NJ Spotlight: Hurricane Sandy's invisible victims
I have a story at NJ Spotlight today on the plight faced by renters displaced by Hurricane Sandy.
Steven Zitz moved to Sayreville when he was in high school and had lived in the Sayreville-South River area for the past 20 years. He had his own business as a house painter and had been working regularly despite the stagnant economy.
Superstorm Sandy changed all that.
His aunt’s house, where he was renting a room, was badly damaged. He lost his work van and has been staying with an uncle in Brooklyn since the storm, unable to work and unable to qualify for government assistance.
“I’m in a very tough spot,” he said. “My back is not only to the wall, it’s through the wall.”
Zitz is one of the thousands of renters who still find themselves scrambling to rebuild their lives. While state and federal agencies have assisted 21,000 renters, several thousand more have likely fallen through the cracks, though the number is difficult to pin down, advocates for low-income residents say. Unlike property records, such as deeds and mortgages, the state does not require that lease agreements be filed with the counties. And many landlord-tenant arrangements are informal, operating on a month-to-month basis.
State officials say they are doing what they can for renters and that the state’s recovery plan includes what the administration calls “a range of rental housing activities designed to replenish rental housing stock lost to Sandy, rehabilitate affordable rental units left uninhabitable by Sandy, and provide affordable housing for special needs populations.”
For more, read here.