At Lisa Abraham’s home in North Fort Myers, some of the damage caused by Hurricane Irma has yet to be fixed.
It gets worse with each new hurricane.
It’s been like this for almost 8 years.
“I mean, what can you do? I just feel restless and bored and angry,” Abraham told Gulf Coast News. “My life is nothing, you know. It's reduced to nothing.”
Abraham didn’t have insurance when the storm hit. In 2020, a few years after that, she found out she qualified for Rebuild Florida , a state-run, taxpayer-funded program designed to help hurricane victims who’ve exhausted all other options.
Abraham said she requested repairs three times, but three years passed and nothing happened.
“Something's wrong. Shouldn't be like this,” she said. “The delay is the real problem.”
Eventually, she said she was told her home would need to be replaced altogether.
In November of last year, a moving truck came to put her belongings into storage, and she was relocated to a hotel.
But she didn’t feel safe there, so she moved back into her now-empty home and has been waiting ever since for it to be replaced.
She’s slept on a couch for nearly six months.
“At this age, nobody has the book on when, how long you're going to live. So, I feel kind of, like, angry that this is how I'm living,” Abraham said. “These might be my last years, nobody knows that. Why do I have to live like this?”
Rebuild Florida is run by FloridaCommerce , but is funded through federal disaster grants from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which allocated more than $536 million to the Irma program.
A spokesperson for FloridaCommerce told Gulf Coast News the program has completed more than 3,800 homes with that funding.
But not every project that has been finished is a feel-good story.
“I think the concept is great,” Mary Lundberg said. “I wanted so much just to be like, this was such a wonderful thing.”
But that isn't how she actually feels.
Lundberg lives in Golden Gate Estates. Gulf Coast News first spoke with her in 2022, when she was waiting for her Irma-damaged home to be replaced by Rebuild Florida.
Last year, that finally happened. But as Lundberg detailed, she's had problems ever since moving in – especially with her water.
“When I smell it, the smell makes me think the dogs have made a mess in the house,” she explained. “But it's my water."
The contractors who worked on her home replaced the well, but she was told she’s not eligible for a new filtration system.
Lundberg said she’s also had issues with her septic system, her electric and her fence outside, among other things.
“I think any new build, obviously, you're going to have some issues. But these are major issues, and they're telling me they're not going to fix things,” she said.
HUD’s Office of the Inspector General – a federal government watchdog, of sorts – has audited Florida’s program two times in recent years.
It first found that the state needs to “strengthen its capacity to administer its disaster grants,” and then found that Florida ran its program “effectively, but not always in a cost-efficient or prudent manner.”
A third audit is underway right now.
“I just never imagined I would be here, just so stressed out, still trying to do stuff,” Lundberg said. “It's not at all what I wanted. And not at all where I thought I'd be.”
A spokesperson for FloridaCommerce did not answer specific questions emailed by Gulf Coast News or say how many homes in the Irma program have yet to be finished.
“While we are not able to discuss the details of Ms. Lundberg or Ms. Abraham’s case, please be assured that the FloridaCommerce team has been in regular contact with these individuals,” the spokesperson wrote in part in an email.
While the pair is grateful there’s a program to help people like them, they never imagined there'd be so many issues and so many delays.
“I think some people feel like they can't speak up because they should be happy with what they're given. But if you're given something that's costing you more money, costing you health issues, all kinds of issues, that's not really free, is it?” Lundberg said.
“It's frustrating,” Abraham said. “Not having a future or something to look forward to, just kind of existing from day to day is, it's trying."
Rebuild Florida is also working on a program for Hurricane Ian victims. FloridaCommerce has completed more than 150 homes so far. It's unclear how many more homeowners are still waiting.
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