Buyouts – Page 3

If just one or two people opt to stay, the town will still have to maintain the roads and services, plus a new park, if that’s what the area becomes. Additionally, if all the homeowner who accept buyouts were to move out of Sayreville, the town could lose $1 million in annual property tax revenue. Given the town’s $50 million annual budget, Frankel deems that loss “very significant.”

Additionally, there are more homeowners in Sayreville who would like buyouts, but who have not yet been accepted into the Blue Acres program.

 

Waiting for a response

  • WHYY thanks our sponsors — become a WHYY sponsor

Just a few miles from Zollinger and O’Connor’s neighborhood, the Old Bridge section of town — at the far southern edge of Sayreville — also experienced massive flooding. Governor Christie walked the streets the day after Sandy, meeting with residents and promising to help, but more than nine months later, many of the houses are vacant, and residents say they’re still waiting for help to arrive.

Dawn Obel has been living in an apartment since last October, when flood waters damaged her home’s foundation and sent raw sewage flowing through her first floor. Today, it remains uninhabitable, with the floors ripped up, portions of the walls gutted, and the basement still caked with mud from the nearby river. 

“It was a pretty house,” said Obel. “Now it just looks dirty and smells, and it’s disgusting! I’m sad that it’s my house. I wish it was somebody else’s house so I could feel bad for them and not me!”

She said she can’t afford to raise her home to comply with the new FEMA flood maps, nor will she be able to foot the bill for the increased cost of flood insurance, so she’s been holding off on doing repairs, hoping for a buyout so she can leave the neighborhood and move on with her life. If she’s not offered a buyout, she says the alternative looks bleak.

“I’m most likely gonna have to lose my home, foreclose on it, and then wind up living in an apartment the rest of my life,” she said.

Close to 80 percent of the 50 or so homeowners in Obel’s neighborhood agree that they’ve had enough and want out. They claim they’ve historically flooded more often than some of the homes that have been offered buyouts in the other part of Sayreville. Plus, they say flooding blocks the two bridges in and out of the neighborhood, trapping residents during storms and making it nearly impossible for emergency help to arrive.

Residents say they’ve been speaking with various state and local officials, trying to figure out why no one in their part of town has received a buyout offer so far, but they’ve had difficulty getting their phone calls returned and their questions answered. Debbie Mans of New York / New Jersey Baykeeper agrees that the Department of Environmental Protection — which manages the Blue Acres program — needs to be more transparent with its process.

“How many applications have they gotten? Where have they done appraisals? Where are they targeting?” she asks. “That should all be public knowledge.”

The DEP responds that it’s weighing a number of factors, including how many homeowner applicants are in a group, how much land they have and how often and severe they’ve experienced flooding. The department gives individual towns a large say over which of their neighborhoods and how many of their homes get bought out, since property acquisitions erode their tax base. And federal money is in play, so FEMA needs to sign off on all decisions.

“We have to go through a 54-step process to get an approved application out of FEMA. It’s an art,” said Rich Boornazian, who oversees the Blue Acres program. “We have to put certain homes in, take certain homes out. It’s not easy.”

                                                              1 | 2 | 3 | 4    Next Page

WHYY is your source for fact-based, in-depth journalism and information. As a nonprofit organization, we rely on financial support from readers like you. Please give today.

Want a digest of WHYY’s programs, events & stories? Sign up for our weekly newsletter.

Together we can reach 100% of WHYY’s fiscal year goal