Podcast: Build it Backlog - The Sandy Non-Recovery

On October 29, 2012 more than 20,000 New York City residents lost their home when Superstorm Sandy tore through the five boroughs. Four years later, the majority of those homeowners are still without a place to call their own, owing largely to the city's mishandling of the recovery process. 

With the four-year anniversary of Sandy approaching, Mayor de Blasio recently admitted that the heavily criticized Build it Back program would fall short of its goal of rebuilding every home by the end of the year, and that the cost overruns for the program will total around $500 million, most of which was reallocated without the City Council's approval. Meanwhile, only 8,585 of the initial 20,000 affected homeowners remain in the Build it Back program, with many exiting out of frustration. 

The Wall Street Journal's Mara Gay has followed the Sandy recovery process closely and her reporting helped expose the myriad problems affected homeowners were experiencing with Build it Back. Mara joins us on this week's episode of the Slant Podcast to walk us through the factors that derailed Build it Back, why so and shares her thoughts on whether de Blasio or his predecessor Michael Bloomberg deserve more blame for the stalled recovery. 

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