Hurricane Sandy Foreclosure Protection Bill Moves In New Jersey Senate

A bill to extend foreclosure protection and mortgage relief for Hurricane Sandy-affected homeowners passed the state Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee on Monday.

Co-sponsored by state Sen. Chris Brown, R-Atlantic, the bipartisan bill would extend the protections to July 1, 2022. They are due to expire July 1 of this year, under a bill passed by the Legislature in 2016 and signed by Gov. Chris Christie in early 2017.

"We are working to get it posted for a vote in the full Senate and to the governor before July 1," when the current law expires, Brown said.

He said the bill was awaiting consideration in the Senate Community and Urban Affairs Committee, but that committee was not going to meet before July.

"So, working with my colleagues, we got the bill transferred to the Senate Budget and Appropriation Committee," Brown said.

Assemblymen Vince Mazzeo and John Armato, both D-Atlantic; and DiAnne Gove and Brian Rumpf, both R-Ocean, Atlantic, Burlington, are co-sponsors of identical legislation in the Assembly.

Other co-sponsors in the Senate are Democrat Sens. Vin Gopal, D-Monmouth; Linda Greenstein, D-Mercer, Middlesex; and Christopher Connors, R-Ocean, Atlantic, Burlington.

Hurricane Sandy happened in October 2012, but there are still more than 1,000 families who qualified to receive federal recovery funding who have not been able to complete the rehabilitation of their homes or move back in, according to the amended bill S-3582.

The amendments would not allow any new homeowners into the program, but would extend the protections to those already covered who need more time.

The original bill gave Sandy-affected homeowners who qualified for federal assistance the ability to apply for a forbearance period on their mortgages, during which they could stop making mortgage payments but would have to continue to maintain and insure their properties and pay property taxes.

The mortgage forbearance period in the 2016 bill extended to one year after the home was awarded a certificate of occupancy, or to July 1, 2019, whichever was earlier.

In 2016 there were 3,200 Sandy victims still working on their damaged homes.

The bill defined a Sandy-impacted homeowner as one who received rental assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency as a result of damage to his or her primary residence due to Sandy, or who has been approved for assistance through the Reconstruction, Rehabilitation, Elevation and Mitigation program or the Low-to-Moderate Income program.

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