
Repairs done by contractors of the Tu Hogar Renace program, implemented by the Puerto Rican Department of Housing after Hurricane María for emergency repairs jobs were so deficient that several nonprofit organizations in many cases had to redo the work, investing in that the money that should have gone to help other necessities, and more families. At least a dozen organizations voiced their concerns to the Center for Investigative Journalism (CPI in Spanish) about how they had to invest more money in repairing, mainly, roof sealing work, which in many cases had to be removed and redone. In the Miraflores sector in Orocovis, there were homes in which Tu Hogar Renace contractors “did not install roof anchors” or where they used “rotten wood that had to be changed,” said the Executive Director of nonprofit organization Matria Project, Amárilis Pagán-Jiménez. The residents of those homes could not remember the name of those contractors. “Last year, part of what we had to do was follow-up on some of the repairs of Tu Hogar Renace and do them right,” Pagán-Jiménez said about the organization’s initiative that has succeeded in repairing 20 homes.