The South Carolina Office of Resilience (SCOR) has reached a milestone in its housing recovery program, having rehabilitated or replaced more than 3,000 homes for individuals impacted by severe flooding in 2015, Hurricane Matthew in 2016, and Hurricane Florence in 2018 across its three U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Community Development Block Grant for Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) programs.

A total of 1,830 homes were completed in the 2015 Severe Storm program, which finished construction in September of this year. The office will complete roughly 1,140 homes in the 2016 Hurricane Matthew program and 400 homes in the 2018 Hurricane Florence program, and looks to complete construction on these programs in the spring of 2022 and no later than 2026 respectively.

“Although the number is significant, we remind ourselves daily that each number represents a person or a family,” says Chief Resilience Officer Ben Duncan. “The walls of our office are lined with before and after photos of every single house we complete, a reminder of why we do what we do. In reality, the number of people we’ve served far exceeds 3,000 and we are proud to have restored them to safe, sanitary, and secure housing, as is the mission of the Disaster Recovery Division.”

SCOR, formerly the SC Disaster Recovery Office, was created in 2015 following severe statewide flooding to carry out long-term housing recovery in areas deemed eligible to receive individual assistance from FEMA. SCOR is on track to complete its three grants ahead of schedule and has received broad recognition for its efficient administration of its long-term housing recovery programs. In addition to its disaster recovery programs, SCOR is also actively serving the citizens of South Carolina by handling more than 30 active flood mitigation projects across the state through its Mitigation Community Development Block Grant (CDBG-MIT), as well as developing the state’s Strategic Statewide Resilience and Risk Reduction Plan, which will provide statewide guidance on dealing with flooding and other natural hazards.