Federal aid for 2015 flood not expected until 2017

Local residents impacted by the devastating flood that washed across Horry County in October won’t see any federal funding until next year to make repairs to their homes.

The federal government is not expected to release $156 million to South Carolina until mid September. Meanwhile, the S.C. Disaster Recovery Team is looking for a contractor that will determine which homeowners qualify for funding, and to oversee volunteer organizations and construction outfits to complete the work.

The contractor is expected to be selected in October, then schedule days in the affected counties when homeowners can apply for the assistance in November or December, said Beth Parks, spokeswoman for the S.C. Disaster Recovery Office.

Parks said she understands that some homeowners are frustrated because the promised dollars have not been delivered.

“People have lost faith, we understand that,” Parks said. “But, it takes a long time to get federal disaster money from the federal government. It took us a year, and we were moving fast.”

Nearly $60 million will eventually go directly to the City of Columbia, Richland County and Lexington County for those local governments to manage and distribute directly.

The money to be split among Horry County and six other counties — more than $96 million — will be managed by state officials and go through the contractor process.

The financial needs locally could total $7 million, but Grand Strand residents will have to compete with homeowners from other counties for the federal dollars.

“I think it will be slow going before that money comes,” said Courtney Kain, Horry County Community Development Block Grants coordinator.

“We have people continuously coming into the office looking for assistance so people are still are in their homes, with the mold, in those conditions,” Kain said.

Horry County officials originally asked to act as the contractor and distribute the money locally to get assistance quicker to those in need — like Columbia, Richland and Lexington County are doing — but their request was denied in July by the state disaster recovery team.

“We are already staffed, we already know what to do as far as housing rehabilitation, we have inspectors, we have the in-house capability to do it,” said Justin Powell, assistant administrator for Horry County.

Despite the county’s in-house capability, state officials rejected the request citing concerns that it would increase costs for the county to duplicate the structure the state plans to create in order to distribute the funding.

The state also said that giving the money directly to the county to begin work could delay the approval process time.

“Introducing another layer of program administration could create impediments to the state’s primary objective to ensure assistance is prioritized toward the most disadvantaged populations,” said the rejection letter signed by Jeffrey Sanderson, program manager of the disaster recovery team.

At this point, county officials say they can only watch to see how those funds will be administered once the federal government cuts a check to the state, to make sure that residents who have already asked for help have access to the funding.

County officials have not been informed as to how the distribution and renovation process will eventually work, but say they expect guidance from the state later this fall.

“We will wait and see how the state proceeds, and then we will see how we will be able to work within the process,” Powell said.

This story was originally published August 30, 2016 at 7:51 PM with the headline "Federal aid for 2015 flood not expected until 2017."