Rapid Repairs

Within two weeks of Hurricane Sandy, New York City both created the new Mayor’s Office of Housing Recovery (HRO) and immediately launched Rapid Repairs, a first-of-its-kind emergency sheltering program to provide essential repairs to thousands of homeowners left without heat, power, or hot water. Created in collaboration with and funded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Rapid Repairs was designed to allow homeowners to use their own homes as shelter in the storm’s immediate aftermath.

Rapid Repairs moved quickly to muck and gut and restore basic habitability to impacted homes, which was critical with the quickly approaching onset of winter.  In less than 100 days, Rapid Repairs restored heat, electricity and hot water service to over 11,700 buildings—which included over 20,000 units—addressing the needs of approximately 54,000 New Yorkers.

Had HRO not been able to do this work so quickly, a lot of buildings would have been left to the elements and, potentially, rendered non-repairable by the time recovery and insurance funds came online, which would have created significant downstream housing problems, not to mention put people’s lives at risk had they not had heat.