Toms River Working with FEMA to Remove Damaged Homes

When Joanne Boston of Ortley Beach visits her Fort Avenue property, where her home once stood, the damage around her is troubling. 

Across the street, a neighbor's home — badly damaged by Superstorm Sandy and now uninhabitable — appears as though it could topple. 

"His house is barely standing. If there's a wind of 60 miles per hour, what is going to happen to his house?" Boston said before the Township Council last week. 

Boston is worried that items remaining in that home could cause not only injury, but financial trouble should they somehow come loose and injur someone on her property. Her insurance company said the same.

"If something comes over to my property and someone gets hurt, the insurance company is telling me that I will be responsible," Boston said. "I'm thinking of putting a fence around the property, and now I have to put out $600 for a liability policy."

About 280 homes in Toms River need to be demolished, according to township Business Administrator Paul Shives.

"I understand your concern," Shives told Boston. 

Many residents are already struggling financially following Sandy, so Toms River has worked out a plan with FEMA to demolish those structures at no cost to the owner.

"We have to get the bids back and have a funding mechanism," said Council President George Wittmann, who indicated that residents such as Boston must be patient as the demolition process moves forward.

"So many of us are asking, when is someone going to require the homeowners that their homes are just completely destroyed, to have them taken away?" Boston said.

In the meantime, the township will not issue citations to those with uninhabitable homes on their properties.

"For folks who are hurting, we're not going to kick them while they're down and give them a citation for not taking down their house," Wittmann said.

Bids for the demolition project went out at the council's meeting in early-February. Wittmann said that it should take about 2-3 months before the work can begin. 

"We're trying to be fair to everyone," Wittmann said. "If this was an isolated incident, where the house was on fire and this was one house, that's a totally different issue than we're working with now."