By FARAZ T. TOOR
Helena Mahon compares the anniversary of Hurricane Sandy hitting New York to death; like her basement, the day did not survive the storm surges.
Looking to her right Thursday, however, she sees something much less morbid. Gravel, instead of water, flowed into her home, as a line of men and women garbed in hard hats shuffled up and down from her basement to pump in the mineral.
“Today is like the rebirth of the day,” Mahon said. “You see something die and come back to life.”
Mayor Bill de Blasio as declared that he expects all Sandy-hit homes to be reborn like this by the end of next year.
The mayor announced a hard deadline for contractors in the Build it Back home reconstruction program, mandating that they finish repairing and rebuilding single-family homes damaged by Hurricane Sandy by the end of 2016.
“The only way you move a large organization is to set a tough deadline,” de Blasio said at a press conference Thursday, the three-year anniversary of the day the hurricane made landfall in New York.
To meet the schedule, the city called on people living in homes that need repairs to begin making accommodations to find another place to stay, and for contractors in the Build it Back program to immediately start working.
“It is a very tough deadline; I’m not minimizing it,” the mayor said. “[But] we are going to push every contractor to stay on schedule.”
Staten Island Borough President James Oddo and State Assemblywoman Nicole Malliotakis at the press conference said they were glad de Blasio had set the hard deadline.
“The only way to get people into their homes is to do what the mayor has done,” Oddo said.
“We are pleased that there is a hard deadline and that we’re holding the mayor’s feet to the fire, while working with the city,” Malliotakis said.
Mahon’s home was an example of this deadline pushing contractors as Habit for Humanity’s New York City chapter began repair work on the New Dorp Beach home, a few blocks away from de Blasio’s afternoon press conference.
The organization provided about 25 volunteers and workers in conjunction with corporate partners to move gravel into Mahon’s basement before they pour cement on it next week. Karen Haycox, the chapter CEO, said they are working to meet the 2016 deadline.
The de Blasio administration credits itself for overhauling Build it Back when the mayor took office by directly managing the program’s centers, expanding eligibility, increasing its presence in communities, and providing aid.
More than 20,000 New Yorkers applied for Build it Back relief or repair. There are 2,237 active applicants on Staten Island, less than half the total that applied before the program deemed them ineligible or they became unresponsive or dropped out of the program.
De Blasio said Build it Back “made an opportunity available” to everyone who applied and sent reimbursement checks to each family.
“We will not be satisfied until everyone is back in their homes,” the mayor said.
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