NEW YORK – The city is embarking on an unprecedented reconstruction program to swiftly repair homes damaged by Superstorm Sandy, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Friday. The program will be mostly paid for by the federal government and aims to get some people home early next week, he said.

The program, called New York City Rapid Repair, will deploy general contractors who will oversee the work in the hard-hit areas. Those contractors will manage electricians, plumbers, carpenters and others to complete the repairs, Bloomberg said. The Federal Emergency Management Agency is supporting the project and will pay for most if not all of it, he added.

“For a homeowner to go off on their own and find somebody who was available and willing to show up is a daunting task,” he said at a news conference. “We’re changing the game. Today, we’re launching a program that will start returning people to their homes as early as next week. … Its goal is to get as many New Yorkers as possible back in their homes by the end of the year.”

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Some 90,000 households in New York City and Long Island remained without power Friday. Some homes need simple repairs to get up and running, while others will need major work.

The program will begin with the easiest houses to fix, with those that have received a green card -- indicating they are sound -- from the buildings department, Bloomberg said. The buildings department has already examined some 80,000 homes.

To register, people must either visit one of the city’s restoration centers, call the information line (311) or sign up online. They must call FEMA to get an identification number. Bloomberg said. The first wave of applicants must have received a green card and be on a street where power has been restored.

Signup begins Tuesday. Work will start soon afterward.

Bloomberg said the program, which is optional, was unprecedented and “will save the city, state and federal government a lot of money and that’s because contractors will be able to work on multiple buildings at once and not just one house at a time.”

Contractors will work over the weekend with the buildings department to identify the homes that will be in the first wave of repairs.

The program “will go a long ways in our recovery, but I will say it won’t fix everything,” Bloomberg said. “In the hardest hit places like Breezy Point, homes were completely destroyed and some of the buildings that are standing will need major structural work before they can be lived in again. For those families, we’re working on housing options that we’ll have more to say about next week.”

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Crews in central Washington, rural Idaho and Southern California made gains on several wildfires, allowing some evacuees to return home and protecting two vacation towns from a massive encroaching blaze.

Firefighters stopped a fire about 75 miles east of Seattle from destroying more buildings in the past two days, fire spokesman Mark Grassel said Thursday, The Associated Press reported.

The blaze near the town of Cle Elum burned at least 70 homes, more than 200 outbuildings and about 35 square miles of wildland since it started Monday.

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Some people were able to return home, only to find nothing left except the land their home sat on.

The Letson family discovered the only thing left standing upright was a satellite dish.

“I’m thankful we weren’t in it,” Virginia Letson told NBC station King 5.

They lost everything except what they shoved into two small suitcases as they escaped the fire. “We did not have insurance, so that was not a good thing,” Letson added.

"Things will get better honey,” Virginia’s husband, Terry Letson, said. “We're alive.”

Mary Colley-Shults went through her family heirlooms. She said she’ll miss her grandmother’s dishes the most.

"She never had anything,” Colley-Shults told King 5. “She lived in a covered wagon most of her life.”

But Colley-Shults still has her home, and her horses and cats survived. Even though she can’t replace what she lost, she still has the memories they created.

Flames whip through forests
Crews focused on strengthening lines on the fire's stubborn north flank, where flames whipped through thick pine and fir forests in a steep, rugged area.

"They're really trying to button up that line so they feel more secure about it holding," Grassel told the AP.

Firefighters' work allowed officials to lift some evacuation orders, although homeowners said they didn't feel out of danger yet.

Unusually hot, dry, unstable weather was expected Friday and Saturday, with thunderstorms possible, Grassel said.

Laurie Plut said the fire has hovered right at the timber line, just beyond the wood cabin she and her husband have been building over the past 12 years.

"We're still worried. It's extremely frustrating, but the firefighters have been working hard," she told The AP by telephone. "And we have to love them."

Photoblogs:

• Razing trees to save a house
• Wildfires continue to burn, destroy homes in Central Washington
• Lone house, surrounded by scorched earth, survives wildfire

In Idaho, crews at 12 big fires worked to protect homes and build lines. Teams of firefighters arrived in Featherville to prepare for work against a huge wildfire that has been advancing on the small communities of Pine and Featherville.

Strangely enough, a column of smoke from the blaze settled over Featherville on Wednesday, cooling temperatures and slowing the fire's steady march toward town, fire information officer Lisa Machnik told Reuters.

That gave residents time to protect homes and cabins and prepare for a possible evacuation. The blaze started two weeks ago in the Boise National Forest and has scorched more than 108 square miles.

Thousands told to flee
NBC station KTVB reported that the Custer County Sheriff’s office had urged people who live in an area including Custer Town and Jordan Creek to get out as a nearby wildfire worsened.

