New York homeowners who received money from the "Build it Back" program of New York City may be forced to repay the money they got for repairs of their damaged homes in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy--this will be the case if they won their reopened flood insurance case and received a higher insurance.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency announced last March that the 142,000 Sandy victims would get a second chance at making a flood insurance claim if they felt they had been cheated by their flood insurance provider.
The decision were made after report from New York Times stated that some engineers allegedly altered their insurance report for lower payouts.
The United States Department of Housing and Urban Development is the one who sponsored the Build it Back program that caters to homeowners whose insurance doesn't cover the repairs of their damaged property.
According to New York Daily News, if a homeowner won their reopened insurance case and received a higher insurance pay-out, it is in the rules of US HUD to request the homeowners to give back the money they received because the Build it Back program, as mentioned before, is a financial aid for those homeowners whose insurance doesn't cover all the repairs.
A letter to HUD Secretary Julian Castro, signed by Mayor Bill de Blasio and City Councilman Mark Treyger, head of the Committee on Recovery and Resiliency, called the federal rules "patently unfair."
"Our primary concern is ensuring that all impacted homeowners return to their homes as quickly as possible. Asking the City and homeowners to stop and re-evaluate their HUD grant funding at this point will divert significant program resources and delay construction and relief for homeowners," the letter read.
"It's simply unacceptable and unfair to ask New Yorkers to clean up a mess they didn't create," the mayor said in a statement to the Daily News.
