Dear New Jersey Department of Community Affairs, Division of Sandy Recovery,

This is a request for public records made under OPRA and the common law right of access. I am not required to fill out an official form. Please acknowledge receipt of this message.
Records requested:

I am requesting records relating to the RREM grant program. Specifically I am interested in how many people were in the program at the time the Sandy Bill forbearance bill passed in Febraruy 2017 and how many of the grant applicants received a certificate of forbearance from the DCA at that time and how many certificates of forbearance remain in place today.

Also, I am requesting any and all SIROMS system reports as it relates to the above request.

I am interested in finding out if some potential grant recipients lost their forbearance because of a court order or a bankruptcy or some other circumstance and how many certificates of forbearance were removed because the recipient recieved a Certificate of Occupancy from the RREM Grant being completed versus the RREM grant going unused.

Additionally I am requesting any SIROMS quarterly reports and monthly summary reports for the same time frame (roughly 2017 to 2020).

Finally, I am interested in any New Jersey Treasury Office of Oversight reports that have not been published on their website (last report from Naviant was in 2016).

Yours faithfully,

Anonymous

Dear New Jersey Department of Community Affairs, Division of Sandy Recovery,
I sent a request for documents in your custodial control on January 29, 2020. I have not received an acknowledgement of the request nor a response of any kind. Please acknowledge the receipt of the original request and provide a time line of when a response to the request should be forthcoming or if refusing the request for documents an explaination as to why you are refusing.

Yours faithfully,

Mary Lisa

Dear Ms. Neda Hartman,
I have been reviewing the excel spreadsheet and with 7,000+ entries it's taken some time to go through. That said, I am confused by your response regarding the DCA not keeping track of the homeowner status of their forbearances. First of all the DCA required RREM applicants have to apply to the DCA for the Certificate of Eligibility. So how is it your agency is not the appropriate records custodian for OPRA purposes? Additionally, while I was reviewing the DCA’s response to the NJ State Budget Analysis for 2019 - linked here: https://www.njleg.state.nj.us/legislativ...
I find that the state of New Jersey asks your office specifically about the status of the certificate of forbearances and your offices answers are highlighted in the original blue in the paragraph below:
In addition, section 5 of P.L.2017, c.15 (C.52:15D-13) also directed the courts to award
certain Sandy-impacted homeowners, upon application and demonstration of good cause, a temporary stay on foreclosure proceedings. Homeowners who were subject to foreclosure proceeding as of August 10, 2015, may apply for the temporary stay. Under the law, the receipt of FEMA rental assistance as a result of Superstorm Sandy, or the approval of assistance through the RREM or LMI programs, constitutes good cause for a homeowner to be awarded the foreclosure stay. Homeowners were required to apply for the stay by July 1, 2017.
• Question: How many Sandy-impacted homeowners were awarded mortgage
forbearances pursuant to P.L.2017, c.15 (C.52:15D-13)? Please indicate how many
homeowners applied for the forbearance. What were the most common reasons for
applicant denial? How many Sandy-impacted homeowners were awarded a stay on
foreclosure proceedings? How many homeowners applied for the stay? What were
the most common reasons for applicant denial?

A total of 1,066 homeowners applied to DCA, including 154 who later withdrew their
applications. Of the applicants, 477 were found to be eligible for forbearance. Most
commonly, those who were found to be ineligible had not received assistance through the programs required by the statute or had already completed construction on their homes. The Department does not have any statistics on homeowners who applied to the courts for a stay off foreclosure

I find it confounding that you would not have those statistics because the DCA, according to the language of the bill referenced above the DCA is to inform the courts as to who received a Certificate of Eligibility in the first place. Please update the spreadsheet you sent earlier to identify which of the original 477 applicants still have their Certificate of Eligibility and the status of those applications to the court and the 154 who later withdrew their applications. As I have already waited for a response that was not what I asked for, I asked for the 477 plus the 154 that had applied for a Certificate of Forbearance as a result of the 2017 bill I’d appreciate an expedited response.
Thank you,
Mary Lisa