Hurricane Francine Recovery: What We Know So Far

Hurricane Francine made landfall on September 11, 2024 as a Category 2 storm, crossing Louisiana’s coast and pushing inland through the bayou parishes. President Biden declared a major disaster (DR-4817-LA) five days later. Eight months on, the federal recovery dollars are committed, the state’s action plan is approved, and the Restore Louisiana program is taking surveys from homeowners in the affected parishes.

This is the first in a series of posts we’ll be writing on Francine recovery. Here’s what’s settled, what’s in motion, and what homeowners should be doing this month.

The federal allocation

Under the American Relief Act, 2025, HUD allocated $117.9 million in Community Development Block Grant – Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) funds to Louisiana for Francine. That’s the pot of money the state will spend through the Restore Louisiana Homeowner Assistance Program.

The state’s Master Action Plan, Amendment 1 is the operating document. The 30-day public comment period on the proposed plan ran from March 5 to April 4, 2025. The amended plan is what governs how the money flows now.

The nine declared parishes

The program is open to owner-occupants in:

Ascension
Assumption
Jefferson
Lafourche
St. Charles
St. James
St. John the Baptist
St. Mary
Terrebonne

If your home isn’t in one of those nine parishes, you’re not eligible for the Homeowner Assistance Program even if you sustained Francine damage. FEMA Individual Assistance is a separate program; that’s at fema.gov.

Who can receive program assistance

You have to meet all of these:

You were the owner-occupant at the time of Francine (September 2024) and you still own the property
The damaged address was your primary residence at the time of the storm
The damage was caused by Hurricane Francine
Single-family home, duplex, mobile home, or condominium
U.S. citizen or legally documented resident
You applied for FEMA Individual Assistance and the inspection showed major or severe damage. That means at least one of:
- FEMA-inspected residential damage of $8,000 or more
- At least one foot of flooding on the first floor
- FEMA-inspected personal property damage of $3,500 or more

The full eligibility table is on the program overview page.

What to do this month

The first step is the program survey. It is a short online form at restore.la.gov that asks for basic information about your property, your insurance, and the damage. It takes 10 to 15 minutes if you have your records in front of you.

The survey deadline is June 30, 2025. Homeowners who do not submit a survey by that date may not be considered for program assistance. We’ll write a separate reminder closer to the deadline, but if you can do it this month, do it this month.

What comes after the survey

The survey doesn’t award you money. It puts you in the pool the program is working through in phases. After you submit, the state does an environmental review (no appointment, inspectors look at the property from the road), then invites qualified homeowners to file the longer application, then performs a damage and lead assessment, then calculates a grant award. We’ll cover each step in its own post as the program reaches it.

Where Adams Industries fits

Once you have a grant award and an Estimated Cost of Repairs, you’ll pick a path. The state offers two: Solution 1, where the state manages the construction, or the contractor-managed path the state calls Solution 2, where you pick a Louisiana-licensed contractor and run the project with them.

Adams Industries is set up for the contractor-managed path. We were a participating contractor on the 2020-21 program (Laura, Delta, Zeta, Ida) and we expect to be on the official Francine contractor list as the program processes contractor verifications. We’ll confirm that publicly once the list is published.