The sheriff’s office said the 2,000 homes affected should be evacuated by 5 p.m. Friday local time (7 p.m. ET).

In the eastern part Idaho, a group of fires that burned more than 114 square miles finally slowed after it blazed through stands of timber killed by bark beetles. The fires were moving northeast, within three miles of the Montana border.

Idaho Gov. C.L. "Butch" Otter has issued a disaster declaration, clearing the way for the Idaho National Guard to get involved.

Inmates join fight against Washington wildfire

Thousands of firefighters were battling blazes throughout the West, which has been hit by hot, dry windy conditions in a fire season that officials said started early. Fire managers and state officials kept a nervous eye on forecasts that warned of more hot, dry weather with possible thunderstorms in many areas.

The ominous weather forecasts were cited by Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber, who on Thursday declared a statewide state of emergency that authorizes use of National Guard helicopters to fight wildland blazes. He noted that much of his state was in extreme fire danger, the imminent threat of wildfire and mentioned a 123-square-mile blaze in southern Oregon.

In Northern California, crews made progress along the northern edge of a fire that has burned 67 square miles in the Plumas National Forest. The blaze has threatened more than 900 homes and prompted voluntary evacuations.

It was among the largest of nearly a dozen major wildfires burning across California that kept more than 9,000 firefighters busy.

Crews moved closer to containing several Southern California wildfires, but dozens of rural homes remained threatened as thunderstorms loomed.

In northern San Diego County, a cluster of lightning-sparked fires kept residents from more than 100 homes in Ranchita and San Felipe.

About 30 miles to the northwest, a blaze in Riverside County neared containment. That fire destroyed four structures, injured six people, and burned more than 4 square miles east of Temecula.

Higher humidity helped at a huge wildfire burning on both sides of the Nevada-Oregon state line. The lightning-sparked blaze has burned 722 square miles of sagebrush.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

 

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To grasp the breadth of the housing crisis affecting a large portion of American troops past and present, consider the ironic case of Grant Moon:

After 13 years as a soldier and captain in the Army National Guard and Army Reserves, logging time in Baghdad during 2007 and 2008, Moon returned to home soil to launch a home-loan advisement firm for service members. This month, Moon’s company will partner with VeteransPlus, a nonprofit that has supplied financial education to more than 150,000 current and former soldiers, airmen, sailors and Marines.

“I am underwater on my home," Moon said. "I can’t refinance (because he owes more on his home loan than the property is worth). Yet I have my own company that’s very well tapped into the mortgage market. So, you know, this is a big problem.”

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Related: Feds move to help out underwater military homeowners

The rates of underwater mortgages and foreclosures appear to be higher among active-duty U.S. troops and ex-service members than among American civilians, said John E. Pickens, executive director of VeteransPlus, and a former combat medic with the U.S. Army Special Forces and 82nd Airborne Division.

“It’s more commonplace than people know,” agreed William Jewsbury, a retired Army Master Sergeant who spent 33 years in the service. In 2011, he was forced to do a short sale on his home near Portland, Ore., losing about $70,000 in the transaction. “Especially for the guys over in the sandbox – Iraq and Afghanistan – it’s pretty common. If the banks nail you (with a foreclosure notice) while you’re in theater, you can’t just drop whatever you’re doing to come home and take care of it.” 

Related: Company accused of deception turns GIBill.com over to VA

While no firm national statistics are available to gauge the full scope of military-mortgage misery, VeteransPlus says that among the 150,000 service members it has counseled since the U.S. mortgage meltdown began in 2008, 39 percent (or 58,500) had housing concerns, almost half needed emergency financial help, and 82 percent had less than one month of mortgage-payment savings in reserve. 

Service members have “several things stacked against them," Pickens said, especially active-duty troops, national guard and reserves. "Those things include the frequency of deployments and a difficulty finding employment when they get home.”

Related: Pentagon, Congress eye new payday loan rules

Based on interviews with three financial experts who work with service members and two veterans with mortgage issues of their own, there appear to be six basic reasons why thousands of current and former troops are sliding into shaky housing ground.

1. Deployments (and re-deployments) to war zones
More than half of the 150,000 military clients counseled by VeteransPlus are reservists or national guard members, meaning they leave full-time jobs - and their civilian salaries - when they're sent overseas. During deployments, those troops are paid according to their rank.

"Many of them are receiving lower wages while serving as military personnel than they were when employed at home," Pickens said. "So if a guy is, say, an E3 rank, the pay is between $1,750 a month and $1,981 a month." In the States, those same people may gross $3,000 to $5,000 per month or more.

