Weeks After Hurricane Ian, Hundreds of Floridians Remain in Shelters – Here’s What’s Needed to Help Them. {News Update}
“We’re having a hard time finding shelter-n-shelter for families because of this storm,” says Jessica Guttman, the president of Family Promise, a non-profit in Miami-Dade County that provides homes for families with children that were displaced by Hurricane Florence and Hurricane Michael. The nonprofit is trying to figure out what their needs are.
The hurricane just happened to hit during Super Bowl weekend, when tens of millions of American football fans are making plans, whether for a day at the games, a long weekend binge in a hotel or a cruise.
Families who lived here before the storm or come from areas hit hard by hurricanes are having a similar experience.
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One of those people is Tanya Jones, the mother of three young children that was displaced by Hurricane Michael. She and her husband were fleeing the Carolinas for their Tennessee home after the storm’s landfall as well as being displaced after Hurricane Andrew hit in 1996.
Tanya has her own stories.
She survived the storm that hit her community, when she and her husband were in their second month of pregnancy.
She says she doesn’t know what to tell people who are struggling or are displaced. But she wants to help.
She and her husband got a $100,000 government grant to rebuild her home – which was completely destroyed by Michael – and have taken out a mortgage on it.
She says the money has been a great help to them and they have saved money that they’d have spent on rent and things like that, and they have been able to make their mortgage payments.
“I feel like if I was back in Virginia, I would have had to live in a hotel or in a shelter,” she said. “I was just thankful that I was safe, we had some things in our house that we wanted to salvage, some nice pieces. We also just wanted to make sure that the pieces that we did not have that were important to us that we had a place to go to get it.
“I’m happy it didn