Friends house near louetta and 249 had 2 feet of water and he did not have flood insurance since he was outside the 100 year. He said FEMA only offers loans with interest so he's going to drain his savings to repair his house instead. Is there no other financial aid programs?

I've heard of places offering low interest loans and some even offering small, no-interest loans. There have to be options out there other than going into his savings.

He can get up to 30k from FEMA that isn't a loan I believe.

Anyone have any links on that? I don't see anything about it on Fema or disaster relief

Does he have savings in a retirement plan? I believe the IRS is allowing Harvey victims to make penalty-free withdrawals of some sort or another.

There are other threads, read up,on it. Thy need to register online now with fema, my Mom got $1900 in relocation money within couple days of registering

Not unless he is really poor. Based on need

yes, grants are need based.
SBA does home disaster loans at low interest, he should apply there.
If there is some damage from wind or other causes there could be a homeowners claim.
Uninsured losses are tax deductible and you can pick which year. He could get a refund of last years paid taxes. check with a CPA I dont do tax advice.

He needs to get a claim denial letter from his insurance. Then file a claim with FEMA. Then the SBA can offer very low interest loans. These loans are not from FEMA but you have to file with FEMA first. I would not drain my savings. The money is almost free at 1-2% interest.

Living in Houston most of my life, I didn't think twice about purchasing flood insurance for $450/year when we bought here in Spring in 2013. We're outside of the 500 year, and haven't flooded, but it's definitely worth the peace of mind.

USAA gives 0% for $20k on their credit cards if you have one during disasters. I used it durinf Ike and again now for Harvey.

SBA Disaster relief (through FEMA) loan is @ 1.825%

Refile your taxes to include losses.

FEMA has already approved $500 for immediate needs and $1900+ for living arrangements until home is livable. Max FEMA grant is $34,000 (not likely anyone will get max)

I'm looking at the SBA loan as a great remodel loan. You can make it work. 401k was my last resort but it isn't looking like I'll need it.

You are right, technically you can receive up to 33k from FEMA. Few individuals will get money from FEMA to rebuild and even fewer will get anywhere near the max amount. I would venture to guess most people posting on texags will not be eligible for "free" money from FEMA. They will in most cases be able to get a low interest sba loan and possibly temporary housing assistance.

None of that money is going to FEMA I hope.

Red Cross will dole out money as it sees fit, probably less than 50% of money raised during HARVEY efforts will go towards Harvey victims.

JJ Watt is who I would trust the most.

I can only tell you about what I've seen in the past and what my family has experienced. They are asking for 8 billion from congress for disaster assistance. Where does that go? I really don't know. All the donated money goes to so many different charities and that will turn into a cluster**** as well.

Assuming the big shelters (are there three or four along the gulf?) need $50,000/day to operate, a whole year only costs $73MM!

Someone please help me understand where the rest of this money goes if it's not dumped onto every affected homeowner at $10,000/ea. (w/ homestead exempt and with gross income under $200K/year)

74OA said:

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Towns03 said:

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Assuming the big shelters (are there three or four along the gulf?) need $50,000/day to operate, a whole year only costs $73MM!

Someone please help me understand where the rest of this money goes if it's not dumped onto every affected homeowner at $10,000/ea. (w/ homestead exempt and with gross income under $200K/year)

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In addition to all the private and public flood damage done in greater Houston, whole towns to its west have been gutted and need reconstruction of all their basic utilites, schools, hospitals, public buildings, transportation infrastructure, etc; roadways are badly eroded all over south Texas; hundreds of bridges large and small are also damaged; thousands of small business have been ruined; several hundred thousand homes are damaged or destroyed; many major and minor ports, harbors and airfields have been damaged; there's rampant pollution, erosion and crop loss everywhere floodwaters flowed; tens of thousands of vehicles destroyed; etc, etc, etc.........

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Yep, I was reading up on this yesterday. After Katrina, Mississippi got $3 billion alone just in grants for the 31k homes that were not in flood zones but had flooding (about $97k per household). NFIP paid out $2.4 billion to about 17k people who did have flood insurance ($141,700 per claim) in MS. They received another $1.5 billion just for debris removal. Louisiana got over $5 billion just for individual assistance grants for something like 900k people. Then there is all the money for repairing roads and schools and water/wastewater plants, other utilities...the list goes on and on. I'll see if I can find the reports I was reading and post the links later.

By the numbers...