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Moreover, many service members faced several deployments. When Afghanistan and Iraq broke out, "nobody estimated that a lot of these people would be deployed three to four times," said Chris Fizpatrick, director of strategic partnerships for the Yellow Ribbon Registry Network. "That lack of fiscal planning is something we end up focusing on a great deal."

2. Partners at home often struggle with budgeting
VeteransPlus has tracked a clear trend among the 150,000 military families with whom it has worked: "The person who deploys is typically the person paying the bills at home," said Fitzpatrick, who in addition to his Yellow Ribbon work serves as deputy director of VeteransPlus.

So, before one partner ships out, the other person at home "is saying, 'Hey, wait a minute now: you want me to take care of the bills, the car, the house? This is not my game.' To which the person leaving for duty says, 'Sorry, I have to deploy. Learn it fast.'

"That," Fitzpatrick added," has always been a problem." 

Additionally, when financial issues surface - such as lapsed house payments - the spouse or partner at home is often reluctant to inform the overseas soldier, not wanting them to lose focus while in combat, Pickens said. "They ask themselves: 'Do I really reveal this letter I got from the mortgage company? Do they really need to hear about that where they are right now?' "

When mortgage issues are kept hidden in that way, they only grow bigger and more complicated, both men said. 

3. Predatory lenders
In October 2011, a whistleblower lawsuit was unsealed in a federal court in Atlanta alleging that some of the nation's largest banks and lenders had defrauded veterans out of hundreds of millions of dollars by disguising illegal fees in veterans’ home refinancing loans. 

Among the companies accused in that lawsuit were Wells Fargo, Bank of America, J.P. Morgan Chase and GMAC Mortgage, who were alleged to have engaged in “a brazen scheme to defraud both our nation’s veterans and the United States treasury” of millions of dollars in connection with home loans guaranteed by the Department of Veterans Affairs. As a result, the suit claimed, tens of thousands of the VA loans have gone into default or resulted in foreclosures. 

One of Moon's prime motivations for launching VA Loan Captain was to give veterans a safe place to obtain home financing. His company has so far vetted four banks - mandating that each sign a guarantee pledge that blends ethical, legal and compliance components - before suggesting that his military clients use those institutions to obtain mortgages. 

"We pre-screen these banks and make sure there’s no type of predatory lending. Then we allow the bank to operate on our platform," Moon said. "(Through our company), veterans can go online anonymously, get pricing fees among some of our platform VA lenders so they have a transparent environment to see what the pricing is going to be. That gives them the ability to make an informed decision."

4. Frequent transfers and the military mindset 
When active military members receive orders to transfer to a new base, they have to decide if the market will even allow them to sell their property. If their mortgage is underwater, they will lose money in a sale. 

"When things do happen that affect our stability, primarily for active duty members, it is outside of our control," said Robert Sanders, a retired U.S. Air Force master sergeant who worked in information management, serving 14 years overseas.

His mortgage dilemma emerged after he retired from the military. When Sanders was offered a civilian job in Florida, he was forced to do a short sale on his home in Arizona, which had lost 60 percent of its value during the downturn. (He also was unable to rent the house).

"A military member may have bought a home and thought they could ride out their last few years until retirement at the same location," Sanders said. "However, if the Air Force gives you orders, you cannot refuse them simply based on the fact that you have a home and would need to sell it.

"They have the old ideal that this will be their only home from now until death so, why not start at the top (with a larger, pricier home), since they can't imagine buying now and having the option to perhaps sell and upgrade later. Military tend to think in long-term, locked-in directions" 

Added Moon: "A lot of people in the military don’t necessarily think ahead. It’s like, 'Hey, I'll just buy every two years'. But you have to think ahead. If you’re in the military, chances are you’ll probably move again."

5. Lack of financial literacy
The inability to fully understand the housing market, credit scores, home budgets or other money matters leads many service members to make poor fiscal choices, Moon said. 

"As many military tend to come from lower income families, the idea of ever owning a home is truly an American dream, but the result is to potentially enter (such a purchase) without a basis of (financial) experience or understanding," Sanders said. "The military doesn't tend to push training in areas of personal finance."  

6. VA Loans and buying too big 
Through the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, service members can obtain VA-guaranteed mortgages issued by qualified lenders. But some veterans have made the critical mistake, Sanders said, of securing a VA loan they can't truly afford. 

"Having the VA Loan makes it tempting for someone to take more than they need," Sanders said. "This can come from either the Realtor talking it up for their own benefit, or the military member seduced with the 'if THIS is good, but I can afford THAT, why wouldn't I take THAT?' mentality." 

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As night fell on the previously vacant home on Brooklyn's Vermont Street that was the target of a “liberation” by housing activists and Occupy Wall Street protesters earlier in the day, an illuminated Christmas tree stood in what is, at least for now, the small front yard of the Glasgow-Carrasquillo family's home.

