Rebuilding and Ripoffs for Mississippi Katrina Family

Aug. 25, 2006 — -- For the Scardinos, refugees from Katrina's fury in Pass Christian, Miss., life nowadays is measured in a constant stream of shifting numbers -- like the changing move-in dates for their newly purchased house and the rising cost of transforming a muddy, shell of a house into a home.

A year later, the family is still not fully settled, and like many survivors of Hurricane Katrina, the Scardinos find that being an initial victim of a Category 5 hurricane doesn't protect you from being a victim again.

After hiring three different contractors, the Scardinos were swindled out of roughly $3,000 and two months of time, but Michael Scardino considers himself lucky.

"My sister lost $40,000," he says. "She really got taken."

This is an all-too-common story for people trying to piece together their lives together on the Gulf Coast. There is a very a high demand for reliable and competent contractors, and those who did stay are often completely overworked.

The shortage of contractors has gotten so bad that people like Michael Scardino have knowingly turned to unlicensed contractors to get their houses built.

"There just comes a time where you do what you have to do to get things done," Scardino explains.

Sometimes, however, things aren't done correctly, as the Scardinos know all too well, and the expenses keep piling up. Even with FEMA money, his own insurance money and the roughly $12,000 his employer and co-workers raised for his family, he finds that he has already spent about $100,000 out of pocket to rebuild a home once owned by another Katrina victim.

"You never forget Katrina," he says. "It's a new house, but a house that has mud everywhere and corrosion from salt and water. It's always there in the back of your mind, no matter where you go."

Last Thursday the Scardinos made their way back to Pass Christian -- or the Pass, as locals call it. It was their monthly visit to the house to look at the neighborhood. This time Mike Scardino mowed the lawn for the first time in a year.

Their Pass Christian home stands pretty much the same as it was after Katrina engulfed the house with 9-foot waves, leaving an indelible water line on the walls of the Scardinos' home.

Now, the rebuilding of the home is engulfed in bureaucratic red tape -- caught somewhere in the triangle of a small business loan that the Scardinos applied for and got (but which "came with too many strings attached"), a local historical society's insistence that the house be restored to it's original specifications, and a grant that the Scardinos are waiting to hear back about. And the waiting game continues.