WASHINGTON – Bob and Karen Valentin are carrying two mortgages, but living in a garage.
Since their house was ruined by Hurricane Isabel in 2003, the Baltimore County couple has had to live in three different places while they wait for their full insurance claims to come through.
Now, they are paying the mortgage on their old home and they have also taken out a Small Business Administration loan to build a new house — and get out of the garage.
The Valentins brought their story to Capitol Hill, where other homeowners complained to a House committee Thursday that the Federal Emergency Management Agency has not helped them get back on their feet after the hurricane more than 18 months ago.
In a hearing that was interrupted several times by applause and groans from the audience, witnesses told the House Financial Services Committee that the National Flood Insurance Program remains flawed despite a 2004 bill intended to improve it.
“This is something that has to be fixed,” said Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger, D-Cockeysville.
The crowd included hurricane victims from the region who are still displaced from their homes after getting insurance payments that were far less than they thought their policies entitled them to. Some said FEMA officials put them on the backburner once a new round of hurricanes hit Florida last summer.
“We’ll never be able to retire,” Bob Valentin said during a recess. He said he had a $150,000 policy on his house, but has only received $76,000.
The FEMA-backed insurance program makes flood insurance — which would be virtually impossible to buy otherwise — available to homeowners in about 20,000 communities nationally.
For the most part it is meant to be a self-sustaining program, paying insurance claims with the premiums it gathers from policy holders, and borrowing from the government during years of imbalance.
But the insurance program was “never intended to restore policyholders to pre-flood conditions,” said David Maurstad, a FEMA official. “It was designed to help them recover.”
The Government Accountability Office said Thursday that FEMA officials claim they need the limitations on coverage to keep the program self-funding.
But witnesses and several lawmakers said that Congress did mean for the FEMA program to bring homes back to their pre-flood condition. Some said that coverage should include damage, such as mold, not directly caused by floodwater.
Maryland Insurance Commissioner Alfred Redmer testified that such confusion between program officials and insurance owners abounded in the months after Isabel. He said consumers often had to grapple with a shortage of trained agents and a “confusing and complicated bureaucracy that is difficult for the average consumer to navigate.”
After his agency stepped in and coordinated more than 100 Marylanders’ complaints against the federal program, Redmer said that payments to some of those victims increased. But he said more reviews were needed.
For Karen Valentin, a community college instructor who said she dropped out of a Ph.D. program so she could devote more time to helping her family, the extra money is long overdue.
“You can’t live in a mold- or a fungi-infected dwelling,” she said. “We’re working to try to get this done so that we can move on.”
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