Page 29 - The Long Road Home

When Nancy Caira and her husband tried to return home after Sandy, the power was out everywhere and the entrance to their neighborhood was blocked due to flooding. Two days later, they were again met with flood waters. Finally, Tony insisted on wading through waist deep water to get a better look. He told Nancy, “It’s bad.” Although their home was flooded, Nancy remembers it didn’t feel tragic. “I didn’t look around thinking ‘oh this is devastating’ because I could live without all of the material things we lost. I didn’t really feel a sense of loss until I saw my husband desperate to fix things immediately.” She didn’t realize what was to come with recovery.
For three months after Sandy, Nancy and Tony stayed with friends a mile up the road while they gutted and rewired their home. They finally moved back to a shell of what their home once was, only cement floors and half of their drywall remained. In May of 2013, Nancy and Tony applied for the RREM program in order to elevate their home. After months of not knowing if RREM had received or started to process their application, they received word they were waitlisted. Nancy recalls, “No one kept us updated on anything throughout the process. I felt completely in the dark.” She remembers going to dozens
NANCY & TONY CAIRA WARETOWN, NEW JERSEY
of Sandy Recovery meetings hosted by the state to answer questions about RREM, other grants, and loan programs. She left most of those meetings not feeling any more prepared to take on recovery than before.
After two years on the RREM waiting list, Nancy and Tony were admitted into the program. During their second meeting, RREM began to review their case. That’s when their project manager told them something they weren’t expecting: their house sits on a portion of property now considered protected wetlands. “RREM didn’t give us any other information about what to expect next. It was a complete headache to go through this process in order to continue rebuilding our home,” said Nancy, “it was like learning a whole new language -- so many legal terms and jargon I could barely keep up with the paperwork.”
After five years, Nancy and Tony are still trying to put together sufficient funding to raise and rebuild, and have yet to sign a contract with a builder. “It’s been lonely and long. There has been no direction on how to navigate the RREM program and there was absolutely no coordination of services. We didn’t know who to trust or listen to - everyone was telling us different things.”
NEW JERSEY RESOURCE PROJECT
29