The main entrance to the Keyport Leisure Bay Apartments complex on March 12. Robert Laughlin, manager of the complex, said the senior living facility needs an additional $1 million to fund repairs, but he is unsure where the money will come from. KEITH HEUMILLER While much of the post-superstorm Sandy discussion has centered on flood insurance premiums, base flood elevations and other homeowner-centric issues, area renters are dealing with significant problems of their own.
Adam Gordon, staff attorney for the New Jersey-based Fair Share Housing Center, said last week the state needs to concentrate more on lower-income renters as the rebuilding process moves forward, as they have been more affected by the storm than any other group.
“Gov. [Chris] Christie has said that he wants to focus billions of federal funds on homeowners, small businesses and Shore tourism, but he shouldn’t ignore the largest group of people impacted by Sandy,” he said in a press release.
According to a new study of Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) data conducted by Enterprise Community Partners, a nonprofit affordable-housing advocacy group, New Jersey renters account for close to half of the state’s post-storm FEMA registrations. As of late February, 254,496 New Jersey residents had registered with FEMA for post-Sandy assistance. More than 108,000 of those were renters, according to the study, and more than 114,000 make less than $30,000 per year. Nearly 70 percent of all renter registrants qualify as low income.
Renters have faced a number of unique challenges since the Oct. 29 storm, since most are dependent on landlords and building owners to clean up debris, repair their homes and reopen them for habitation.
Margaret, a hairdresser and mother of four, was renting an apartment in Keyport when Sandy flooded her complex and rendered it uninhabitable. After she and fellow renters were evicted, Margaret said her landlord hired a “management company” to dispose of debris and handle other tenant issues.
After bringing Dumpsters to the site, the company’s employees began “kicking in” apartment doors and disposing of furniture and other items without tenant supervision, she said.
“I have moved my TV and my jewelry box so it wouldn’t get damaged,” she said. “It was there on Thursday, but by Friday it was gone. What they did with it, I don’t know.”
Margaret, who declined to give her last name, said residents called Keyport police during the debris removal and the manage- ment company was told to vacate the property. Later, company employees told her they would be going back in to clear the remaining debris and said she could be present to supervise, she said. They came a day early, however, tossing much of her personal property without asking her for permission.
“I called a woman with the management company to ask why they had changed the day, and she said: ‘It was all garbage, don’t worry about it,’” Margaret said.
She and other tenants whose doors had been knocked out requested that temporary boarding or locks be installed in order to safeguard against looting in the aftermath of the storm, she said, but each of those requests were ignored. After their leases were terminated, tenants also had to wait weeks before their security deposits were returned. When they raised concerns with the company, Margaret said she and her neighbors were told they had little say in the matter.
“They said you’re just a renter; it’s not your house,” she said.
Other renters, like Keansburg resident Laura Lopez, struggled after the storm to replace a number of costly, uninsured possessions with little state or federal aid.
“I lost everything,” she said, during a walk to raise awareness for storm victims in January. “My friends, who are here with me today, came and helped me take everything out of the house [and] they bought me things for my new place.”
Lopez said she was lucky to know a Realtor, who helped her find another apartment in Keansburg.
Margaret, however, was placed in a FEMA-sponsored hotel room while competing with countless other displaced homeowners to find new housing.
Her children – 14, 12, 11 and 6 – were forced to share beds in the two subsidized hotel rooms, she said, while she worked for months to find a suitable replacement home.
“It was difficult trying to find housing within my limitations,” she said. “Does the certificate of occupancy only allow four or five people? Can my income handle the extra bills?”
Unlike some of her friends and neighbors, Margaret had flood insurance on her possessions and much of her losses were covered.
However, after being forced to rent a storage unit, replace lost possessions and feed her family while living in a hotel room, Margaret said she is still struggling.
“Other than eating sandwiches, made daily, everything was eating out,” she said. “Even McDonalds, if you have to eat there every day, can get pricey with four children. When you have to spend a majority of the money to eat, to replace things and everything else, the money has now dwindled down. And things still need to be replaced.”
According to the Enterprise study, renters have also had to weather the impacts of the storm with fewer resources. The average income of renters registered with FEMA is $59,631 per year, compared to $151,528 for homeowners.
Many senior citizens — a group traditionally limited by lower, fixed incomes — have been especially hard-hit, living in temporary housing while the owners and managers of their age-restricted complexes struggle to repair damaged facilities.
Robert Laughlin, manager of the Leisure Bay Apartments senior living complex in Keyport, said he is currently trying to rehouse as many of his impacted residents as he could while dealing with a large, unfunded damage bill.
“We have, give or take, $1.5 to $1.8 million dollars in damage,” he told the Keyport Borough Council at a recent public meeting. After receiving a flood insurance payout of $250,000 to repair damaged electrical systems, hot water heaters and other infrastructure, Laughlin said the facility’s application for FEMA aid was denied.
“That probably puts me $1 million in a hole,” he said.
Though a number of first-floor apartments are still uninhabitable, Laughlin said he has re-housed most of his displaced tenants and is working to place lower-income renters in the complex as quickly as he can. Still, he said, the building’s lobby and other areas will be in a state of disrepair until more funding becomes available.
“I don’t know where the money is going to come from yet,” he said.
In the Port Monmouth section of Middletown, tenants of the Bayshore Village senior living complex are still waiting to return home. At a recent meeting of the Township Committee, resident Andrew Butzko said friends of his who had lived in the facility have been put through the ringer since the storm.
“They didn’t have enough time to go back into that building, and as a result they have lost valuable treasures. God knows where they are,” he said. “They have medical issues to deal with … Plus they don’t have the money to put their stuff in storage for six, seven months.
“A lot of these people were like, where do we go?” he added, referring to the nearly 50 displaced Bayshore renters. “One of them is living in Asbury Park in a rathole for $700 a month. She’s going to continue to live there and they’re going to be having this conversation a year from now.”
At the March 4 meeting, Township Administrator Anthony Mercantante said the complex’s owners are actually in the process of suing their insurance company, as necessary repair funding has not yet been made available. A lawsuit, however, is unlikely to be an effective solution in the short-term, he added.
Laughlin, who said Leisure Bay was considering suing its own insurance company, also doubted the effectiveness of legal action.
Middletown Mayor Gerard Scharfenberger said the governing body is attempting to locate private funding options to help Bayshore Village repair its units and re-open them to tenants.
“We are reaching out to other organizations outside of the government to see if we can get them some help,” he said. “We’re trying everything we can to do an end-run around the road block that insurance company is putting up.”
Margaret, who was able to find an apartment in Keansburg in January and move her family in just three days before her temporary housing assistance was cut off, said she and her children are still adjusting to their new home.
While she wants to move back to Keyport eventually, she said she can’t predict what might happen in the future. For now, she’s just filing all the necessary applications, filling out the required forms, keeping copies of all her receipts and, occasionally, stopping to count her blessings.
“By the grace of God, everything ended up working out and we didn’t end up in a shelter or somewhere like that,” she said, referring to a displaced friend who was denied an extension of her housing assistance and forced to leave the hotel before finding a new home.
“She has kids. I thought, how could they not extend her? What did she do or not do? Why did I get approved and not her?” she said.
“These people didn’t ask to be homeless. They all just want a roof over their families’ heads. And you wonder where they are going to go. Why isn’t anybody helping them?”