robklurfield
eclipse
Paul, thank you. For my wife and I, we're just simply awfully lucky. It's not our primary residence. We have been renting it out to cover our property taxes since the kids left home. Ours is still standing and with a bit of work can be made habitable again (we mostly will need water-damaged systems -- electric, HVAC, hot water, etc. replaced).
At one time, this was almost exclusively a summer community of mostly modest bungalows. As the land got to be more valuable, people kept adding on rooms and floors to these houses, in many cases doing a slipshod job because the houses weren't intended for year-round use and because inspections tended by lax (or by-passed entirely). The older houses were often rather flimsy (the ones that landed in the street, for example). In the past 20 years, the number of year-round residents has grown considerably and, I'm afraid, some of these folks, most of them entering or well into their senior years, are temporarily homeless. But, there are also a good number of wealth snowbirds who fly south as soon as Thanksgiving's leftovers are finished. (Not us.)
Some of the younger or more well-to-do folks were in the habit of tearing down the modest bungalows and putting up big fancy shingle-style beach palaces. Those houses were built to withstand rough weather and many of them did surprisingly well.
Now, for us, we're not among the wealthy, so what we could afford was a house off the beach -- about five houses in -- and I think that saved us. We were on slightly higher ground and protected by a bigger house on the ocean side (it too did pretty well).
Anyway, your prayers are always appreciated beyond what words can express. I hope you'll direct some more of that positive energy to some of the many folks who are so much less fortunate than us. I'm especially worried for people on Staten Island and Queens. Many of them didn't have much before the storm and now they've got less or nothing. Very sad and worrisome as the weather gets colder.
At one time, this was almost exclusively a summer community of mostly modest bungalows. As the land got to be more valuable, people kept adding on rooms and floors to these houses, in many cases doing a slipshod job because the houses weren't intended for year-round use and because inspections tended by lax (or by-passed entirely). The older houses were often rather flimsy (the ones that landed in the street, for example). In the past 20 years, the number of year-round residents has grown considerably and, I'm afraid, some of these folks, most of them entering or well into their senior years, are temporarily homeless. But, there are also a good number of wealth snowbirds who fly south as soon as Thanksgiving's leftovers are finished. (Not us.)
Some of the younger or more well-to-do folks were in the habit of tearing down the modest bungalows and putting up big fancy shingle-style beach palaces. Those houses were built to withstand rough weather and many of them did surprisingly well.
Now, for us, we're not among the wealthy, so what we could afford was a house off the beach -- about five houses in -- and I think that saved us. We were on slightly higher ground and protected by a bigger house on the ocean side (it too did pretty well).
Anyway, your prayers are always appreciated beyond what words can express. I hope you'll direct some more of that positive energy to some of the many folks who are so much less fortunate than us. I'm especially worried for people on Staten Island and Queens. Many of them didn't have much before the storm and now they've got less or nothing. Very sad and worrisome as the weather gets colder.
