A Staten Island woman whose renovated home is being touted by City Hall as a Build it Back success story has a different opinion of the storm recovery program. NY1's Amanda Farinacci filed the following report.
Just as NY1 was about to air a half-hour program about the city's troubled Build It Back program, City Hall went on the offensive, posting messages on social media touting tyhe storm recovery effort.
The caption on one Facebook post reads, "Resilient homes and stronger neighborhoods is what Build It Back is all about" under a picture of Lisa McSherry's home in Great Kills, Staten Island.
An incredulous McSherry told NY1 Tuesday, "How do you leave someone with no heat? How do you leave people in damaged homes and then use their house as the success story?"
NY1 first met McSherry when she attended NY1's live Town Hall meeting on the Build it Back program. She wanted to speak to city officials about problems at her home after Build it Back elevated it to protect it from future flooding.
"After elevation, the first floor of my house only heats to 63 degrees when we are below freezing," McSherry said.
A details-oriented special education teacher, McSherry has kept painstaking records of all of her communications with Build It Back and its contractors.
The work at her home took more than a year before McSherry was allowed to moved back in last December.
A punch list details 138 outstanding construction issues. The most alarming: when temperatures fall below freezing, the home is uncomfortably cold, too.
"What is my family to do?" McSherry said. "Because a flood of Sandy proportion may never come again, but winter comes every year."
In April, Build It Back sent a plumber to house and told McSherry the heating system was working properly. Rather, the cold house is the result of being elevated.
When temperatures drop below freezing, heat escapes through the now-raised ground floor. In other words, the home may now be resilient when it comes to flooding, but not the cold.
"It's a fixable thing. It needs to be fixed, and I don't know what else to do," McSherry said
Build It Back officials tell NY1 they are aware the problem the McSherrys have with their heating system. They say they tried to address it, but since the problem persisted, they're now once again looking into ways to fix it.