Osceola waiting on $50M in aid funds
Osceola County officials called on Gov. Ron DeSantis on Thursday to quickly release more pandemic relief dollars to their county, where the unemployment rate is higher than anywhere else in the state, food pantry shelves need to be restocked and families need help with the rent.
So far the county, which is home to a portion of the sprawling Walt Disney World property and an economy in free fall since the coronavirus shut down much of the travel market,
has received just a quarter of its portion of the federal CARES Act — about $16.4 million in June. Nearly four months later, Osceola Chairwoman Viviana Janer said the county is still waiting on another $50 million, which DeSantis had said would be released in phases.
“The continued delay hurts our community and this is truly unacceptable,” Janer said at a news conference Thursday afternoon.
DeSantis’ office did not respond to questions about when the remainder of the money will be released.
Local food pantries are so desperate, she said, that earlier this week the county sent more than $47,000 in CARES ACT dollars to 15 charities to help cover the cost of food only expected to last for another nine weeks. Osceola officials spent another $40,000 to help nine of the pantries buy freezers or refrigerators.
Overall, in the county of nearly 400,000 people where nearly a quarter of all families with children under 18 live below the poverty line, local officials have spent about $230,000 to help feed the hungry.
Osceola’s unemployment rate soared to 29% in May and was at 20.2% in July, the most recent month available. The county was the subject of recent stories in the Washington Post and the Sentinel, which have chronicled families living in rundown motels without running water or power.
On Wednesday, the county and local nonprofits moved remaining families from the Star Motel in Kissimmee, where sewage
was backing up in some rooms.
Because the motel had power and water shut off, residents became eligible for help under the CARES Act, and the Community Hope Center received $50,000 to help find safe hotel rooms for those families throughout the county.
About 70% of Osceola’s federal relief funds have gone to programs offering people mortgage and rental assistance.
Counties with fewer than 500,000 people weren’t eligible to receive CARES money directly from Washington and instead must wait on allocations from the state. Florida received about $1.3 billion to hand out to its small and mid-sized counties.
Osceola, along with Seminole and Lake counties, have received among the highest amounts so far. Seminole received $20.6 million and Lake has received $16 million.
Janer said she’s reached out to U.S. Rep. Darren Soto, D-Kissimmee, as well as Republican U.S. senators Marco Rubio and Rick Scott for help, in hopes of extending the Dec. 31 federal deadline by which counties must spend the federal dollars. The county is also a battleground in the presidential election with both President Donald Trump and Joe Biden making plays for support there as Puerto Rican voters gain influence across the region.
Neighboring Orange County, which has a population of 1.4 million, received its $243.2 million of CARES dollars directly from the federal government. It’s offered programs to help small businesses as well as aid families with rent, mortgage payments and utility bills as well as distribute masks and other equipment.
Orange, which is also heavily dependent on the low-wage tourism industry, has nearly 27% of its families with children under 18 living in poverty. The county plans to spend as much as $8 million on the Second Harvest Food Bank, which pledged to provide 3 million meals distributed through 235 local charities.
Second Harvest expanded its kitchen production from 12,000 meals a day to 24,000 per day. Families received complete meals and boxes of food. More than 48,000 people across the region rely on food from Second Harvest.
Janer said there’s more work to do in Osceola, too, but for now the county is awaiting word from DeSantis about when the federal aid will arrive.
“We haven’t gotten any specific details from the governor’s office, we’re hoping they’ll release it any day now,” she said.