LA got $19.6 billion from FEMA after Katrina and Rita

https://www.fema.gov/news-release/2013/08/28/louisiana-recovery-eight-years-after-hurricanes-katrina-and-rita

MS got $22 billion in total from the federal gov't (not sure the final number on FEMA funds, but at least $9.6 billion)

http://www.osa.state.ms.us/documents/performance/katrina-funding-recovery.pdf

https://archives.hud.gov/news/2006/pr06-036ms.pdf

The above reports tell you where the money goes.

You can go on to the General Land Office's Coastal Resiliency program to see how the Ike money was distributed and progress of how the money was / is spent. Houston-Galveston Are Council also has multiple reports on the distribution of funds and the defined methodology for such distribution.

Having run a small business working the the housing programs for the past 8 year, the HUD/CDBG funding goes something like this. Money is appropriated at Congress. The bill this week was both FEMA and HUD/CDBG. Ignore FEMA for the moment as that is shetlers, handouts, debris removal, paying their own people, sheleter in place, etc.

The HUD/CDBG money, roughly half of what was passed this week in the Harvey bill, goes in to HUD and then to the State of Texas. State must then provide a plan for distribution approved by HUD. The plan will likely be 60-70% infrastructure in this first round if not more. Its housing and URBAN development, the latter being your roads, freeways, public services, water, sewer, schools, etc.

From there, the housing dollars will then be divided up among the local areas. Some will opt to manage their own programs, some will manage at the COG level, others will defer to the State.

Then those longer term dollars will be prioritized to the hardest hit, but lowest income areas.

Ignore reports from MS and LA. Texas has not and does not follow the paths those states took. In fact, our good folks at the State of Texas learned mightily from those failures and actually rebuilt, rehabilitated homes post_ike instead of buying Harrahs gaming cards and bass boats.

flown-the-coop said:

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Ignore reports from MS and LA. Texas has not and does not follow the paths those states took. In fact, our good folks at the State of Texas learned mightily from those failures and actually rebuilt, rehabilitated homes post_ike instead of buying Harrahs gaming cards and bass boats.

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How can one conclude that giving $3 billion in grants to 31k homeowners to rebuild their flooded homes (that weren't in zones that required flood insurance) was a failure? I will concede that there have been quite a few structures along the MS Gulf Coast that have not been rebuilt, but that's because they were reduced to nothing more than slabs by a 30+ ft storm surge and building codes were revised to the extent that rebuilding was nearly impossible from a cost standpoint. Having grown up on the MS Gulf Coast, I would agree that there are certain areas where structures should not be rebuilt.

Another $2 billion was given to the area to rebuild public infrastructure. Another $1.5 billion was spent on debris removal. Another $2.5 billion was paid out in flood insurance claims. $9.6 billion in FEMA funds goes fast when you have 230,000 damaged or destroyed homes and two federal highways with major bridges are completely destroyed.

I haven't been able to find any numbers on how much federal assistance the casino industry in MS received in funds. And having watched it take over my hometown, I am certainly no fan. But it was the third largest casino market (behind Las Vegas and Atlantic City), generated $1.23 billion in revenue before the storm, and provided 17,000 casino and hospitality jobs (that number is only about 9200 today). It's arguable that the whole reason the area has built back to the extent that it has is because of the gambling/tourism industry.

What's interesting to me is the diversity of funding sources that make up the total of $22 billion in federal aid sent to MS. Only $9.6 billion came from FEMA. The rest came from HUD, USDOJ, USDHHS, USDOL, and direct congressional appropriations to state agencies like k-12 education, the Institutions of Higher Learning, the Corps of Engineers, etc.

LA was a little different, and from what I understand, the state required that anyone who accepted a FEMA grant must live in the property for some set period of time (something like 2 or 3 years, IIRC) or they would have to repay the money. Consequently, lots of homeowners just walked away. You can see many of those abandoned properties when you drive along I-10.

From what I can tell you if you make too much money you won't get squat.

that's the only constant in any govt program.

GasAg90 said:

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From what I can tell you if you make too much money you won't get squat.

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The question is what do they consider "too much money"

surgeag said:

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GasAg90 said:

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From what I can tell you if you make too much money you won't get squat.

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The question is what do they consider "too much money"

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If you have to ask, you make too much.

Jethro95 said:

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surgeag said:

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GasAg90 said:

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From what I can tell you if you make too much money you won't get squat.

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The question is what do they consider "too much money"

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If you have to ask, you make too much.

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Sigh.. That's what I'm afraid of.