Perfect Storm 2012

[Romeo]

and what good is it? People have been paying thousands for flood insurance and are still waiting for their money. It's a damn shame.

After Katrina FEMA change the flood zones in my area. I live 5 miles from the Ocean but I am considered part of "Zone A" and was made to purchase flood insurance as a separate policy from my homeowners (I do not carry a mortgage so it is not mandatory). I paid it for two years until I said fuck this. Even after this superstorm I wasn't flooded but the water came damn close to my street for the first time in almost 50 years in that town. I'm still not paying for that shit (even though the chances of getting anyone to write policies for this area is slim to none)

[creep]

Strong Islanders helping Strong Islanders.

Also Blackula, Tide "Loads of love" will be in Island Park tomorrow. If you know anyone who needs laundry done. As soon as I know the location of where they will be I'll post it

Sorry to resurrect this thread. My wife, son and I moved back home at the end of February. Our repairs cost around 140,000. Between flood and homeowners we got 77,000. We borrowed money from the SBA disaster relief to pay back relatives for the rest of the money. Yesterday in the mail, 6 months after the storm, I'm told I need to raise my house 11 feet. When my shitty little 3 bedroom ranch was brought down to the wood beams in January over 2 months after the storm, maybe that would've been a better time to tell me that. If I don't raise my house I will not be in compliance with FEMA and my food insurance will go up from 1200 a year to 10,000 a year. To raise a house, FEMA is offering a 30,000 dollar grant. After all is done, 30,000 to raise, then raising all the wiring, plumbing, building a concrete foundation, fixing cracks on the wall, replacing the floor....100,000 dollars. FEMA may or may not give a 30,000 grant after work is done. Everyone in Long beach got a notice yesterday. If you had over 50% damage you are subject to this. I thought we were fine, we paid 379,000 and our damage was assessed at 76,000. Not that easy. It goes by value of the actual structure, which the depreciated value was at 108,000. We are fucked and will most likely sell cheap, pay off our 2 loans on the home, and walk away having lost over 150,000 we put down on the house, which was everything.

I'm not looking for sympathy, I just want to expose these shitty politics. We did everything the right way, had we known when fixing the house we would've raised it. 6 months later a lot of people are done with the work and living back at home . Just when things seamed to be getting back to normal.

just curious...do you feel you got gouged at all with your repair bill being so much higher that what your insurance paid out or did you have it done nicer than you had it before?

your whole situation sucks....hope it works out

[Romeo]

I can't speak for Blackula but most of what is going on is more than repairs. It's total demo & reconstruction, in most cases total electrical rewiring, PLUS mold abatement...
A lot of people opted not to rebuild & sell their houses "as is" or for the land only.
FEMA doesn't pay for anything outside the home like decks, pools or landscaping. I went down to Baldwin harbor last weekend which is a pretty expensive area down by the bay. Everything and I mean everything is BROWN. All the decorative shrubs, trees, grass etc....BROWN. Sea water just kills everything

[blackula]

Creep- the contractor is a friend of my wife's parents. Flood insurance only covers everything below 1 foot above the water line. They run everything through a computer program. The Adjustor choses the level of quality, they have 3 or 4 options. Then the program assigns a depreciated value. We had just under 4 feet of water. To replace all of the floors and walls required us to bring the windows up to code, they were too small. So we needed all new windows too. We didn't just replace the bottom cabinets, we replaced the tops as well. We also didn't have contents, which is a separate rider. We made 1 upgrade, since the house was brought down to the beams we vaulted the ceiling. That didn't really add much to the cost though. The flood payout would've covered a half assed repair that would've required work down the road.

There were people who were getting ripped off though. Two weeks after the storm some company called servepro invaded our town and went door to door to see if you've gutted your house yet. Most people couldn't find a contractor and needed to remove the moldy cesspool growing in their house so they let servepro do the job. They were charging 15-20 thousand per house.

[Pandemonium]

Creep- the contractor is a friend of my wife's parents. Flood insurance only covers everything below 1 foot above the water line. They run everything through a computer program. The Adjustor choses the level of quality, they have 3 or 4 options. Then the program assigns a depreciated value. We had just under 4 feet of water. To replace all of the floors and walls required us to bring the windows up to code, they were too small. So we needed all new windows too. We didn't just replace the bottom cabinets, we replaced the tops as well. We also didn't have contents, which is a separate rider. We made 1 upgrade, since the house was brought down to the beams we vaulted the ceiling. That didn't really add much to the cost though. The flood payout would've covered a half assed repair that would've required work down the road.

There were people who were getting ripped off though. Two weeks after the storm some company called servepro invaded our town and went door to door to see if you've gutted your house yet. Most people couldn't find a contractor and needed to remove the moldy cesspool growing in their house so they let servepro do the job. They were charging 15-20 thousand per house.

ServePro here in California did my initial flood damage work when my kitchen line broke and flooded half the house a couple years ago. They seem to be a franchise like the McDonalds of flood repair services with each local business privately owned. As my insurance company contracted them as an option on our policy, it didn't matter to me what they charged but when I looked at the bill my first comment was "now I know why insurance costs are skyrocketing." It was about 15k for maybe 4 full days of work. Basically, tearing out the walls and kitchen cabinets and flooring, fans drying out the walls, disinfecting and shooting some orange foam into the walls for mold abatement. Another contractor (who were total fuckups) rebuilt the kitchen and flooring.

[Romeo]

The local news stations are all doing the "6 months post Sandy" shows from affected towns. Today PIX11 was down in Blackulas area and showed a house that was raised 10' above sea level. One of the bungalow houses in the West End. It looked silly. And very high.

