ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. – Nearly three years after Hurricane Ian tore through Central Florida, a program for low-income homeowners seeking recovery is now available.
The Orange County Recovers Program started taking applications Wednesday and are for homeowners who were impacted by the Category Four storm in September 2022 and still have repairs needed for their homes.
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For qualified homeowners, they can receive funding to pay for a contractor to rebuild, repair or replace their home, Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings said. This program will not reimburse homeowners for repairs already made.
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“For individuals who are looking to repair their homes. They can get up to $250,000. If it requires a complete rebuild of existing home, they can get up to $375,000. If they lived in mobile homes or manufactured types of homes, they would be eligible for up to $200,000,” Demings said.
Meanwhile, there is not a deadline to apply, as it will be accepting qualified residents until its $35 million in funding runs out, Orange County Housing and Community Development Manager Mitchell Glasser said.
“This program is targeted to income qualified residents who may not have been able to afford the needed repairs to their homes since the storm. For that reason, we want to make Orange County recovery process extremely accessible so that we can get the work completed as quickly as possible,” Glasser said.
For those who are interested in applying — it is done on the program’s website or can be done in person at the Holden Heights Community Center at 1201 20th St. in Orlando.
According to the program’s website, certain qualifications will be needed to receive funding such as:
- You must have owned the home when Hurricane Ian made landfall
- You must currently own the damaged home
- The damaged home is located within Orange County
Meanwhile, Glasser said the process of applying and getting federal funding from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development was lengthy and time-consuming — which is why the program was not already available for homeowners. He said in spring 2023, HUD announced that Orange County would be getting allocation on the funds, but it took roughly eight months for the nearly $220 million grant agreement to be finalized. However, he said if there is another disaster it should be quicker to receive recovery since the county is more familiar with the bureaucratic process.
“But what is unique about disaster recovery, if you’ve not done the program before, there is a lot of requirements to put in place for a disaster recovery strategy and activities such as this. So, all of the documents that we had to prepare was for the first time for us, and so it takes time to do that. Now, once we have everything in place with, which we have, if we get hit with a storm like Milton, we have had received an allocation for that hurricane as well. But because we have now all the policies and procedures and all the financial requirements in place, it will take much less time to actually put that money out on the street,” Glasser said.
For more information on Orange County Recovers Program click here.