Battling For Home

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August 31, 2005

http://www.imakenews.com/pureaircontrols/e_article000448408.cfm?

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Battling For Home

Since Hurricane Jeanne, Sherry has fought to keep her house

together and, now, in her possession.

by Steve , St. sburg Times, Pasco Edition

[Times photo: Kathleen Flynn]

Sherry pauses recently at her New Port Richey home. It is

still damaged from the 2004 hurricane season. She has battled

Citizens Property Insurance Co. for money for repairs.

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When Hurricane Jeanne left her home full of water last September,

Sherry found comfort knowing her house was insured.

But the adjuster from Citizens Property Insurance Co. didn't show up

until November. Money for repairs didn't come until January, and

still hasn't gotten what the adjuster said was due. She is

fighting Citizens for more money.

The delays forced the 33-year-old, a University of South Florida

student, to live for eight months in a rented motor home in her

front yard. Her 55-year-old mother, , moved into a

backyard shed.

They used the bathroom at a nearby 7-Eleven, would drive there at 4

a.m. in pajamas, half-asleep, and buy a Gatorade when the clerk's

look made them feel guilty.

Even now, near the height of another hurricane season, only half the

home is fit to live in. Mostly, they blame Citizens.

" If it was their parents' home, or their sisters' home, "

says, " they wouldn't let them live this way. "

* * *

Jeanne ripped swathes of shingles and tar paper from the s'

$123,000 home on Kentucky Avenue, near downtown New Port Richey.

Rain poured in holes and down the inside walls. They bailed it out

with buckets, sopped it up with towels and pushed it out the door

with brooms.

Water had invaded the couch, the dressers, the oak desk, the cherry

wood doll cabinet.

The s called Citizens. They were told to secure the home as

best they could. An insurance adjuster would come as soon as

possible.

They waited.

By November, mold had set in. The house smelled rotten. Sherry

spent five days at Morton Plant North Bay Hospital with a lung

infection. The doctor told her to stay out of the house.

She rented an RV for $700 per month and parked it in the front yard.

The adjuster came. He was from Texas, hired by someone who was hired

by Citizens, he explained. He looked the place over for several

hours, got a ladder, climbed on the roof, and listed the damages and

expenses at $95,749. Not all the damage was covered, because of a

policy limit on mold damage. Citizens should pay $83,811, according

to the report he filled out.

He left, and, again, they waited. They kept calling Citizens: We're

sorry ma'am, but a lot of people are in your position. We're trying

as quick as we can.

By December, state regulators had received 4,119 pleas for help in

dealing with Citizens on hurricane issues.

Many of the complaints were that no communication came from Citizens

for months, followed by a settlement check in the mail covering a

fraction of damages.

was developing asthma. She too needed to get out of the

house, a doctor told her. In January, the s gave a friend their

20-foot fishing boat and some cash to build a shed in the back yard.

It had no toilet, no running water and no insulation against the

cold weather. They put a twin bed and a space heater inside, and a

computer with wireless Internet from the house.

" Hey, what are you doing? " Sherry would ask, calling on her cell

phone from the motor home out front. They would chat like that at

night, too frightened to venture back and forth in the dark. The

house looked abandoned. No telling who might lurk.

Finally, in January, money for repairs started coming. But, even up

to now, it has totalled only about $59,000.

The checks were made out to both Sherry and her mortgage bank.

The bank held onto the money, doling it out in chunks, to see that

repairs were made. That has meant even more delays.

The roof was first priority. 's mom has a friend in the roofing

business, who got them on the schedule of Flack's Roofing.

Otherwise, they would have been on a waiting list.

They hired Restoration, which packed their belongings

into two storage pods in the front yard. The company started gutting

the house, removing drywall and insulation from the stinking,

waterlogged walls.

The restoration company sent their clothes, sheets, table linens and

shoes to Sacino & Sons, the formal wear chain, for cleaning.

