RELATED ARTICLEFEMA dollars come with warning
WASHINGTON – After Robert and Eloise Taylor’s two-story condominium in the Bellevue area of Nashville was destroyed during the May 2010 flooding, the elderly couple was just able to scrape together the $60,966 it cost to rebuild their home of more than two decades.
Robert, 84, and Eloise, 83, cashed in some retirement accounts and insurance policies on their children and received $26,517.56 from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
After spending about five months living in his brother’s house, they moved back home a few days after Labor Day, thinking that, except for the health problems Eloise has had that they think are related to stress, the nightmare was behind them.
But in mid-March the Taylors received a letter from FEMA saying they had to repay $10,500 of the assistance they received because they had received that amount through a homeowners insurance policy. That is considered double payment, FEMA said.