Eligible Clarke County residents may be able to receive a new grant that FEMA is issuing through their Swift Current initiative. The initiative is designed for flood mitigation assistance for families who have repeatedly suffered a loss due to flooding.
Mississippi has been granted $5 million through the initiative to give out, but there are different requirements that must be met in order for a person to qualify to receive the money.
For those who do qualify for the grant, funding will be granted based on which category the damages are labeled as. While federal funding usually covers about 75% of the costs, FEMA could contribute a higher percentage for properties that are insured under the NFIP at the time of application and meet the initiative’s definition of severe repetitive loss or repetitive loss. For those who meet the definition, FEMA could contribute the following percentages:
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• Severe Repetitive Loss: Up to 100%
• Repetitive Loss: Up to 90%
• Further, as a result of funding made available under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, FEMA may contribute up to 90% federal cost share for a property located within a census tract with a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Social Vulnerability Index (SVI) score of 0.5001 or over.
For those who may want to try and attain the grant money, here are the definitions that FEMA has set for the different levels of loss.
Severe Repetitive Loss would be a structure covered under flood insurance and has had flood-related damage and can fall under one of two categories. One category would have four or more separate NFIP claims payments with the amount of each claim exceeding $5,000 and the cumulative amount of claims payments exceeding $20,000. The other category would be at least two separate NFIP claim payments being made with the cumulative amount of the claims exceeding the market value of the insured structure.
Repetitive Loss would be a structure that has had flood-related damage on two occasions in which the cost of the repair, on average, equaled or exceeded 25% of the market value of the structure at the time of each flood event.
Substantial Damage would be damage of any origin sustained by a structure where the cost of restoring the structure to its before damaged condition is equal or exceeds 50% of the market value of the structure before the damage occurred. The determination applies to a severely damaged home or other structure in a Special Flood Hazard Area, regardless of the cause of damage, where the community participates in the National Flood Insurance Program. To be included in Swift Current, the structure would have to be significantly damaged after August 26, 2021.
The following are projects that can be completed with the use of the grant money for anyone who qualifies:
• Property Acquisition and Structure Demolition/Relocation
• Structure Elevation
• Dry Floodproofing of Historic Residential Structures or Non-Residential Structures
•Non-Structural Retrofitting of Existing Buildings and Facilities
•Mitigation Reconstruction2
• Structural Retrofitting of Existing Buildings
Applications can be found on www.fema.gov. Anyone who has any questions or needs any assistance filling out the application can contact Clarke County EMA Director David Sharp at 601-776-2256.
The deadline to complete applications would be July 1, 2022.