It remains unclear whether authorities or the Bank of America, which owns the mortgage on the two-story brick house, intend to roust the longtime homeless family – Alfredo Carrasquillo, 27, Natasha Glasgow, 30, and children Alfredo, Jr., 5, and Tanisha, 9 – from their new abode. There were police parked on both ends of the block and a van in front of the family’s home, said Sean Barry of VOCAL-NY. Bank of America did not respond to an email seeking comment.

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As the Carrasquillo-Glasgows got accustomed to their new surroundings, a group of the people responsible for putting a roof over their heads stood outside, discussing logistics and munching on food being distributed from a table on the sidewalk.

 

 

"What we're doing today … should encourage more and more people to ... fight for what their right is: Housing is a right,"” said Dorothy Amadi, a 63-year-old activist who was part of a squatting movement in Brooklyn in the 1980s. "We fought with the city and they gave this organization ... the buildings and we were able to renovate them and put people into apartments, and help put abandoned buildings back ... on the tax rolls, give the city some money to think about," she added with a laugh.

Some protesters had set up a mobile library across the street and were circulating a sign-up sheet for eviction defense -- in case authorities attempted to throw the family out of the foreclosed home.

“There definitely is going to be around-the-clock eviction defense,” said Barry, noting that protesters planned to work in shifts on an indefinite occupation. “Our understanding is that the police won’t take any action unless Bank of America asks them to do so.”

The NYPD did not respond to an email seeking comment. Officers at the scene declined to comment, as well as when contacted by phone.

Rob Robinson, of Take Back the Land, which helped plan the foray, said he hoped the action would encourage people to come out and share their stories of eviction, thereby helping others to overcome the shame and stigma of being foreclosed upon.

"You can only probably help somebody or change somebody's lives by sharing that story. Movements begin with the telling of untold stories," he said. "You need to tell your story, otherwise nobody knows."

Click here to read previous posts on the seizure of the Brooklyn home.

Click here to read complete coverage of the "Occupy" day of action.

A New York family with two children that has been living on and off in shelters for more than a decade will move into a new home on Tuesday, say housing activists and ‘Occupy’ protesters who intend to force their way into a foreclosed house in Brooklyn later in the day.

"We are going to liberate the house,” said Sean Barry, of VOCAL-NY, which has been working to prevent homelessness for 10,000 low-income New Yorkers living with HIV/AIDS and their families. "We want to make a public stance … for people to take sides."

The home that protesters aim to give to the Glasgow family -- which is not affected by HIV/AIDS – is in Brooklyn's East New York neighborhood, which has foreclosure and underwater rates that are nearly three times greater than that of New York state, Barry said, citing data from the housing and property database ListSource. 

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The move-in is part of a national day of action coordinated by the 'Occupy' movement and housing activists in some 25 cities and towns, such as Petaluma, Calif., Southgate, Mich., Atlanta and Denver.

Activists and protesters plan to march to the Brooklyn home, where they will hold a housewarming party for them -- mother Natasha, 30, father Alfredo Carrasquillo, 27, and children Alfredo, Jr., 5, and Tanisha, 9 -- and then begin renovations. Carrasquillo is a community organizer at VOCAL-NY.

Rob Robinson of Take Back the Land, a national network of organizations focused on housing rights and securing community control over land, said the protesters plan to resist any efforts by authorities to remove the family from the home in a low-income neighborhood that's home to mostly African-Americans and Latinos.

"I am going to put up a real defense," said Robinson, who will serve as the police negotiator. "Until a judge tells us we have to leave, we're not leaving that house, so the family is in that house to stay. We're not ... disruptive, we do nonviolent civil disobedience. We call it positive action."

The 'Occupy' movement served as an inspiration for housing activists, who have been trying to help homeowners facing foreclosure keep their residences.

"Like September 17, when Occupy Wall Street started, people looked at it and there was this real question, 'Is this going to last? how is it going to grow?' and one of the reasons it grew is that as people stayed down at Zuccotti Park ... other people were inspired to take action," said Matt Browner Hamlin, an activist with occupyourhomes.org. "This is not something (where) ... we want a family to have a home for a day, we want them to have that home for a lifetime."

And for 'Occupy,' the initiative gives them a new focus after the dismantling of many of their encampments nationwide.

"It’s part of a national day of action that we hope will kick off a wave of defenses and home reoccupations,” Max Berger, 26, told the Occupy Wall Street General Assembly late last week while requesting $6,400 in funding to buy tools for the project. "This is not just about one event; this is a huge frontier for us. We can do these kinds of actions all the time, and we should. And it doesn’t have to be just us. We got to do this one right so we can inspire people to do it theirselves.”

Click here for all the posts on this developing story.