Can't wait until they do the Rockaways. Talk about a forgotten area. That area was poor to begin with

[blackula]

The local news stations are all doing the "6 months post Sandy" shows from affected towns. Today PIX11 was down in Blackulas area and showed a house that was raised 10' above sea level. One of the bungalow houses in the West End. It looked silly. And very high.

Can't wait until they do the Rockaways. Talk about a forgotten area. That area was poor to begin with

Romeo, awesome meeting at city hall earlier this evening. FEMA couldn't really answer anyone's questions and I have new concerns that I didn't even know existed. To raise a home our good friends in LIPA need to sign off on it. If any one of their poles are too short for your newly elevated home, you need to pay the 20-30 thousand dollars to replace the pole! Also, your taxes will go up about 40% if you raise. FEMA can't guarantee that the BFE (base flood elevation) won't go up again in a few years, it was reassessed in 2009 and 2013. So, if you raise your home instead of paying 10,000 a year in flood insurance, FEMA can reassess the BFE and your flood insurance will go up again. We are going to cut our losses and hopefully leave Long Beach.

[Romeo]

The local news stations are all doing the "6 months post Sandy" shows from affected towns. Today PIX11 was down in Blackulas area and showed a house that was raised 10' above sea level. One of the bungalow houses in the West End. It looked silly. And very high.

Can't wait until they do the Rockaways. Talk about a forgotten area. That area was poor to begin with

Romeo, awesome meeting at city hall earlier this evening. FEMA couldn't really answer anyone's questions and I have new concerns that I didn't even know existed. To raise a home our good friends in LIPA need to sign off on it. If any one of their poles are too short for your newly elevated home, you need to pay the 20-30 thousand dollars to replace the pole! Also, your taxes will go up about 40% if you raise. FEMA can't guarantee that the BFE (base flood elevation) won't go up again in a few years, it was reassessed in 2009 and 2013. So, if you raise your home instead of paying 10,000 a year in flood insurance, FEMA can reassess the BFE and your flood insurance will go up again. We are going to cut our losses and hopefully leave Long Beach.

Are you fucking kidding me? What a cluster fuck!!

So sad you'll be forced to leave LB :cona: Such a great town. Was Rep Harvey Weisenberg at this meeting?? He is such a Long Beach guy i can't believe he would allow this shit like paying for a new pole or taxes going up 40%. That is the biggest bunch of horse shit I've ever heard.

[Pandemonium]

The local news stations are all doing the "6 months post Sandy" shows from affected towns. Today PIX11 was down in Blackulas area and showed a house that was raised 10' above sea level. One of the bungalow houses in the West End. It looked silly. And very high.

Can't wait until they do the Rockaways. Talk about a forgotten area. That area was poor to begin with

Romeo, awesome meeting at city hall earlier this evening. FEMA couldn't really answer anyone's questions and I have new concerns that I didn't even know existed. To raise a home our good friends in LIPA need to sign off on it. If any one of their poles are too short for your newly elevated home, you need to pay the 20-30 thousand dollars to replace the pole! Also, your taxes will go up about 40% if you raise. FEMA can't guarantee that the BFE (base flood elevation) won't go up again in a few years, it was reassessed in 2009 and 2013. So, if you raise your home instead of paying 10,000 a year in flood insurance, FEMA can reassess the BFE and your flood insurance will go up again. We are going to cut our losses and hopefully leave Long Beach.

Smells like someone is looking to eventually rezone and build up for business/tourist/resort by basically forcing residents to walk away. Much more taxable income to be had. Of course, you hear nothing about this in the various news reports about the 6 month anniversary, just about how boardwalks are getting upgrades and will be better'n ever by Summer time.

[Romeo]

yeeeeears ago they talked about bringing casino gambling to Long Beach. Make it like Atlantic Shitty....I mean city. But the problem is that the only way in for buses would be the main road in and out (Long Beach Rd/Austin Blvd) which is just a 6 lane normal main drag with businesses. The 2 Parkways that lead into either end of the barrier Island do not allow commercial vehicles on them (Parkways in NY are cars only, the over passes were specifically designed by Robert Moses to be short enough not to allow buses under them THUS keeping the "urbanites" out (he was a racist fuck).

The people of the area didn't want Casinos because of the traffic woes it would cause so it never went forward.
I'm 2 towns north of Long Beach & after the storm it was impossible to get around my town because of the amount of commercial trucks trying to get down there to help.

[ellis]

We are going to cut our losses and hopefully leave Long Beach.

That's what they want!
Push the people out... move the super rich in. Fuck them.

[Romeo]

That is what sort of happened in the 80's. Long Beach fell in disrepair in the late 70's. It got bad there, a lot of crime. My Family had a business on Park Ave (near the Synagogue) for many many years. A carpet store called Modern Carpet. Long Beach consisted of mostly working class folks and a lot of the apartment houses had lower income folks. Well....developers started to push the poor folks out. And began knocking down the older apt houses and began building the luxury high rises (like the one at the end of Edwards & Boardwalk, that was completed in the late 80's). Knocked down the bowling alley & (dirty) Dick's Bar because those brought in the bikers & undesirables (this land still sits empty at the end of Long Beach Blvd to Riverside on E Broadway) and pushed all the poor people to the area behind Walbaum's. It suddenly dawned on people "HEY! This is great for Yuppies, luxury apts with train service to Manhattan!!" Well the young professionals moved in, but eventually became young families and Long Beach became a great community to live in.

My Family's store eventually moved to Island Park. (then eventually closed because my Father's cousin ran it into deep debt)

This is going to happen again I fear.

Of course the two famous people who grew up in Long Beach Billy Crystal (who actually was in my house one Christmas eve before he was famous as a guest of my Brother's friend with whom he was in a local comedy troupe) and Rick Rubin