Homeowners With ‘Different Reality’ Than City Delayed Build It Back: Mayor
(DNAINFO) Katie Honan | October 29, 2016 — A year after promising the Build It Backprogram would be finished by the end of 2016, Mayor Bill de Blasioreturned to the borough Saturday to mark the fourth anniversary of Hurricane Sandy — and said homeowners’ expectations were in part to blame for the delays that will cause the program to miss his self-imposed deadline.
Two weeks after admitting the city wouldn’t meet his goal, the optimistic tone on Build It Back he shared on last year’s anniversary had changed. And the mayor said homeowner demands — like stalling construction until after upcoming holidays, which is a new initiative — blocked progress.
Unlike other city projects, Build It Back was not “one size fits all,” and because of differing expectations the city couldn’t keep momentum going, de Blasio said.
“I’m not saying homeowners didn’t have a right to say, ‘hey, I want to slow down for a reason, or didn’t have a preference to design a home,'” he said Saturday after touring a new water tunnel on Staten Island. “I’m saying it contradicted the very notion of what we were trying to do, which is a big, fast operation on many many fronts — and I think that’s where the contradiction is.”
The Build It Back program, founded under former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, came out of the Rapid Repairs program, which fixed boilers and electrical units to get people home quickly after Hurricane Sandy.
It was supposed to use billions in federal funds to repair, elevate, or reconstruct homes effected by the storm — but the model, which puts the city in charge of rebuilding thousands of homes, clearly doesn’t work, de Blasio said.