Published October 7, 2013
By Shawn Boburg

Superstorm Sandy delivered a crushing blow to more than 100 mobile homes in Moonachie, many of them rickety structures atop cinder blocks, in a pair of impoverished neighborhoods that make up more than one-third of the borough’s entire housing stock.

But very little money from Governor Christie’s signature home-rebuilding program is headed to those residents, or to other mobile home communities, state data show, raising concerns among housing advocates that the recovery is bypassing a vulnerable subgroup.

More than 3,500 residents statewide have been awarded home rebuilding grants so far, most of them at or below moderate income levels. But they include only 10 mobile-home owners, state officials said. And only four are from Moonachie’s two communities, Vanguard and Metropolitan Mobile Home Park, whose nearly 400 residences made up one of the most concentrated areas of damage in Bergen County from the Oct. 29 storm.

The reasons for the relatively low numbers are not entirely clear. The state says the selection process was open to, and not weighted against, mobile homes. But housing advocates say their informal surveys indicate owners of mobile homes were told during the application process that they weren’t eligible for the rebuilding grants, which provide up to $150,000 to elevate, repair or replace a home. Several mobile-home owners in Moonachie told a reporter the same: that they relied on volunteers or representatives of the state program who, it turned out, gave the wrong advice.

“They said it was only for the big houses in the center of town, so I didn’t apply,” Metropolitan resident Diane Davidowski said, recalling a meeting with a volunteer adviser at a drop-in center at a Moonachie church.

Mobile-home owners were, in fact, eligible, although some additional restrictions apply because the homes often sit on land that is leased, not owned, by the homeowner. State officials and housing advocates call the houses manufactured homes.

The application process “treated manufactured homes as any other home,” said Lisa Ryan, a spokes¬man for the state’s housing agency, the Department of Community Affairs. She added: “Indeed, the fact that manufactured home owners did apply and approximately 10 have been preliminarily awarded a … grant rebuts what the advocates are saying.”

The program is now closed to new applicants.

The rebuilding grant program is one of the many the Christie administration developed as part of a $1.8 billion federal Sandy aid package that arrived this year. It has been one of the most popular, too, with the number of applicants, so far, outstripping available money. Only about 30 percent of the 12,255 applications submitted by all New Jersey homeowners have been approved, although another wave of federal money is expected to be announced in the coming weeks.

In the lead-up to the release of the federal money, U.S. housing officials drew special attention to mobile-home owners in Moonachie.

“Damaged neighborhoods in Moonachie seem to have very high rates of mobile homes, which may signal the need for greater recovery resources,” analysts at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development wrote in a January report. But of the 35 rebuilding grants headed to Moonachie residents, less than a handful are going to the very mobile home communities mentioned in the report.

Many in these communities are recent immigrants who don’t speak much English, single parents who are unemployed or large families that rely on a single source of income. Some residents are itinerant drug addicts or are mentally ill. Drawn to the tightly packed community by low rents, many stay for years if not decades, forming a bond with neighbors.

Lori Dibble, policy director for the Manufactured Homeowners Association of New Jersey, said her group’s surveys indicate about 150 mobile homes in Moonachie were seriously damaged and needed repair and elevation. An additional 350 similar homes across the state suffered damage from Sandy, she said. They include neighborhoods in Beach Haven, Highlands and Cape May.

“We’ve asked around and done surveys [of mobile home communities] and haven’t found one person who has gotten a grant,” said Dibble, who lives in a mobile home.

Dibble’s own experience applying for a grant from the Rehabilitation, Reconstruction, Elevation and Mitigation Program suggests there was miscommunication and confusion and perhaps an ineffective outreach effort by the state in mobile home communities.

Dibble said she applied for the grant the first day she could. But she got no response for months. When she asked about it later, she was told it was because the name on her application didn’t match land ownership records for the parcel she lived on. Her home sat on a leased lot in a private community in Highlands, a Monmouth County town near Sandy Hook. When she finally got a meeting with a program representative, she said she was told she was not eligible because she does not pay property taxes. She said she’s asked for written policies since, but hasn’t been able to get answers.

Dibble said she did not know mobile-home owners were eligible until a reporter told her nearly a year after Sandy struck.

“It seems like they are making it up as they go along,” said Adam Gordon of the Fair Share Housing Center, an advocacy group that has accused the Christie administration of not being transparent about its recovery policies. He added that mobile-home owners “often have some of the fewest resources to rebuild and they are being ignored and that needs to change.”

State officials pointed to a website that lists eligibility requirements. But it does not specifically address whether mobile homes are eligible for the rebuilding grant. It says second homes and “trailers” are not eligible. “Nowhere on the posted eligibility requirements does it say mobile homes/manufactured homes are not eligible,” said Ryan, of the state’s Department of Community Affairs, which is administering the grant money.

Mobile homes do present some complicating factors when it comes to rebuilding: They usually sit on leased land, so the state is reluctant to rebuild a permanent structure there. And it’s often more expensive to repair or elevate manufactured homes — which the state defines as mobile homes made of non-wood material such as metal — than it is to replace them, state officials say.

For those reasons, even the relatively few mobile-home owners who got rebuilding grants may find more roadblocks ahead.

Ryan said mobile-home owners are not eligible for repairs, unlike other homeowners, only replacement.

And the state will not replace a mobile home in the same location if it would have to be elevated more than 4 feet to be above the flood plain because that would require building a permanent foundation.

“They would have to find an alternate lease site located within their county of residence,” Ryan said. It’s unclear how many, if any, of the 10 mobile homes awaiting a grant would have to be relocated, but it would leave few options for the Moonachie communities. Bergen County, one of the wealthiest counties in the country, has few similar options outside of Moonachie, advocates say.

The state is now conducting site inspections at homes that are in line for the grants to identify needed repairs and elevation requirements.

Lorena Gaibor, who works for the Housing and Community Development Network of New Jersey, an association that supports the creation of housing for low- and moderate-income New Jerseyans, surveyed some mobile-home residents in Moonachie.

“A lot of them didn’t even know about the grant or what they might qualify for,” said Gaibor, a social worker. “It’s been difficult for people to get a straight answer. I don’t think any of them would have left money on the table if they knew about it.”

Moonachie Mayor Dennis Vaccaro said four grants “sounds low.” He said he didn’t know whether it was a cause for concern because he didn’t know how many people from mobile homes applied. State officials said they didn’t either because the application treated all homeowners the same. It is only during inspections done after preliminary approval that they learned of the numbers of manufactured homes.

But Vaccaro said he was surprised to hear that residents believed they were not eligible.

“I know there were a lot of organizations that helped them,” he said.

Kathy Machado, 46, a resident of Vanguard, said she called a state information center to apply for grants by phone and got the strong impression that she was only eligible for a separate grant program that does not provide rebuilding assistance. That program gives residents a $10,000 so-called resettlement grant in exchange for agreeing to stay in the same county for three years.

Machado explained to the woman on the phone where she lived, and other information, she said.

“She said, ‘You have to apply for the resettlement,’Ÿ” Machado said. “I asked her if that was the only one I could apply for and she said, ‘Yes.’Ÿ”

Staff Writer Stephanie Akin contributed to this article. Email: [email protected]