We've just learned that a state program to lend more than $400 million in taxpayer dollars to replenish affordable housing lost in Hurricane Sandy has benefited only a handful of storm victims.



Of the 2,000 units completed since the storm hit nearly four years ago, fewer than two-dozen now house Sandy victims. Meanwhile, an estimated 5,000 are still not back in their homes, advocates say.



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It's a nasty brew of incompetence and misuse of funding for political reasons. The state started off building in the wrong places, and didn't do the necessary outreach. But there's a larger reason why this money went to places that weren't impacted by the storm: Gov. Christie's political ambitions.



Christie steered Sandy money to towns like Belleville, which were barely damaged, to further his 2013 re-election campaign. We were reminded of that again this week, when old emails surfaced that strongly indicate he knew his staffers were using their taxpayer-funded office to push Democratic mayors to endorse his re-election.



Two of those mayors were from Belleville and Orange, towns virtually unscathed by Sandy, which still got recovery dollars to build affordable housing. Within months of receiving the Sandy money, both Democratic mayors endorsed Christie.

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Here's what the Orange mayor said about his bloodless endorsement of the governor: "This is not an endorsement of the Chris Christie policies and politics. This is an endorsement of certain actions he took on behalf of Orange."



The mayor of Belleville claims his endorsement had nothing to do with the funds. But at the town's groundbreaking ceremony, Christie said he'd personally leaned on Rich Constable, his head of storm recovery - calling him "every day" to tell him to get relief money to the project. "We get on them and things get done," the governor said.



This is a groundbreaking that should have been held in a place like Barnegat, or Keansburg, one of the most heavily impacted, low-income areas of the state. Instead, these towns are just having their groundbreakings now, three years later, after the administration was hit with a complaint by advocates at Fair Share Housing for failing to rebuild in the areas most affected by Sandy.

The Christie administration says it believes more than 15 of the 2,000 new units are housing Sandy victims, but has no evidence of that. It says shovel-ready projects were prioritized, but if that's the case, why not at least ensure Sandy victims got those spots?



The state didn't have a strong enough plan for outreach, to connect storm victims with new rentals. And even if it had contacted everyone impacted, it's unlikely many would have moved to Belleville from Barnegat, 80 miles away; far from their jobs, or kids' schools.



Even now, as the state is finally rebuilding in places like Barnegat, there are still outreach problems. Christina Stoltz, who's had to move out of several affordable housing apartments while waiting for her home to be rebuilt, now lives in Barnegat, not far from where a development is finally under construction.

But she had no idea that a Sandy victim like herself could get priority when it's complete.



"I'm positive people don't know about this," she said. "I'm involved in Sandy programs and I don't know about it. If I don't know about it, you know the public doesn't know about it. And that's horrible."



This project also would have been a lot more useful had it happened three years ago, before advocates filed a complaint, when these hardest-hit towns were not the Christie administration's priority.



In disaster recovery, timing matters. So does using relief dollars as a political slush fund. Had Christie leaned on his people to get this money where it was needed most, maybe there'd be more than two dozen Sandy victims living in 2,000 new apartments.

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