Applying for FEMA assistance: what is total household annual income?

Why?

In order to apply for FEMA assistance, you have to be in a declared disaster area. The only recently declared disaster area in the country right now is the South Carolina floods.

Total household income is the total income earned by you and your spouse before taxes.

frick Fema brah, don't do it.

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i know that. I live in Columbia

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You should have said that. Being an LSU fan, people will assume you live in Louisiana.

The number of people ITT that thought I just woke up this morning and decided to apply for FEMA assistance on a whim is pretty amazing. Especially since we just played South Carolina. smh.

Full disclosure - it isn't for me personally but a neighbor that was flooded out.

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frick Fema brah, don't do it.

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While I agree I also think everyone else will be doing it so why not? Plus, you don't know what this dude may have lost and where he and his family are financially.

One time assistance like FEMA is the way welfare in this country should work instead of it being made into a lifestyle but even disaster relief gets abused.

I had a buddy that worked in a speaker and car shop during Rita and he worked on commission. Dude was rolling in it after the FEMA checks for Rita and Katrina started coming in. So many stereo systems and rims sold it was ridiculous.

Do they still just give out $2K with no idea how people spend it or is it a bit more controlled?

I know at one point FEMA was asking for receipts or else you would have to pay it all back but that would have been like trying to squeeze blood from a turnip. Asking tons of people already on lifetime welfare to pay you back some welfare?

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Gaston

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Apply to FEMA, not sure we did that...was that the first $2k check? I remember going to building to fill shite out but I don't remember. The SBA process is more solid in my mind.

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The first $2K check for almost everyone in Louisiana who applied was for something referred to as DUA, or Disaster Unemployment Assistance. You may have thought that came from FEMA, but it was actually 11 weeks of Unemployment Assistance at about $228/month (with or without state income taxes withheld at 10% depending on what you checked on the application) that were autopaid up front if you filled them out after displacement or upon arriving at an assistance center somewhere from your home post-disaster.

Now, FEMA did pay the State of Louisiana back, but DUA money was paid by the Louisiana Department of Labor (which is now the Louisiana Workforce Commission).

The messed up part-of one of a million messed up puzzle pieces post-Katrina-was that Louisiana paid to make sure people had money wherever they were and they weren't out on the streets destitute, stranded in Houston, Atlanta, etc. But in an act that can only be described as altruistic, a large number of New Orleans/Orleans Parish proper employers continued to make payroll even though folks weren't at work and they were shuttered for the time being.

So you had the State paying Unemployment while Employers were still making payroll...and with the State auto-paying 11 straight weeks before people even filed for it based on the understanding that FedGov would pay them back, it created a massive problem on the back end.

You see those employers reported the income they paid to their employees on their quarterly taxes. So when it came time for the State to get paid back, the FedGov-in their infinite wisdom-required the State to hold all of these folks who were auto-paid 11 weeks up front for Unemployment as overpaid for Unemployment due to them also receiving payroll.

They required many of these folks to file appeals to get their overpayments overturned.

The only other options was for the Unemployment Insurance Trust Fund not to be paid back, and go broke...therefore reducing benefits and increasing taxes for both employees who were eligible and had no issues resulting from Katrina moving forward, as well as from the Employers who had truly done nothing wrong.

Like I said...just one of a million problems showing how ill-prepared every station of life-public sector, private sector and local/state/federal government-was for a disaster of that magnitude.

If it ever happens again, the response will be a billion times better...but man what a clusterf$ck that was...