Belmar: Help these Sandy families come home

BELMAR – "Home" is a constantly evolving concept for those families forced from their residences by superstorm Sandy and still displaced 27 months later.

"I've talked to other mayors in other towns on the Jersey Shore and I can tell you that after this much time, a lot of families are giving up, a lot of families are not going to get back home," said Belmar Mayor Matt Doherty.

There are two families from Belmar who refuse to relent, Doherty said, and "as long as they don't want to quit, we can't quit on them."

With the tarp-covered shell of Teresa Keefe's first-floor serving as a backdrop, Doherty called a news conference on Thursday where he asked for patronage for the two remaining year-round Belmar families whose homes are not yet rebuilt. They want to raise $200,000 — which would be paid out to contractors as it comes in — in order to have the homes completed and the Keefes and the Sperber-Irwins back home by June 1.

Krista Sperber, along with her husband and two kids, stood next to Doherty and nodded when he talked about how the grind can force families to give up. The $2,500 more in housing costs that they have to pay every month on top of their mortgage has bled their savings dry, she said.

"We live here, go to school here, I even opened my business here. For 16 years, we've been part of the fabric of this community," Krista Sperber told the crowd. "We've been mired in the (Rehabilitation, Reconstruction, Elevation and Mitigation program) process for over a year and frankly we can't wait for them anymore. ... We're out of time, we're out of money and we're out of options and we need help. We just want to go home."

Five rentals since the storm

Her family has moved into five different rentals since the storm, always staying in Belmar. That's in contrast to Keefe, a single mother who moved with her three kids and her mother into her brother's two-bedroom condo in Lakewood. She's grateful for the roof, but it's not a lot of space for six people and that can be stressful.

"We all still say 'Goodnight, I love you,' " Keefe said at the news conference, "as Alyssa and my mother go into the dining room and my son sleeps on a futon and my oldest gets to share her room with me."

Keefe told the Asbury Park Press on Wednesday that much of their family time is spent in her car, driving them to and from their native schools and commuting to her job in Wall. She kept her kids enrolled at Manasquan High School and Belmar Elementary rather than in Lakewood schools because she can't give them any other part of their normal lives back.

"2012 was a very rough year for them," she said. "Between losing their house and every little, single thing they have. ... (School is) the only normalcy they have."

Thousands still waiting

Equal rights and housing advocates released a report Wednesday proclaiming that 15,000 families in New Jersey were still waiting to rebuilt — though the state says that number is based on false assumptions.

More than 8,100 homeowners are enrolled in the RREM program, including both the Sperber-Irwin and Keefe families, but only 353 homes as of mid-January had been rebuilt, although the state says 4,100 or so are now in the construction phase.

While those homeowners wait, they are burning through their resources paying for rentals — rental assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and from a state-run program have long since expired — and are running out of ways to make their temporary accommodations fit into a budget that also includes repairing their home.

"We want this to be out there front and center," Doherty earlier told the Press. "There are thousands of families like this throughout New Jersey who are in the same situation."

The town has partnered with Saint Vincent De Paul Society of St. Rose in Belmar, and the church will be handling the Central Jersey Bank account where the donations are being directed. Any contribution is tax deductible and there are no administrative costs — all the money collected is going toward the construction work, according to Doherty.

Russ Zimmer: 732-557-5748, razimmer@app.com

HOW YOU CAN HELP

If you want to give, donations are being accepted on the borough's website, belmar.com, or by check, which should be made out to "Home by Summer" and mailed to Borough of Belmar, Attn: Home by Summer, P.O. Box A, Belmar, NJ 07719.