The help can’t come soon enough.
New York homeowners still waiting on Hurricane Sandy relief will be awash in federal dollars next year, Sen. Chuck Schumer vowed on Sunday.
“The spigot is open and money is beginning to flow,” Sen. Schumer said at a press conference in Battery Park. “Homeowners will feel much better.”
Schumer said the feds will send about $6.3 billion overall in hurricane relief to New York State in 2014, with $1.4 billion going directly to battered New York homeowners who saw little or no aid this year as they limped along through the recovery.
“The money has not flowed quickly enough in this last year,” Schumer said of the federal government’s $60 billion emergency aid package covering all Sandy relief efforts — of which $20 billion has been spent to date. “There are bureaucratic obstacles that took a while to overcome. I spent a lot of time cutting red tape. But I’m convinced people will feel the real effects of the rebuilding projects this year. ”
Where money in the first year went to immedate clean-up and emergency aid efforts— everything from clearing roads to providing emergency shelter — the focus next year will turn to rebuilding and strengthening the region’s storm defenses.
The $1.4 billion going to homeowners comes from Community Development Block Grant funding that Schumer said is flexible enough to be targeted quickly at homes that were missed by the first round of federal aid.
The other $4.9 billion will flow to a variety of restoration and upgrade projects in 2014 such as building wave-dampening sand dunes in the Rockaways and Long Island, and fortifying the Ocean Parkway against future storm damage.