New York, NY – The city is helping homeowners take a key first step in repairing damage from Superstorm Sandy — finding people to do the work.
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Officials are lining up plumbers, electricians and other contractors who will concentrate on fixing storm damage and will be dispatched to the homes of residents who sign up for the city’s new NYC Rapid Repairs program, Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced Friday. People can start signing up Tuesday, and the city hopes some work can be done as soon as next week.
The initiative aims to help homeowners who would otherwise have to track down contractors themselves at a time when they’re in especially high demand. The program also aims to ease a problem for government: finding temporary living quarters for potentially tens of thousands of storm victims in an area where housing is scarce and expensive.
Bloomberg estimates that 1,000 houses in New York City were destroyed during the superstorm and up to 80,000 suffered water damage.
“The best temporary housing is permanent housing, and that means we want to get as many people back into their homes as we can, and it starts today,” Bloomberg said, calling the program “innovative and unprecedented.”
The goal is to get as many people as possible back into their homes by the end of the year, he said.
To take advantage of the program, residents need to contact the Federal Emergency Management Agency to get assigned a FEMA number; that can be done by phone or at a disaster assistance center. The bulk of repairs should be eligible for FEMA disaster aid payments, city officials say.
Then homeowners can sign up for NYC Rapid Repairs by going to NYC.gov, by calling 311 or by going to a city recovery center.
The homes need to be on streets that have electricity, even if the homes themselves do not. Houses that have been inspected and given a green placard, signifying they are structurally sound, will be addressed first because they should be quickest to repair, officials said.
The city will coordinate the repair requests by area, assigning workers to fix multiple houses in the same area for efficiency’s sake, so they don’t lose time traveling around, officials said.
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