By Brenda Flanagan
Correspondent
“I’m staying here as long as I can. Can they push me out? How can they?” said Ella Copletown.
Copletown lives in Seaview Village — an Ocean County retirement community that’s located between two major streams. Superstorm Sandypushed four feet of water into many of the 349 homes here, including Ella’s. But while many flood victims elsewhere have elevated their homes to meet demanding new building codes, the elderly residents of Seaview Village resisted.
“It’s a joke!” she said. Why? “Because everybody’s seniors. No one can do stairs.”
“I still can walk up and down stairs. But what its going to be like, another five, 10 years from now? Who knows,” said Jerry Phillippi.
Phillippi has to raise his house six feet higher or he won’t get a certificate of occupancy from the town of Brick.
“I mean, I’m going to have 8 to ten stairs in front of my house. I’m going to have stairs in my garage. I can’t afford to try and sell this house, and say, ‘the heck with it’ and just pack up and leave. I got no place to go,” he said.
“You cannot sell your home if you don’t have a certification of occupancy. So, you’re occupying your home illegally, according to FEMA, if you don’t raise a substantially damaged home,” said George Kasimos, founder of Stop FEMA Now.
The Seaview Village Association says residents here can’t afford to raise their homes even if that means higher federal flood insurance rates.
“If FEMA doesn’t pay for it, the people that we’re talking about do not have mortgages and are not going to do it. The cost is going to be so unreasonable that it’s going to be more than what our homes are worth,” said Steve Jacabow, President of the Seaview Village Association.
The mayor says most of Seaview’s homeowners successfully appealed their cases and won exemptions from the new building codes for now.
“The federal government has now extended the deadline for six years, so it’s well out in the future. It’s not going to be happening anytime soon, as far as the need to elevate,” said Brick mayor John Ducey.
Residents here want the Army Corps of engineers to dredge the streams and build a protective berm around their community.
“We’ve been told our houses are worthless. Why would I sink more money into it in order to raise it if I’m still going to flood,” said Seaview resident Carolyn Kowalski.
When asked if they push her to raise her house Copletown says she won’t do it. “I’ll move,” she said. “I’ll walk away.”
Many Seaview Village residents are warning government officials before they take a step this drastic, they’ll just pack up and leave.