Report: Huge housing gap for N.J. Sandy victims

• Need greatest in Monmouth, Ocean counties
• Congressman: FEMA says mobile homes unnecessary

Asbury Park -- If federal authorities decide to roll out mobile homes to house New Jersey families left without shelter by Superstorm Sandy, that would still leave thousands without housing, according to a state hurricane housing task force report.

The mobile homes would house 1,000 households, according to the report, leaving another 5,500 families or individuals still scrambling to find housing.

But those trailers may not arrive.

"They told me they won't be bringing trailers to New Jersey, that there was no need for them, and that's unacceptable," said Rep. Frank J. Pallone Jr., D-N.J., who lashed out at the Federal Emergency Management Agency following a conference call Thursday afternoon. "People are living in friends' homes, in basements. They can't do that for a year and a half."

More than a month after Sandy ravaged the New Jersey coastline, people in Monmouth and Ocean counties have encountered a dire shortage of temporary housing.

According to the New Jersey State-Led Disaster Housing Task Force, some 12,500 eligible households need disaster-related housing statewide. The number of available units in New Jersey is about 6,100.

The Hurricane Sandy Disaster Housing Strategic Plan, which was released on Nov. 26, said the number of households needing housing is more like 25,000, but about half have given up on FEMA's registration process, can't be found or decline the options FEMA gives them.

The housing gap is even wider in Monmouth and Ocean counties, according to the report. As of mid-November, 6,941 people in Monmouth County were eligible for housing assistance, but only 384 rental units were available. In Ocean, 14,052 applicants were eligible for housing assistance and only 232 rental units were available at that time.

FEMA spokesman Chris McNiff said only a fraction of eligible applicants will need those units. Some applicants only need repair work to get back into their homes, and others move in with family, he said.

But Pallone said that the temporary housing need is still severe and that FEMA is backing off a previous commitment to bring trailers to New Jersey. He added the agency is maintaining that the housing stock in the state is adequate when it is not.

FEMA, however, said there has been no request from New Jersey to bring the trailers here. FEMA has identified 865 vacant lots in mobile home parks statewide, 122 in Monmouth County and 129 in Ocean County, according to the report. The agency has also set up 40 mobile homes in Jackson to be used if needed.

And the housing gap may have closed since some of the numbers were compiled three weeks ago. Officials are working to increase the housing stock, from vacant homes in suburban neighborhoods to apartments at Fort Monmouth to housing with the state Department of Human Services.

"Those numbers go down over time," McNiff said. "People do make other arrangements."

To find housing, people in the two counties may have to travel to other areas to tap into housing resources there, McNiff said. FEMA considers a commute of 50 miles reasonable, McNiff said. And the overall need changes, he said.

What happens to people who can't find housing? Some disappear into other people's basements.

Joyce Bornemann is one. She lived in Union Beach with her husband, 22-year-old son, 27-year-old daughter and 9-month-old grandson.

They stayed upstairs in their two-story home while water swept through their street during the storm. Afterward, the storm dispersed the family. The daughter and her baby live with a friend. Her son is staying with a friend in Union Beach. And Bornemann and her husband Brian are living in an unfinished basement in her stepdaughter's home an hour south in Berkeley. A small heater fights the cold at night. They have little more than that, a bed and a television, she said, offering no complaints.

Brian Bornemann, a printer, now must commute an hour and a half to his job. Bornemann can no longer get to her job as a chef and waitress because they have only one vehicle. Seven people live in the four-bedroom home above them. The hunt for an apartment has proved futile so far, she said.

"You can't find something because everything's already taken," she said. "We look every day. We'll find something, we'll call up and it's taken."