Florida homes get hurricane help

Florida homes get hurricane help
My Safe Florida Home program helps low-income residents prepare homes for hurricane season.
BY P.J. HELLER PLANTATION, Fla. June 2, 2007

My Safe Florida Home
Ross Dobben of New Creation Builders in Miramar, Fla., fits hurricane-rated shutters to windows on a home in Plantation as part of My Safe Florida Home program. Credit: P.J. Heller

Low-income residents in 12 Florida counties are getting a little extra help this hurricane season to protect their homes from storm damage.
Under the state-funded My Safe Florida Home program, a total of 4,000 homes will be getting hurricane-rated storm shutters, stronger exterior doors, sturdier garage doors and improvements to roofs, all free of charge.
"Everybody who lives in the state of Florida should know the importance of having shutters on their windows and just how much more secure you can be," said 22-year-old Vanessa Hernandez, who was watching as her mother's home in Broward County was being outfitted with the window coverings. "I feel more secure for them, too."

Residents in the counties of Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach, Martin, Escambia, Osceola, Glades, Hendry, Pinellas, Polk, Santa Rosa and St. Lucie are participating in the program, which is being coordinated by non-profit agencies in each county.

The mitigation effort was an attempt by the Florida Legislature to alleviate high homeowner insurance costs while allowing residents to strengthen their homes to better withstand hurricane damage, explained Suzanne Yack, a staff member with Volunteer Florida Foundation which oversees the program statewide.

Yack said that strengthening the homes with such things hurricane-rated window shutters and stronger exterior and garage doors would make them less vulnerable to wind damage during a hurricane.

"If we do all that we can prevent the wind from coming in," said Yack, who also serves as director of Neighbors to the Rescue and the Florida Faith-Based and Community-Based Advisory Council. "Once the wind comes in the roof tends to come off."

She said the program would also help maintain the limited amount of affordable housing available in many areas. The program does not include mobile or manufactured homes, apartments, condominiums or businesses.
"It's really critical that we save as much of our affordable housing inventory as we possibly can," Yack said. "We lost so much with Hurricane Wilma all across southern Florida. The housing has been absolutely destroyed and nobody is building affordable housing. So what we have left we've got to protect."

Dale Hirsch, executive director of Volunteer Broward, one of two non-profit agencies running the program in Broward County, said the program's $20 million total price tag for the 12 counties is a small amount to pay compared to the monetary damages a hurricane might cause.

"The building process is so expensive, the cost of fixing something is so expensive, it's cheaper to mitigate it," Hirsch said. A few weeks before the start of the 2007 Atlantic hurricane season, only about 100 homes had been strengthened with another 400 or so undergoing fortifications, according to the My Safe Florida Home Web site. Yack admitted that many of the homes enrolled so far in the program would not be ready for much of the 2007 Atlantic hurricane season, which officially began Friday. It ends Nov. 30.

"We have several hundred [homes] done but in terms of hitting the 4,000 number, there's just no way we can," she said. "We just really hope and pray that we can get enough up before anything hits."

With 12 counties to deal with and no idea where, when, or if, a hurricane will strike, Yack said it made little sense to concentrate efforts on a specific area.

"You can really pour all your coals into certain areas and then the storm hits somewhere else," she said. "You don't know where it's going to hit."
The majority of homes being strengthened are in the south Florida counties of Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach and Martin, Yack said.
The program began earlier this year. The non-profit agencies responsible for the programs publicized the project, then took applications from residents. In Broward County, 150 homeowners are scheduled to have work done this year; other Broward residents were on a waiting list.
"We had lines out the door," said Sandy Lloyd, disaster specialist with Volunteer Broward. "There's way more than 150 we could really help. Way more."

The Liberia Economic and Social Development, also working in Broward County, was also at capacity, as was Habitat for Humanity of Greater Miami.

Once a homeowner has been selected, the Volunteer Florida Foundation sends a certified inspector to the home to conduct a free inspection. The agencies in each county then work with the homeowner to schedule the work, arrange for necessary building permits and hire contractors. Two contractors have been hired in Broward County.

The local groups are asked to find matching funds as well as consider the use of volunteers to assist the contractors in order to leverage the project, Yack said. She said volunteers from faith-based groups, such as Mennonite Disaster Service which have construction experience, were especially welcome, as were people who can help find discounts on shutters, doors and roof bracing materials. "Right now, we have about 20 volunteers waiting for us to tell them what homes to go to," Lloyd said.
"It's not just about getting the funds," Hirsch added. "It's about layering the project with volunteers. Some actually have some construction background, although probably not a lot. But the ones that don't can still do a great deal of work that doesn't require hammering and nails."
Each project is limited to a maximum of $2,500, eliminating the need for competitive bidding, Yack said. Homeowners can pay extra to upgrade the industrial-style hurricane shutters or have additional work done that may not be covered under the program, she said.

Yack said that the non-profit agencies were quickly learning about construction. "They didn't come up through the trades," she said. "They didn't start as experts in shutters. They will end this project as experts in shutters, I promise you that. All of these people who are working on these projects are going to be incredibly valuable."

The low-income home strengthening project is just one part of the My Safe Florida Home program. Another much larger part, with a $250 million budget, involves matching grants of up to $5,000 to homeowners for upgrades. At the start of 2007, the My Safe Florida Home program had received more than 65,000 applications for wind inspections, officials said.
Yack said she expected the low-income program to continue for another year or two, with funding expected to double and the project expanded into other vulnerable counties.

"More money is going to be transferred into the low-income portion of the program because the need is so great," she said, adding, "And because we're doing a good job." Exactly how much of a difference the project will make is an unknown. One way of determining that might be to measure the damage after a storm to homes that were strengthened versus ones that were not, Yack said. "There's no guarantee," she said. "You never know which way the winds are going to come from. It's as strong as it gets for the amount of money."

Related Links:
• My Safe Florida Home program
• Volunteer Broward
• Volunteer Florida Foundation
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