Cape Coral homeowner says Elevate Florida program falls short

CAPE CORAL, Fla. (WINK)—A Cape Coral homeowner says he's one of the first in the city to be accepted into the highly sought-after Elevate Florida assistance program, but what he thought he signed up for may be different from the reality.

More than 12,000 Florida homeowners applied to the program, with nearly 2,000 of those applications in Lee County. Some homeowners have waited more than a year for a decision.

Thomas Safar's home still shows the damage from Hurricane Ian nearly four years after the storm. He thought the program would help bring back some of the original amenities he once had, like storage rooms and a garage, but he says the program will literally just elevate the home on stilts for almost three times the price of hiring a private contractor.

"Elevate Florida covers 75%. I'm responsible for 25%," Safar said. "So if they stay at the $500,000 number, I'm responsible for $125,000 for something that I don't really want."

Like many Southwest Florida homeowners, Safar remembers all too well the day he came home after Hurricane Ian made landfall.

"There was a couple trees in the front yard that came down," Safar said. "Came inside, everything was floating at some point and moving around, and we had about two feet of water in the home. The back slider over there popped off its track. The back line I had stuff was all over the yard, and debris from everywhere else was just covering the property."

Four years later, his home is still unlivable.

Like thousands of homeowners, Safar applied for the Elevate Florida program in 2025. When he got the acceptance after waiting more than a year, he thought he finally caught a break.

"I thought we were gonna be able to start construction," Safar said. "We have a set of plans drawn up that we worked with the floodplain manager here in Cape Coral to meet the needs of all the new flood regulations."

Safar said that throughout the process, he learned the "reconstruction and elevation" phase will really consist of the program just elevating his home. It won't bring back any lanai, garage or covered outdoor space.

"They say it's structurally sound to lift, and in their guidelines, they say as soon as it hits that mark, then it switches from reconstruction to elevation," Safar said. "Then I spoke to my caseworker and started getting some numbers, and it is three times what the original lift price was."

Now, with hundreds of thousands of dollars spent and hurricane season upon us, time is ticking for Safar to make a decision.

"They want $500,000 to just put it up on piles and not complete the inside," Safar said. "So in my eyes, it's a waste of money. And then if I want to go back later to make some of this space below the house that they created usable, it's gonna cost me even more money, probably another couple hundred thousand, which I don't have."

Safar said he'll continue evaluating his options as he weighs the cost against the benefits of participating in the program.