The county has about $90 million to help residents who cannot afford to make repairs to homes damaged by Hurricane Ike.
It also has a list of about 1,700 people who likely would be eligible for help.
Still, it could be another eight months before the first nail would be hammered or the first contractors hired with the federal grants.
County commissioners have yet to hire the company that will manage the housing assistance program and likely won’t have that contractor in place until October, County Judge Jim Yarbrough said Wednesday.
Emergency Management Coordinator John Simsen told county commissioners that the county’s application to the state, which outlines how it plans to manage the housing program, was just sent to Austin. The $90 million is part of $160 million in federal community development block grants the county received after Ike. The money was allocated to fix critical infrastructure in communities and to provide housing repair and reconstruction assistance for those unable to afford the work.
Last month, the county divvied up $60 million for infrastructure among the cities in the county.
The county’s funds are to be used in all communities and cities in the county except Galveston, which received $200 million of its own.
“My worries are the expectations people will have,” Yarbrough said. “We don’t want people coming down here saying, ‘Here it is a year after the storm, and where’s the money to fix my house?”
Officials blamed delays on a combination of the county having to manage such a large grant program for the first time and the layers of bureaucracy involved.
“There will be a lot of red tape,” Simsen said. “My hope is we can hit the ground running.”
Companies bidding for the contract to manage the housing program for the county will have to have certified contractors to do the repair work, county officials said.
The management firm will be required to have offices throughout the county to take homeowners’ applications. Up to 15 percent of the funds can be spent on administration costs.
Yarbrough said he is concerned about how the case managers, who will take applications from homeowners and determine eligibility, will be managed.
Galveston County Restore and Rebuild, a conglomerate of Galveston County social service and charity groups, has been lobbying to manage much of that process.
The state, meanwhile, prefers to stick with Lutheran Social Services, which managed a lot of the casework for the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s intake process. A decision on which organization will manage the housing program for the county should come in late August, Yarbrough said.
