Applications for housing assistance due June 30

BY STELLA MORRISON
Staff Writer

The Christie Administration has launched the reNew Jersey Stronger housing assistance initiative to grant rebuilding funds to those affected by superstorm Sandy.

Under reNew Jersey Stronger, which was announced May 24, homeowners whose primary residences were damaged by the storm in Middlesex, Monmouth and seven other New Jersey counties may apply for two grant programs. Vacation homes, second homes and recreational vehicles or trailers are not eligible for the program, based on federal restrictions on the use of funds.

“ReNew Jersey is designed to encourage homeowners to resettle in their home counties and help them reconstruct, elevate, rehabilitate or mitigate their homes,” New Jersey Department of Community Affairs Commissioner Richard E. Constable III said.

The first program — the $600 million Homeowner Reconstruction, Rehabilitation, Elevation and Mitigation (RREM) Program — will provide eligible homeowners with up to $150,000 in grant funds to aid in the reconstruction, rehabilitation, elevation and mitigation of damaged primary homes. All applicants under the RREM program must have registered for assistance with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and must have a household-adjusted gross annual income of less than $250,000. Priority will be given to homes that are deemed substantially damaged, which are homes that sustained damages exceeding 50 percent of a home’s assessed value.

“The program intends to fill the gap between the costs needed to repair a home and other sources of funds, such as insurance payments or assistance from FEMA,” Constable said. “In addition, the program will help homeowners’ reconstruction by developing repair specifications for reconstruction that will ensure the quality of the work completed.”

The second program — the Homeowner Resettlement Program — is a $180 million program aimed at encouraging Sandy-impacted homeowners to remain in Middlesex, Monmouth and seven other New Jersey counties that were seriously affected by Sandy. The program will provide $10,000 grants to eligible homeowners to encourage them to resettle in their existing home or resettle in the same county.

“We are doing this as an effort to restore home values and stabilize towns,” Constable said. “The program’s mission is the retain the blue-collar character of a town. What we found historically, with Hurricane Katrina, is that thousands of people with modest means… literally left the state because there was so much damage.

“Property values went down and revenue values went down because people weren’t there. It had a devastating impact, so we are encouraging folks that are thinking about leaving to resettle in their community.

“We don’t want these towns to become ghost towns.” All applicants under the resettlement program must have registered for assistance with FEMA, and must have sustained at least $8,000 in damages or more than 1 foot of flooding on the first floor as a result of Sandy. Homeowners much also agree to remain in the county of their damaged residence for three consecutive years following the grant award.

Approximately 6,000 households will receive a RREM grant, and up to 18,000 households will receive a resettlement grant.

Seventy percent of the RREM funds will be reserved for low-to-moderate-income households and sixty percent of the Resettlement funds will be reserved for low- to moderate-income households, in accordance with federal requirements. In Middlesex County, according to the New Jersey Council on Affordable Housing, a family of four earning less than $84,000 per year is considered a household with moderate income.

Applications may be submitted by visiting www.renewjerseystronger.com or by calling 1-855-SANDY-HM. Sandy Housing Assistance Centers will open in the nine affected counties on June 8.

The first round of applications will be accepted through June 30. Applications submitted by June 30 will not be first-come, first-served. They will be randomized and then sorted according to need.

“The better practice is to have a longer period where folks can apply, and at the end of that period we will prioritize,” Constable said. “The randomization is that there’s no benefit to people racing into our offices.”

By press time, 5,700 completed applications had been submitted to the DCA and over 1,000 were being prepared.

Contact Stella Morrison at [email protected].