BATON ROUGE, La. (KLFY) — Money is almost on the way for survivors of hurricanes Laura and Delta. The Restore Louisiana survey has been posted and officials are asking those affected by the storms to fill it out, because that’s the first step in getting financial relief.
“We have to recover from these disasters but we have to recover in A way that we are less impacted in the future when we get hit again. We want to make sure that we build houses back that are stronger,” says Pat Forbes with the Louisiana Office of Community Development.
The US Department of Housing and Development, known as HUD allocated $600 million dedicated to recovery efforts for Hurricanes Laura and Delta. The first step for homeowners is filling out a survey at restore.la.gov
”Let us know that you are a homeowner and that you lived in your house and that you need money to help finish fixing it up,” says Forbes.
Although this money is not yet available in Louisiana, the program is launching the survey to better understand the needs of impacted homeowners. Forbes explains they hope to have funds available in late spring to start being able to help rebuild peoples homes.
For some residents they’ve been living in a state of limbo since 2020. People want to move back home but their houses aren’t ready, some can’t afford repairs, and affordable rentals are hard to find. He says most survivors are frustrated money has it come yet.
Forbes says, “It’s partly because of the way this funding flows. Congress has to appropriate funds specifically for long-term disaster recovery and they didn’t do that until this past fall for Hurricanes Laura and Delta. That’s why it’s so important for us to get the program going quickly now that the process has started. They publish the rules. We still don’t have the money available to us, there are still some federal hoops for us to jump through. But we are going through that process right now and we will do our part as quickly as possible.”
Again money is not available just yet. But the survey is online and that is the first step in recovery.