A private fund established by Gov. Cuomo to help Hurricane Sandy victims has started distributing money to homeowners — who didn’t realize the checks were coming.
“It was a big surprise. At first, I told my wife, ‘We’re not cashing it until I do some homework,” said stunned homeowner John Surowiec of the $7,393 check from the Empire State Relief Fund.
To date, the fund — which enlisted the help of Hollywood stars like Robert De Niro and Al Pacino featured in a public service TV announcements — has raised $15 million from private donors. Of that, $7 million has been distributed so far to 1,066 homeowners affected by the storm, the Post has learned.
Surowiec’s Staten Island home saw upwards of $65,000 in damage after 14 feet of water washed over it, moving the two-story Oakwood Beach home six inches off its foundation.
But since he has paid off the mortgage, selling the place where he and his wife and four grown children have lived since 1974 wasn’t an option.
They had seen floods before, and after a Nor’Easter in 1992, Surowiec, a mechanical engineer, rebuilt to add height, raising the home to eight feet above sea level. So when Sandy came, he thought they were relatively safe.
“I didn’t expect more than eight feet of sea water. All of the sudden the water started rushing in,” Surowiec, 60, said.”It went from zero to 14 feet of sea water in no time flat.”
“My wife thought she felt the house move and I thought she was joking.”
He and his wife had maxed out on FEMA money, getting $31,900. But by applying for the federal aid, his application was also automatically submitted to the state for consideration.
The $7,393 check Surowiec received comes in addition to a $10,000 check from the publicly funded Homeowner Repair and Rebuilding Fund, for which the state allocated $100 million. That fund has sent out $17.9 million to 2,754 New York homeowners so far.
“It was a godsend,” Surowiec said. “Now, maybe I can borrow a little less to save my home.”
The private Empire State Relief Fund has been criticized by some groups, like CharityWatch, because it is being overseen by major Cuomo campaign fundraisers who have no disaster relief experience.
But Cuomo defends the fund, and its structure, pointing out that the money from the private fund is also being disbursed by the Office of Homes and Community Renewal and so it has no overhead and all money will go toward disaster relief.
“For many New Yorkers whose homes suffered greater damage than their insurance or the federal government could cover, help is now on the way thanks to the Empire State Relief Fund,” Cuomo told the Post. “The people getting these checks did not have to jump through a single bureaucratic hoop and the Fund’s partnership with the State guarantees that every single dollar raised is going to New Yorkers on the ground.”
Marsha Rosenthal, 66, has lived in her Howard Beach home for 37 years and watched from upstair in horror as water from Sandy poured in.
“It was like my living room was an aquarium,” she said of the ranch-style home.
Rosenthal, a fitness director at a small gym, had no flood insurance and also maxed out on FEMA aid. She received the $10,000 from the State Housing fund and another $333 from the private Empire State fund.
Like others, she questioned whether the check was real since she didn’t recall applying for it.
“I was shocked when I looked at the mail,” she said. “I called to ask if it were real.”