##VIDEO ID:FkOhEFGgEuk## welcome to cloudcast where you get an inside look at St Cloud Florida's local government whether you live work or play here we're bringing you the information you need to better understand your city cloudcast is hosted by our Communications team including maramma bachelder Andrew Sullivan Deborah Carson and J B Miller thanks for listening in to cloudcast all right well welcome back St Cloud we're glad glad to have you along with another edition of cloudcast and today we've got in our studio internet Forbes from our Economic Development Office anet how you doing I'm doing well how about you I'm great if you are a regular listener to cloudcast you've heard interet she's been a guest in here because her office has a lot of really great things going on a lot of great programs here for the city to help our businesses and our residents and Anette you brought some new special friends in today to talk about special yet great program and opportunity for some of our residents here so I'm going to just kind of let you talk introduce them and let's hear about this program I have the microphone now awesome you got it hand off complete so our office um along with economic development which is primarily Business Development we also look at how do we help our community our residents and so we understand that you know we have residents of of various income um limits but we also have residents that need some assistant as far as their homes are concerned you know we have unfortunately um experienced some issues with weather um that couple of hurricanes the last couple hurricanes and storms that have caused you know some real damage to our to our residents property and and we need to figure out as a city how we can benefit and so we have an exceptional partnership with the county through the office of Housing and Human Services that administers a program called ship with a PE that's ship is in Paul let's all make sure let's not get any of us in trouble today right can't stress that enough ship which stands for State Housing Initiative Program and it is um just a series of different housing programs that helps homeowners um and I won't steal their Thunder but it really helps homeowners you know with housing repair um with rental assistance um owner occupy repairs just a whole plethora of of things so I brought my from the county because they actually have an open cycle right now specifically for St Cloud residents really really really so if you live in St Cloud money is available there all right I'm definitely listening and I'm sure many of our people are as well so that's right so we have Vanessa and Maria here who are going to tell us a little bit more about their programs welcome ladies thank you for having us thank you for having us yes so we currently have um ship down payment assistance funds um also known as purchase assistance um we currently have about a little over a million dollars to burn through if I could whistle i' go like pH right yes and um we're giving families um low-income families up to $100,000 um in down payment assistance um that could go towards closing cost as well so this is to get into their own home to purchase a home yes up to $100,000 to purchase a home yep great and this is just for St Cloud residents um St Cloud residents along with unincorporated oel accouny okay okay great now I know there's also programs that you have for people who already own their own home that is correct yes so through the same source of funding through ship we also administer a cdbg and a ship owner occupied rehab program so if you are a homeowner especially located within the city of St Cloud limits we encourage you to reach out to us we can either assist with repairs or replacing your existing home to make sure that your property is brought up to code um and as far as Replacements are concerned we go up to $255,000 it's one of our programs that we have and administer so there's plenty of funding available you do have to income qualify but we are always accepting new applicants and we just encourage the public to reach out to us yes now you mentioned bringing a house up to code do you have to have some kind of code enforcement action against you or just the house is in need of repairs that's a great question so you don't necessarily have to have a violation in place normally and it can range depending on what kind of need the family is in so let's say for example um you need a new roof maybe it's agent but you haven't received a violation from the city um you can definitely reach out to us and what we'll do is we'll coordinate for one of our chief inspectors to go out to the property and conduct an inspection on your home a general contractor is awarded the project and the projects can take anywhere from 3 to 6 months depending on what is needed and um we are currently doing repairs and Replacements so if you have a manufactured home or a mobile home and you own your land and it's just an agent property and you want to bring it today then we encourage you to apply and we will definitely look into your application as soon as you reach out to us that's awesome and it sounds like you kind of make it easy for the homeowner um because what I'm thinking about if I had to completely replace my home for example or even if I had a big project to do it's kind of nice to know that the county is a going to come out and and do that inspection on it and then you're going to get the bids and award the contract so that's not something the homeowner has to to do correct and then I assume that you pay the contractor directly rather than correct all that is correct yes so the program is explained in great detail the idea is to um assist individuals who are Income qualified that may without the program not be able to make those repairs we want to ensure that we build sustainable communities throughout Oola County and St Cloud definitely being one so throughout the entire process Oola county is very handson if I can add um we are always seeking um contractors General Contractors so if any of them would like to reach out to our department that's something that we could look further into as well business opportunity for our contractors as W that's a great ad that was a great plug so I know that we talked about you offer down payment assistance and you also offer assistance for rehab for homeowners but what about homeowners who unfortunately have hit some Financial issues and now they face possible foreclosure I believe you have programs available as well for foreclosure prevention yes that is correct yes so also through our ship program we administer a mortgage foreclosure prevention program and we can assist with up to $10,000 towards your mortgage so let's say for an example you've had a hardship you're now over your hardship but you fell behind in your mortgage payments we pay the homeowners directly to pay those debts as far as with your lender is concerned to get you today so that you can continue paying your mortgage moving forward to avoid a foreclosure on the property that is awesome and then the other thing I thought about was we do all this great work for our homeowners but we we do have some people that rent yes and so I think there are programs or at least a program that helps our renters too correct yes so our ship program once again back to ship um with a PE with the p always with a PE make that clear um we do have a rental assistance strategy and we do three different types of assistance through that particular strategy we assist with eviction prevention so similar to the mortgage foreclosure prevention program if you've had a hardship financially related and you're now over that hardship and you owe rent we encourage you to apply cuz we can pay up to $7500 towards your rent we also assist individuals who meet the HUD definition of homeless and are seeking for a rental space or if you're living in a motel and you want an apartment we would assist with your movein cost and security deposit and utility deposit as well and then once you're in the unit and if the rent meets the rent limits then we go ahead and we can pay future rental subsidies so that is definitely a multi- type of strategy where we can do all sorts of things on rental assistance boy and that's got to be helpful because rents are so high right now not just here I mean just throughout Florida that the prices have gone so high so and so the question I think on a lot of folks mind may be how do I participate how do I apply okay so that's actually why we are here today to spread the information to inform the listeners that we do have these funds available both state and federal to push out these programs that can help individuals whether you're a homeowner or a renter just seeking for some kind of assistance reach out to the county via email at cdbg a.org or ship that's with the p ship oil.org and we'd be happy to assist you and get you started well we really appreciate you joining us on cloudcast today to talk about this program and really help push that message out um particularly for our residents here in St Cloud you know there there's there's people struggling in every community and certainly in ours and it's good to know that there's these programs available um and hopefully this will help us push that message out to the right people who need to know so that we can be a help to some of those people in need in the community absolutely I I also really want to illustrate how we in government whether city or county we all just try to work together to figure out what's the best way to serve our community and so I think this is a really good example of us seeing that there's a need in our in our community in St Cloud and figuring out what programs we have available to to assist great absolutely and we here at the county we also value the partnership that we have with the city of St Cloud so we thank you for having us today yes we thank you so much I think you're welcome anytime do do you all think so we love guests on cloudcast so well we may be back awesome well again thank you so much for dropping by to join us today we look forward to working with you in the future and St Cloud residence hope this information has been helpful and please take advantage of this opportunity they said we've got about a million dollars worth of funding available for these programs so check them out we look forward to seeing you or hearing you next time on cloudcast thank you thank you that's it for this edition of cloudcast don't forget to like follow rate and review and we'll see you next time on cloudcast