s logical and works for people,” Devecka-Rinear said.
Some homeowners have succeeded in reducing what they owe. But barring the passage of permanent relief by Congress, it’s a process — the latest in a long line of them.
“I don’t want Sandy to be my lifestyle,” Diane Quaranta said. “The storm comes, the storm goes, the news goes away, but years later, people are still suffering.”
