March 20, 2005
By Robin Benedick and John Holland
Sun-Sentinel

Six months after the last of four hurricanes hammered Florida, up to 75 percent of affected homeowners in the hardest-hit counties are still waiting for their homes to be repaired.

Most of them can't find anyone to do the work, while others who thought they got lucky were instead ripped off by people who took their money and ran, or who stayed and did shoddy work, say building officials across the state.

So far, hundreds of people have been arrested statewide for allegedly contracting without a license, stealing the license numbers of local contractors or taking deposits but not doing the work. In addition, dozens of licensed contractors have been cited for using their credentials to win business and then handing the jobs to unlicensed, uninsured subcontractors, building officials said.

Even before the quartet of hurricanes -- Charley, Frances, Ivan and Jeanne -- walloped most of Florida in August and September, explosive growth had the state struggling with a shortage of building supplies and widespread fraud. The storms merely exacerbated those problems, building officials said.

Jon Wells of Royal Palm Beach paid $2,000 toward roof repairs on his three-bedroom home in the La Mancha subdivision, which was whipped by both Frances and Jeanne. But the man he hired, who claimed to be a roofer, never returned to do the work. When Wells called, the roofer's phone was disconnected.

Frustrated, Wells lined up friends from his church, Palms West Alliance, and last weekend they began replacing the roof themselves.

"All of this has caused a lot of stress, but hopefully we're getting near the end," said Wells, a fifth-grade teacher, who lives in the home with his wife, Alyson, and three young children.

More than 10 percent of the state's houses, apartments and mobile homes were damaged or destroyed by the hurricanes, affecting more than 700,000 Floridians. There was more than $21 billion in insured losses, not including more than $2 billion handed out by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. In addition, the Small Business Administration approved $1.46 billion in loans.

While no single agency in Florida is tracking the pace of rebuilding, officials statewide predict it will take at least another 18 months to clean up. Add a few more years, they say, if another hurricane smacks Florida this summer.

A more immediate fear, building officials say, is what happens when the season's first heavy rains pound roofs that were rebuilt incorrectly.

"There is such a shortage of roofing materials, particularly shingles, that we're seeing many roofers driving to other parts of the country, as far away as Oklahoma and Michigan, and bringing back full truckloads of shingles," said Palm Beach County Building Director Roland Holt. The problem, he said, is those shingles often don't comply with South Florida's stronger building codes.

Building officials say they are also dealing with out-of-state contractors who get temporary licenses to work in Florida, but then fail to get local building permits so their work can be inspected. In addition, said Palm Beach County Deputy Miguel Corzo, "we are getting a lot of complaints about contractors using other contractors' license numbers. When the homeowner checks, it shows them that the person is licensed, when in fact they are being ripped off because the person is not licensed. We've also got unlicensed guys who don't know anything about roofing. They take people's money and go up there and starting tearing up the roof and don't finish. Then rain gets inside and ruins the house."

That's what happened to Wellington homeowner Norma Zubiate, who lost virtually all of the roof shingles on her 15-year-old, four-bedroom house during Frances and Jeanne.

She said she paid a roofer referred to her by a former Home Depot employee $2,000, about one-fifth of the total tab, to begin work. The man tore up the roof and covered it with white plastic that had holes in it.

"It started raining, and it was literally raining inside my house," said Zubiate, 44, a bank employee who lives in the Berkshire subdivision with her two children. Her ceilings collapsed and her soaked cabinets had to be replaced.

Zubiate ended up using another roofer, spending $6,000 of her own money on inside repairs and using insurance money to pay $10,500 for a new roof. The work was finished by the end of January.

Still, she is one of the lucky ones.

For the past six months, retiree Hana Hudecek has been forced to live in a friend's tiny Fort Lauderdale studio after Jeanne pummeled her two-bedroom condo in Tiara, a 320-unit high-rise on Singer Island. The 30-year-old building sustained so much structural damage that owners still have not been allowed back into their units to collect their belongings.

