As FEMA surveys flood-damaged homes, here’s how Floridians may get financial aid

For homeowners who don’t already have a separate flood insurance coverage policy, their best chance at getting help would be from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, according to local insurance companies.

“Typically, they won’t have much recourse other than FEMA to get some sort of resources from the catastrophe,” said Ryan Pappy, president of the Keyes Company Insurance. “Most homeowners’ insurance policies exclude flood as the cause. So most of those people aren’t going to be finding any help from their insurance company. It would come from FEMA as a natural disaster.”

FEMA was in Broward County on Wednesday, assessing the overall damage to the community, how many homes have been destroyed, how many of those homes have major damage, and any other seriously unmet needs in the community, according to John Mills, spokesperson for FEMA.

“Technically there is not a threshold or minimum number of homes to be affected for the state to chose to request a major disaster declaration from FEMA,” he said.

Should the state decide to request such a declaration based on the information gathered by FEMA, money would more than likely be provided to homeowners for losses and serious needs in the form of a direct deposit.

“The three examples are money for basic home repairs, to make the home habitable, money for temporary rental assistance if someone needs to relocate and money for other needs such as replacing personal property that was destroyed,” he added.

As of now, there is no definite timeline on when or if a declaration might be requested and when funds would be available.

Last week, a major storm dumped over 26 inches of rain in Fort Lauderdale and other parts of Broward County, flooding roads and stranding drivers, and causing significant damage to homes, leaving many residents trapped in their residences.

Police and firefighters made hundreds of rescues in the days after the storm. As of Tuesday afternoon, the city had checked more than 820 damaged homes. More than 600 had major damage and more than 220 had minor damage, according to a fire official.

Many homes in neighborhoods such as Edgewood, Shady Banks and Riverland were not in flood zones, and therefore didn’t require flood insurance.

It’s not uncommon for those not living in a flood zone to forgo getting flood insurance, as it’s often not required by the mortgage lender if they aren’t in a flood zone. Flood insurance agents put the number of people who don’t live in a flood zone, but who have flood insurance between 10% and 20%.

“Most people are having affordability issues when it comes to paying insurance as a whole. What they need to do is to assess the risk and know that the one-in-1,000-year storm does happen. There is no such thing as not being in a flood zone,” Pappy said.

Already, some homeowners are reaching out to see if they can get flood insurance after seeing the damage from the storm.

“We probably sold this week 10 times the normal amount of flood insurance that we usually do in areas where they aren’t mandated to have it,” said Kandie Landers, owner of the Landers Agency at Brightway Insurance in Fort Lauderdale. “Unfortunately, the awareness came from the storm last week.”

There could be ripple effects in the housing market as homeowners struggle to recover from the damage.

“The sellers might not be able to afford to fix the home and will be forced to sell,” Whitney Dutton with the Dutton Group in downtown Fort Lauderdale noted. “The flood also must be disclosed, making the home potentially less desirable to buyers, affecting the sales price.”

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