Build It Back finally on track, city officials say
Mayor touts recent program successes
Lauren and Francis Slavin survived Superstorm Sandy, but the Gerritsen Beach bungalow where they lived for 24 years was nearly destroyed.
“The front of our house fell into a sinkhole. The water was coming in so fast; we barely got out of the house. I’ll never forget the sight of my dog sitting on the couch with the couch floating across the room. We ran out with just the clothes on our backs. We got the dog out, but my parrot drowned. And everything else we owned was lost,” Lauren Slavin told the Brooklyn Eagle on Friday.
After the storm, the Slavins were able to move back into their one-story house, but the place was a mere shell of its former self. “We had a house with no sheet rock. And my roof had gotten blown off,” Lauren Slavin said. “When the storm hit, we had only three months left on our mortgage. We would have had it all paid up. Talk about ironic.”
Still, the couple wanted to stay and rebuild.