Housing director tours Coney Island to assess post-Sandy rebuild
Councilman Mark Treyger played the role of tour guide, showing a newly appointed city official the sites of Coney Island on Monday. But it wasn’t a bid to boost tourism.
Treyger, chairman of the council’s Recovery and Resiliency Committee, said he wanted Amy Peterson, director of the city’s Housing Recovery Office, to see first-hand the rebuilding efforts going on in Coney Island, a community that was devastated by Super-storm Sandy in 2012. Seventeen months after the storm hit, residents are still struggling to rebuild their damaged homes.
Treyger (D-Coney Island-Gravesend-Bensonhurst) took Peterson on a three-hour tour of Coney Island and its neighboring community, Seagate. The two not only looked at damaged buildings, they also spoke to neighborhood residents about their struggles to rebuild their homes and businesses.
Many residents told Peterson that they are still trying to get back into their damaged homes and are awaiting reimbursement from eh government after using personal savings to rebuild. Residents raided their life savings to rebuild their houses, Treyger said.