FEMA money is a fickle thing.
You can only qualify for repair/replacement if it's your primary residence.
If you're insured, you don't get none.
If you're a dead beat renter, they shovel it to you so you can become a dead beat home owner.
If you're already a dead beat home owner and have zero insurance on your primary swamp located home, FEMA brings you crisp hard cash by the truckload typically within 3 to 5 days after the related storm.
Don't ask me why I know this.
I've seen single wide 12x70 mobile homes magically turn into 3500sf sprawling waterfront estates after FEMA gets done fixin' them up.
They need to start naming hurricanes more appropriately.
Names such as Bingo, Jackpot or Yahoo would be more fitting.
Our doublewide was destroyed by flooding in June 2006. We did not have flood insurance as we didn't live in a floodplain. Our property hadn't been flooded in the last 100 years. We still owed 11K on it so still had to make the monthly payments to the bank or default on the loan, even though we could no longer live in it. It took until November 2006 {five months} before FEMA finally paid off the loan for us so we could start looking for a new place. Meanwhile we stayed with my inlaws {what a blast}. Paying off the loan on our destroyed home so we could start over with a new loan on a new place was all FEMA did in our case. We ultimately went from living in a doublewide that would have been paid off in two more years to a singlewide that took 12 more years to pay off. 90% of our belongings were destroyed. FEMA inspectors estimated our total loss, including furniture, appliances, TV, stereo, etc. etc. at 184k. Many things were destroyed that just can't be replaced. Perhaps the worst being all the family photos from when my kids were little. Yeah, we made out like bandits and it was grand. I highly recommend the experience for everyone.