"It's not easy for a 78-year-old to go through something like this," said Hudecek, who plans to sell the condo when it is finally repaired.

Her problems are shared by homeowners throughout the state.

Ivan blew apart Alan and Vicki Woolford's four-bedroom house in Pensacola, where about 10,000 homes were damaged. Although two-thirds of their neighbors are selling, they want to rebuild. So they pay their mortgage as well as rent on a house they are living in about two miles away. They've postponed demolition of their home because they have yet to settle with their insurance company.

"This whole area is like living in a ghost town," said Woolford, 46, an artist. "I told my wife it's going to take us at least two years to get back to where we were because once we demolish our house, we're going to have to wait to get a builder."

Although contracting without a license is normally a misdemeanor, Gov. Jeb Bush issued an emergency order after the storms making the practice a felony and giving police the option of arresting contractors on the spot.

But unlicensed contractors are only part of the problem. Palm Beach County Senior Investigator Ron Lewis said he thinks the majority of licensed contractors -- facing a shortage of workers, high demand and spiraling worker's compensation costs -- are subcontracting work to unlicensed tradesman or out-of-state companies not licensed in Florida.

That leaves homeowners responsible for medical payments and potentially liable in lawsuits if a worker gets hurt on their property, because homeowner's policies normally don't cover unlicensed tradesman.

"Almost every problem that we're seeing out here begins with the licensed contractor," said Nick Bowman, an investigator for the state workers' compensation agency, whose territory covers Palm Beach to St. Lucie counties. "If you could stop them from hiring all the unlicensed subcontractors, then you could stop all these laborers working under the table with no worker's comp."

But some contractors say they don't have a choice.

"People need roofs, and there just aren't enough workers," said Jimmy Jackson, a licensed contractor in Melbourne who had jobs shut down because he hired an unlicensed subcontractor from Texas. "How am I supposed to know he wasn't licensed? He told me he had a license, and that was good enough for me."

Another problem, although less prevalent, is licensed contractors who hand over jobs to unlicensed colleagues for a cut of the profits. One Palm Beach County contractor admitted doing this in return for 7.5 percent of the total price of each job, inflating the cost to homeowners, investigators said. He paid a $3,500 fine, then wrote a stinging letter to investigators, claiming they had harassed him.

In Brevard County, where as many as 20,000 homes sustained damage, Kelly Pullano, 77, lives in a small FEMA trailer, waiting for someone to repair her home. She had hired a contractor and checked out his company with the state, which reported no complaints. But it turned out the contractor illegally used the firm's name to get jobs, and gave the owner a percentage of the money collected, Brevard investigators said.

In all, officials say, the man signed up 90 people and, in almost every case, didn't do any work.

An area of equal concern, investigators say, is that much of the roofing and construction work across the state is being done by laborers with no experience and little oversight.

In the days after Charley struck, FEMA brought in thousands of workers to clean up debris and tarp homes. Almost all were unskilled laborers hired by a Texas company under contract with the agency. They weren't licensed to do roofing work.

But when FEMA pulled out after the final hurricane, many workers stayed. Some began working off the books for licensed contractors. Others used their FEMA background -- often showing nothing more than a letter or pay stub -- to win work from homeowners who think they were qualified and backed by FEMA, investigators said.

During a sweep in early January, Brevard County Code Inspector Pam Willis found six workers from Texas sitting on a roof of a home in Barefoot Bay, clad in sandals and sneakers instead of work boots more suitable for roofing. They told Willis they were making $10 per hour subbing for a licensed contractor, even though they had never done roofing work until about two weeks earlier.

"These guys aren't roofers, and most of them will be gone in a few months," said Brevard County Licensing Inspector Mary Puckett. "So when roofs start collapsing, who is going to pay the consequences?"

Robin Benedick can be reached at rbenedick@sun-sentinel.com or 954-385-7914. John Holland can be reached at jholland@sun-sentinel.com or 954-385-7909.

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