Victims of Superstorm Sandy are being asked to return thousands of dollars in FEMA disaster relief money which FEMA claims was paid out in error. Senator Chuck Schumer has just introduced a bill that would waive these recoupments. Forum Photo by Richard York.
United States Senators Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand announced last week legislation which would prevent the Federal Emergency Management Administration from recouping disaster relief grants paid out after Superstorm Sandy.
FEMA is legally obligated to conduct audits of individual assistance payments to identify improper payments made to disaster victims. When the agency believes it has uncovered improper payment, it will attempt to recoup the entire grant. In recent months, FEMA began demanding that Sandy victims pay back thousands of long-spent relief monies the agency claimed had been incorrectly or inappropriately doled out in the first place, citing bureaucratic and technical errors for the original payouts. Sixty percent of New Yorkers who received letters demanding the grant money be paid back have an income of less than $50,000, while the average recoupment amount has been $7,000. Schumer and Gillibrand explained that the vast majority of cases are not of fraud but rather honest mistakes made by either FEMA or the disaster victims.
Previously, the Disaster Assistance Recoupment Fairness Act of 2011 protected against this situation, granting FEMA additional authority to waive debts incurred as a result of improper payments – but this legislation expired in 2011. Given the financially devastating impacts of Superstorm Sandy and other recent disasters, the Senators announced the Disaster Assistance Recoupment Fairness Act of 2015, which will expand upon the previous legislation.
“Requiring our New York’s Superstorm Sandy victims to repay thousands of dollars in aid, two and a half years after the storm, is a devastating request for many of these individuals and families, because they have already put this money to good use,” said Senator Schumer.
Schumer and Gillibrand are co-sponsors of the legislation, along with Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ), Senator Corey Booker (D-NJ), Senator David Vitter (R-LA) and Senator Bill Cassidy (R-LA). Earlier this month, Schumer announced that FEMA would stop the Superstorm Sandy recoupment action for thirty Belle Harbor Manor residents. In November 2014, FEMA unexpectedly said that residents of the assisted living facility in Rockaway hit hard by Superstorm Sandy had to pay back much of the Sandy disaster aid they were initially granted after the storm. FEMA’s recoupment notices, which arrived long after residents had spent the funds, stated that the aid was supposed to be used solely on temporary housing. However, Belle Harbor Manor residents moved around to different state-funded shelters after the storm, and residents needed to use the Sandy money to purchase necessary items like food and clothing.
DARFA legislation would require FEMA to waive debts related to disaster assistance and refund disaster victims for recoupment payments already made in all cases that would have been waived had the Act been in effect. Schumer, Gillibrand, and the other bill sponsors believe that more effort should be made on the front end of the disaster relief process to reduce waste, fraud, and abuse and that doing it on the back end is unfair to honest Americans.
By Eugénie Bisulco
