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Working on safe home program

By IVAN PENN
Published March 10, 2007

When she took over the Department of Financial Services in January, Alex Sink inherited a $250-million program, called My Safe Florida Home, that already had mounted criticism for its slow pace.

To strengthen dwellings against hurricanes, My Safe Florida Home offers free home inspections and matching grants up to $5,000 for qualified homeowners.

The program's pilot phase ended in February with about 14,000 people receiving free home inspections. But the effort, launched by the state Legislature last May, has not issued any checks to homeowners for improvements and repairs. The program ran into some snags when a contract with the Federal Alliance for Safe Homes was determined to have escalated improperly from $457,000 to almost $3-million.

What is your assessment of the pilot phase of the My Safe Florida Home program?

We got a lot of processes set up that were good. We got a lot of inspectors certified. You don't want people going into somebody's home unless they've been checked out. It was quite an effort to get the program going. They were able to do about 14,000 inspections. The reports are in the hands of those homeowners. Those homeowners are now evaluating those reports.

We'll be getting money out into the hands of these grant applications over the course of the next 60 or 90 days. It's a great idea, a good program. There are kinks to work out.

Where has the program been strong and what are its weaknesses?

I think one of the strengths has been getting together a very capable group of qualified inspectors and now a group of what we believe are a very capable and qualified group of contractors. The weakness of course is that we all would have hoped that by this stage that the program would have gotten more money out the door.

What will it take for My Safe Florida Home to reach the goals set forth for the program?

You can't set aside $250-million for a program without acknowledging that it takes a staff to run a program of that size. Somebody somewhere is going to have to have people and staff. It's not only the grant money it's the design of how the program should operate in the future.

It has been stated that you did not believe that your department was suited for overseeing My Safe Florida Home. Why was it given to the Department of Financial Services?

I really don't know. I remember being told that this department, the Department of Financial Services, has a very, very good reputation of looking after the taxpayer's dollar. I think what we've learned by putting it here was that this was not a grant-making agency. Our core business is to look after the taxpayer's dollars. When I came into office, there were some issues about the FLASH Federal Alliance for Safe Homes contract (during the pilot phase) and some other financially related things.

The way the state has done outsourcing and contracting is a big issue with me. When I got here and realized that we had an example of an out-sourced contract that had not gone through the appropriate bidding process we called an immediate halt to it.

What would demonstrate to you that the program has been successful?

I don't think we can declare success until we get checks into people's hands. It has been a lot slower than people expected. I always had the attitude, let's see where we are. Let's evaluate the good the bad and the ugly. Our goal is to get out of this hiatus.

Can this program work?

Of course it can work. It works for a lot of people. It will work for the successful grantees. I want to make it work for every homeowner. My goal would be to educate homeowners about the importance of hardening their homes, whether they get a grant or not. There's a huge education component.

Ivan Penn covers consumer affairs issues. He can be reached at ipenn@sptimes.com or (727) 892-2332.

For more information about the My Safe Florida Home program visit www.mysafefloridahome.com or call 1-800-342-2762.

[Last modified March 10, 2007, 01:53:57]