CAPE CORAL, Fla. — On a perfectly warm Tuesday in early December, a serious question really has to keep someone up at night to get them inside of a library for two hours.
About fifty people came with those questions at the Cape Coral-Lee County Public Library on Tuesday as the National Alliance Against Home Repair Fraud. Specialists from insurance, law enforcement, the City of Cape Coral's code enforcement division, attorneys spoke and also met with people still working on the recovery process, nearly ten weeks after Hurricane Ian hit.
Joe Pawn just moved to Cape Coral in August from New Jersey. He had a little more than one peaceful month in Southwest Florida before the historic hurricane. Pawn said some of the roofing companies want half of the quote paid "up front".
"So that's a lot of pressure because we want a roof repair," Pawn said of the moments to make decisions on fixing his property. "We want to go back to where we were on September 27."
We asked him if he felt more empowered from the workshop.
"This was very informative and we know this is our house," said Pawn. "We have to control our costs and dealing with the contractors."
Workshop leaders echoed that theme. While we're all working through hurricane recovery, the property owner controls the situation on how to rebuild, the cost, the pace, the specialist they go with.
The topic of "assignment of benefits" also covered the opening minutes. Even before Hurricane Ian, this has been a legal issue within state courts surrounding the option for a property owner to sign over, or "assign", control of the insurance claim process to a third party. Concerns linger about if that hampers the pace of the rebuild to whether that third party pockets too much of the settlement.
Workshop leaders stressed that people, in Florida, have 14 days after signing a contract for an assignment of benefits to cancel it for any reason.
In the days after Ian hit, companies and contractors were not too far behind emergency responders to reach Southwest Florida in the quest to also rebuild their bottom line as Southwest Floridians started rebuilding.
"Don't sign any paperwork because you don't know where (the company) is when you sign it," said Tony Fernandez, a special agent with the National Crime Insurance Bureau. "You might not be able to find (them) afterwards. I'm not saying they're crooked or anything like that but you might be able to find them when they leave."
