{"id":17185,"date":"2013-01-16T10:09:21","date_gmt":"2013-01-16T15:09:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=17185"},"modified":"2013-01-16T10:09:21","modified_gmt":"2013-01-16T15:09:21","slug":"some-of-many-reasons-the-damage-from-hurricane-sandy-has-not-been-repaired","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=17185","title":{"rendered":"Some Of Many Reasons The Damage From Hurricane Sandy Has Not Been Repaired"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Monday the Wall Street Journal<\/a> posted an article telling the story of one homeowner<\/a>‘s struggle to rebuild her damaged home in Connecticut<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The article relates the homeowner’s story:<\/p>\n

Our first exposure to the town zoning<\/a> authorities came a couple of weeks after Sandy. We’d met with insurance adjusters, contractors and “remediation experts.” We’d had about a foot of Long Island Sound<\/a> sloshing around the ground floor<\/a> of our house<\/a> in Connecticut, and everyone had the same advice: Rip up the floors and subfloors, and tear out anything\u2014wiring, plumbing, insulation, drywall, kitchen cabinets, bookcases\u2014touched by salt water. All of it had to go, and pronto, too, lest mold set in.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yet it wasn’t until the workmen we hired had ripped apart most of the first floor that the phrase “building permit<\/a>” first wafted past us. Turns out we needed one. “What, to repair our own house we need a building permit?”<\/strong><\/p>\n

Of course.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Before you could get a building permit, however, you had to be approved by the Zoning Authority. And Zoning\u2014citing FEMA<\/a> regulations\u2014would force you to bring the house “up to code,” which in many cases meant elevating the house by several feet. Now, elevating your house is very expensive and time consuming\u2014not because of the actual raising, which takes just a day or two, but because of the required permits.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The article further explains that there is also a zoning limit on how high your house can be–so if you meet the requirement to raise it, you have to make sure you don’t raise it too much.. The homeowner goes on to detail the maze of government gobbledygook encountered in trying to repair and re-occupy his home.<\/p>\n

The article concludes:<\/p>\n

We’ve spent a few thousand dollars on a lawyer to appeal to Zoning, many thousands in rent, and hundreds getting a fresh appraisal of our house. The latest from our lawyer: Because of our new appraisal, we may be able to “apply for a zoning permit.” “Apply,” mind you.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I used to think that our house was, you know, our<\/em> house. The bureaucrats have taught me otherwise. But then I also used to think that Franz Kafka<\/a> wrote a species of dark fantasy. I know now that he was turning out nonfiction.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Our problem is not the lack of money to repair the damage from Hurricane Sandy–it is the government bureaucracy that is hindering the homeowners from getting back into their own homes.<\/p>\n

\"Enhanced<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Monday the Wall Street Journal posted an article telling the story of one homeowner‘s struggle to rebuild her damaged home in Connecticut. The article relates the homeowner’s story: Our first exposure to the town zoning authorities came a couple … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[139,611,4796,841,1429,4797,238,1630],"class_list":["post-17185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-connecticut","tag-federal-emergency-management-agency","tag-franz-kafka","tag-house","tag-long-island","tag-long-island-sound","tag-wall-street-journal","tag-zoning"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17185"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17185\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17188,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17185\/revisions\/17188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}