Emergency Grant to Employ 5,000 for Sandy Cleanup

Governor Andrew Cuomo announced that the state has secured a $27 million federal grant that will help put more than 5,000 unemployed New Yorkers to work helping clean-up communities still recovering from Hurricane Sandy.

The funding, provided by a national emergency grant, will be provided to communities hit hard by the storm so they can quickly hire young people and the unemployed to help with clean-up efforts in affected counties. The State Department of Labor, which is administering the funds, will work with communities to identify cleanup areas and deploy workers to job sites.

In addition, the governor announced that the state has partnered with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to launch a local hire program to replace FEMA employees, often from out of state, with New Yorkers. The goal is to hire upwards of 700 New Yorkers.