By Lauren Wanko
Correspondent
Questions surround the millions of dollars of Sandy relief aid already spent on projects.
“Our biggest concern is that it seems that politics played a role in these funds being spent rather then the need,” said Fair Share Housing Center Associate Director Kevin Walsh.
A charged denied today by the Governor’s office. Marc Ferzan said, “Politics has played absolutely no role in disaster recovery. There is nothing that is more highly regulated than federal recovery disaster grant programs.”
Kevin Walsh says the funding allocations are going to leave more residents directly impacted by Sandy out in the cold. A projected $6 million of federal Sandy relief aid is expected to be used to assist in the construction of a housing project in a Belleville community for low-income households and displaced storm victims.
Another $4.8 million of federal Sandy relief funds is going to a New Brunswick apartment complex. Twenty percent of the 238 units will be designated affordable housing with displaced Sandy victims being the priority. For three months the units are on the market.
“What we decided to do in our process so we can get the benefit of the new affordable units to the market as soon as possible we solicited the developers in our development community to submit applications for projects they already had that were close to being shovel ready,” said Anbthony Marchetta.
That applies to the nine most storm-impacted counties, which includes Middlesex County.
“There’s no reason why there should be any preference for people in Belleville. This is state money. It should be for people in that region especially for people impacted by the storm who are the ones the housing is for,” Walsh said.
Marchetta says producing new affordable housing in the storm impacted counties would increase the supply and ease the demand.
“Those counties in those communities within those counties because of the nature of the impact people would move to other affordable housing and a tight housing market would be even tighter,” said Marchetta.
Belleville’s Democratic mayor endorsed Gov. Chris Christie. A spokesperson for the mayor says his endorsement has nothing to do with the developer getting the funds for the shovel ready project, adding the developer applied for the funding for the housing project — not the township. Still, Walsh insists there’s a lack of transparency within the Christie administration.
“It may be incompetence, it may be something else that’s going on, but the problem is no one really understands what’s happening and that’s partly what Belleville and New Brunswick demonstrates. No one knows exactly why their developments go funded,” Walsh said.
Meantime, construction on the building — and the debate — continues.