Washington, D.C. – (RealEstateRama) — In response to letters he has sent individually and in collaboration with five other members of the New Jersey Congressional Delegation, Rep. Chris Smith (NJ-04) sat down yesterday with officials from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to discuss the ongoing hardships faced by victims of Superstorm Sandy who are precluded from receiving HUD grants and HUD’s inexplicable decision to carve out needed Sandy funds for a nation-wide resiliency competition of which NJ received only $15 million.
“We continue to seek clarity from HUD regarding their decision to create a National Disaster Resilience Competition with $1 billion in desperately needed Sandy funds that would be better targeted to real-time unmet needs remaining in our state,” said Smith, the dean of the New Jersey congressional delegation.
“There is a reason we urged HUD not to go down this road—Sandy victims remain out of their homes, and they must remain the top priority,” he said.
As an example of ongoing need for equity, Smith noted his continued fight for relief for Sandy victims who were advised by federal officials to apply for and accept home disaster loans from the Small Business Administration (SBA) only to find themselves ineligible for further relief, such as grant awards through New Jersey’s Reconstruction, Rehabilitation, Elevation, and Mitigation (RREM) Program. After sending a letter to SBA and HUD detailing the issue and requesting appropriate relief, Smith shed light on the hardship faced by affected victims in his testimony before the House Small Business Committee.
“Over the last three years, Sandy victims struggling to rebuild have been blindsided by policies that lock them out of critical disaster relief programs. Homeowners who acted in good faith to immediately begin the rebuilding process have been unfairly penalized through no fault of their own, and they deserve an equitable solution,” Smith said.
Smith told the HUD officials of a family from Manasquan, NJ who liquidated their retirement savings to pay down debts taken to finance their children’s college education—decimating their savings and incurring a substantial tax penalty for the early withdrawal—just to qualify for a home disaster loan. It was not until the final stages of the RREM application process that they learned of their ineligibility for a grant award to pay down the SBA loan.
“HUD indicated they are willing to work on possible remedies with my office and the State of New Jersey,” Smith said. “Failure to address this misguided duplication of benefits policy will only lead to more confusion down the road for disaster victims.
“That’s a positive opening,” Smith said. “But it is still a long road ahead because while the agencies may move on some limited hardship cases that touch on the duplication of benefits, the programs that could provide help might already be out of cash, in part because of the national competition,” he said.
In 2014, Smith led a delegation meeting with then-Secretary Shaun Donovan and urged against diverting Sandy funds to a national resiliency competition with so many victims still out of their homes.
Jeff Sagnip ((732) 780-3035)