Progress. But then, Citizens stopped sending checks. When

couldn't keep paying Restoration, the workers quit

showing up. Sacino & Sons says the clothes and linens are ready, but

can't have them until she pays the account.

Sherry hired a lawyer to fight Citizens for the money. The

lawyer hired another adjuster, who assessed 's damages,

including the expenses of being without her home, much higher than

Citizens: about $159,000.

* * *

Even if Citizens paid all that its own adjuster said was due,

would have needed plenty of her own cash to restore everything.

That's because of something called " recoverable depreciation. "

The phrase means that even though 's policy promises to replace

what's damaged, Citizens doesn't have to pay it all up front.

The adjuster, for example, estimated it would cost $120 to replace

's screen door. But because the door was years old, it was

worth only $90. The difference, $30, is the recoverable

depreciation. So, Citizens pays $90 and gets the rest only

after she buys a new door and turns in receipts.

The recoverable depreciations for the door, roof shingles, paint,

insulation and everything else needed added up to $15,644.

The catch, used by other insurers as well, ensnared many after last

year's storms. In June, the governor signed a bill requiring

insurers to pay all replacement costs up front after October 1.

That may be too late for some this season, and it is definitely too

late for the s. Once recoverable depreciation was subtracted,

Citizens' adjuster suggested should get just $68,000 in

payments up front. So far, Citizens has not paid even that amount.

Citizens spokesman Glover said the roughly $9,000 shortfall

(between the $68,000 that the adjuster recommended after recoverable

depreciation and the $59,000 paid) is because of a dispute over

which damages are due to mold and which to water. The policy limits

mold damage payments to $10,000, but does not limit water damage.

Glover declined to describe the dispute in more detail, saying only

that it is not uncommon for Citizens to disagree with its own

adjusters.

He defended the nonprofit state insurer of last resort, which he

said has incurred more than $2.4 billion in losses due to last

year's storms.

" We do not pay hefty executive salaries. We do not pay bonuses. We

do not turn a profit. So we're not motivated to keep claim funds.

The only thing that we are there to do is to provide coverage and

pay claims for folks who cannot find coverage in the private market. "

He said the insurer has scheduled nonbinding mediation with the

s for October.

" We're fully committed to cooperating in the mediation, " he

said, " as we have done for thousands of other Floridians throughout

last year's storms. "

* * *

This spring, with help from the neighbors, Joe and Terry Duross, who

also own a taxi company that employs Sherry, the s began making

repairs themselves.

In April, something in the house still smelled. The odor was

incredible, like a dead animal. They couldn't figure it out. The

walls had been gutted, the carpets and kitchen linoleum scrapped.

They eyed the tile in the dining room.

Sherry went out back and returned with a sledgehammer. She smashed

it against the middle tile and, underneath, found what they were

looking for: a smelly, sludgy mess swimming with maggots. They spent

the rest of the night in masks and gloves, pulling up all the tiles.

Soon afterward, Sherry was picking up new tiles at Home Depot. Her

utility trailer's ramp fell on her foot. She spent the next three

weeks in a cast.

The s used to spend time tending to the snapdragons, hibiscus

and daisies in the yard. But this year, they learned to hang

drywall. Cut a piece to fit. Nail it up. Screw it tight. In May,

was standing on a metal folding chair in the bathroom,

holding a piece to the studs. She leaned one way, the chair went the

other, and she broke her thumb.

Finally, with half the house livable again, mother and daughter

moved back in.

Last month's power bill to cool the uninsulated 1,472 square-foot

home was $303.

In July, someone from the clerk of court came to the door to serve

Sherry papers. She had missed two mortgage payments, paid other

bills instead, thinking the bank would work with her. Now the bank

was foreclosing. She had 20 days to respond. She did, and now is in

talks with the bank to keep the house.

" You wonder how far you're supposed to battle, " Sherry says. " When

am I going to get the break? "

Sherry 's homeowner's policy expired July 18. Her insurance

agent found her coverage with another company.

What's its name?

couldn't remember offhand.

" I don't care who they are, " she said. " They're not Citizens. "

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