When Hurricane Sandy moved them out, kind-hearted New Yorkers moved them on up.
Three Long Island families displaced by October’s hurricane were put up in posh Upper East Side rentals — for free — while they got back on their feet.
The luxury one-bedroom digs, which typically rent for $2,500 per month, have been a godsend to the “refugees.”
Surge waters flooded the first-floor Long Beach home of “Jerry Springer Show” producer Lacy Edwards and her police-officer husband, Brian.
When they heard through a friend that they could stay in a luxury rental for free, they were floored.
“It was unbelievable. We couldn’t pass it up and moved in right away… it really helped us a lot,” said Lacy. “There are really no words to describe how it made us feel.It’s overwhelming.”
They’re planning to rent a home in Long Beach next month so Lacy, who is expecting her third child in February, can be closer to her doctors.
“The stuff we lost were material things,” she said. “At the end of the day, it can all be replaced.”
Another two families stayed in the apartments only until recently. That includes Erin Joyce, an accountant, who had moved with her husband and 1-year-old son into a new Long Beach home just one day before the storm — and were forced to evacuate the next day.
“We bought a house that didn’t need any work, but within a couple of days it became a fixer-upper,” Joyce said.
And Antoinette Diamond and Anthony Borello lost all their possessions from their Long Beach basement rental in Sandy’s storm surge — including everything they were gathering for their upcoming wedding. The apartments belong to the real-estate-investment firm Stone Street Properties, founded last year by Rob Morgenstern and Jeff Kaye.
The engaged couple initially hesitated when they were offered up an apartment on East 88th Street.
“We are young and without kids,” said Diamond, 25. “ I thought there would be other families who would need it more than us.”
But after crashing on other people’s couches for a while, the pair decided to accept the offer of a free place.
“It felt so good to take a hot shower and go to sleep in a bed,” said Diamond — the couple recently moved in with Borello’s grandmother.
“We talked about donating money or clothes, but what we have are bricks, heat and water,” said Morgenstern. “All of a sudden that became a commodity.”
Kaye’s parents live in a Long Beach neighborhood that was ravaged — it brought the families plight closer to home.
“It’s like a war zone out there. People’s homes were ripped to their foundations,” he said.