Slow pace of flood recovery frustrates homeowner, contractor alike

CEDAR RAPIDS - Twenty months on, flood recovery is taking a toll on some displaced residents.

“I'm tired, man,” Henry Spruill said one recent afternoon. “I just want to go home.”

Home for Spruill is the 800 block of Ellis Boulevard NW, still largely vacant. The deliberate pace of the state's Jumpstart program and the delays typical of many major home repairs have pushed Spruill's return to mid-March.

Spruill blames the stress for a minor heart attack he suffered Wednesday afternoon. An ambulance took him from the house, where he spends most of his days watching the work, to Mercy Medical Center. He was discharged later that afternoon.

“Doctor told me just take it easy for a day or two,” said Spruill, 60. “I just got so involved, so heated up. I just really shouldn't have, but I did.”

Homeowners and contractors alike are frustrated.

“At this point in the process, it is something we're starting to hear,” said Steve Schmitz, director of the Community Recovery Center in northwest Cedar Rapids. Of the 676 owner-occupied homes for which CRC has coordinated repairs by volunteers, the number of serious delays is “well in the single digits,” though.

Jay Prator, Spruill's contractor, said Spruill ordered home improvements and changed some plans, further slowing Jumpstart's deliberate pace.

“He took a wall out of the kitchen and lost a lot of countertops and cabinets,” which had to be moved elsewhere, said Prator. “He insisted on having a dishwasher in a kitchen that wasn't set up to accommodate it,” requiring new plumbing and electrical connections.

Jumpstart pays contractors 50 percent at the start of a project, with the balance payable after the work has been completed and cleared by city inspectors. In Cedar Rapids, the checks come four to six weeks after initial Jumpstart approval and after the inspections, adding up to three months of downtime to each project and hampering contractors' efforts to budget and schedule work.

“I would love to have 20 people,” said Prator, “but I'm only able to cash-flow for six.”

Prator, 40, came to Iowa 10 days after the flood from Fort Myers, Fla., where he's operated his own contracting business for 10 years. He wanted to help Midwesterners, like the latter had helped in Florida after hurricanes in 2004, but “I'm not an angel. I came up here because our construction economy collapsed, and I had the tools.”

Prator said his company, Contractor Services of Iowa LLC, has repaired about 20 flood-damaged homes, including several for the Block by Block neighborhood recovery program. His firm is unrelated to another company of the same name that's a division of Detroit-based Masco Contractor Services.

Ananda Adams-Zmolek, the Jumpstart manager for the Affordable Housing Network, which manages the program in Cedar Rapids, said it takes up to six weeks for the state to release funding for an individual project. The process is complicated by the federal government, which provides additional funding under its lead-paint abatement program.

“We try and manage expectations appropriately,” Adams-Zmolek said. “There's an internal process, and it goes externally, and we have to receive the funding before we can write the check.”

To speed the process, Adams-Zmolek said her office requests funding for the final payment when an inspection is scheduled, delivering the check after the work is checked.

The $49 million Jumpstart housing program has so far processed 2,541 applications for housing assistance, including 563 for mortgage and down-payment aid, spokeswoman Tina Potthoff said. Potthoff said 1,020 businesses have received aid from the Jumpstart business program, which is funded by $15 million each from the state and federal governments.

Paula Mitchell of Cedar Rapids Housing Services said Jumpstart managers check city inspection records to ensure work is done and done right.

Contractors “would provide a bid showing the scope of the work, and they would get the payments after they've done the work,” Mitchell said. Jumpstart “would be looking for if the permits had been closed out and the work inspected” before releasing the money.