FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Jocklynn Keville, PIO
March 19, 2020 Harris County Project Recovery
O: 832-927-8317 C: 832-468-8357
Email: Jocklynn.Keville@csd.hctx.net

Applications for Flood Assistance Ceasing in Response to COVID-19
Community Services Department to Continue Processing Applications Already in the System

HARRIS COUNTY, Texas – In response to County guidance urging residents to avoid gathering
in groups and to maintain social distancing, Harris County Project Recovery will cease
accepting new applications from homeowners seeking flood damage assistance, beginning
Friday, March 20, 2020, until at least July 1, 2020. After that time, the application
process will reopen if there is additional funding available.

Project Recovery staff, many of whom will be working remotely to prevent the spread of
COVID-19, will use phone calls rather than face-to-face visits with homeowners to discuss
information and documents needed to advance their requests to the Texas General Land
Office (GLO) for review and approval.

“Despite this measure, we will continue our focus on providing assistance to homeowners
who have already asked for help,” said Joshua Stuckey, interim director of Harris County
Community Services Department, which administers Project Recovery. “We are ramping up our
effort to connect with those 5,000 county residents who have not heard from us in a while
through what we call Operation Reach Out,” Stuckey said. He added that the goal is to
have 2,000 homeowner funding requests into the approval pipeline within the next 90 days.

To date, Project Recovery has received approximately 8,000 applications for home repair
reimbursement, home reconstruction and home buyout.

After revamping processes and procedures to speed assistance to homeowners, Project
Recovery began reimbursing homeowners who made repairs at their own expense following
Hurricane Harvey. In the last 90 days, $10.9 million in reimbursement requests have been
submitted to the Texas General Land Office (GLO) for approval. To date, reimbursement
checks totaling more than $1 million have been issued to homeowners. Project Recovery
staff will continue working with homeowners and the GLO to get the reimbursement program
completed while ramping up phone calls to applicants for the home repair and
reconstruction program.

The level of documentation required to determine program eligibility has been a
frustration for all involved. Project Recovery’s funding is from an allocation by HUD to
the Texas General Land Office and then to Harris County. Each layer of bureaucracy has
requirements that must be met, resulting in some 53 different sets of documents needed
for homeowners to show program eligibility. Any missing or questionable documents mean
significant delays in approving funding requests.

The GLO and Project Recovery staff have joined forces to accelerate the time it takes to
get funds to homeowners. The GLO has stationed a strike team in the Project Recovery
office to help address questions, review applicant documents and speed the rate that
files are moved through the system to approval. Project Recovery has changed several
program processes to speed the overall delivery of funding requests to the GLO, and most
recently, to minimize the level of face-to-face contact required of homeowners requesting
assistance. Michael Spletto of Tetra Tech Disaster Recovery, whom Stuckey named Chief
Operations Officer for Project Recovery, has streamlined the procurement process,
activated electronic signatures and raised the funding caps on the reconstruction
program, allowing more assistance to eligible homeowners.

Spletto has significant experience with state and federal disaster recovery rules and
regulations, having provided recovery program consultation for more than $20 billion in
HUD Community Development Block Grant - Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) funding over a career
spanning 30 years of HUD CDBG program experience. He was the disaster recovery director
for the State of Louisiana for Hurricane Katrina, and later worked for a consulting firm
as the disaster recovery director for Harris County following Hurricane Ike.

“We will work with each homeowner to ensure their documentation is complete so when we
submit their file, the GLO has everything needed to approve their eligibility and doesn’t
have to come back to us for additional information,” Spletto said.

In addition to contacting homeowners impacted by Hurricane Harvey, Project Recovery is
also reaching out to those whose homes were flooded in 2016.

If you previously completed an application with Harris County for single-family
rehabilitation or reconstruction assistance and want to get a head start on completing
the eligibility documentation, download the forms at
https://harrisrecovery.org/formsflyers/. For general information about the program, visit
www.HarrisRecovery.org.

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