Zulma Cornier says workers from Rebuild Florida offered help, but years later, she still doesn’t have a home.
POLK COUNTY, Fla. — It’s officially hurricane season, but for some Floridians, the scars from past storms have yet to heal.
Zulma Cornier is among numerous residents still unable to return home after Hurricane Irma wreaked havoc in Florida back in 2017. Today, the spot in Polk County she once called her own has been overtaken by wild grass, marking the place where Cornier lived before Irma damaged her home, leaving it with a compromised roof and water intrusion.
Shortly after the storm, Cornier says workers from Rebuild Florida knocked on her door offering help.
“They came, and then checked out the house,” she told us with the help of a translator.
The Rebuild Florida’s Hurricane Irma Repair and Replacement Program received close to $480 million from federal funds, intended to refurbish or replace about 2,000 homes damaged by the storm across Florida. Cornier recalls that the program assessed her home as being beyond repair. Consequently, she entered an agreement with the state to have her house taken down and replaced with a new one.
“They told me that it [would] take a year, a year and a half,” Cornier said.
That timeline has long passed. It’s now 2025, and she still has no home.
According to documents our investigative team acquired, after her home was dismantled, a replacement mobile home was set up. However, due to its size, it didn’t fit the original lot, necessitating a relocation to a nearby park just across the street.
The Press Secretary for Florida Commerce, which oversees Rebuild Florida, told us, “While we are not able to discuss the details of Ms. Cornier’s case, please be assured that the FloridaCommerce team has communicated with Ms. Cornier extensively and the information she has relayed to you is simply not true, moreover, she is no longer in the program.”
Cornier, however, shared email correspondence showing that in October she informed the program that her new park manager did not approve of the floorplan. In response, Florida Commerce told her the contractor was in contact with the park manager. Later, the agency wrote that the mobile home met program guidelines and that Cornier was in breach of contract for not submitting a new application for the updated lot.
“It has affected me, it has affected me in many things, this in my health, this in the nerves, that’s what it is,” Cornier said. “Every day I have to be taking pills to control myself. I have a lot of things going on… very worried and… crying with depression and everything.”
She says if she doesn’t get a home from Rebuild, she will be left homeless.
“I had my house. They took me out to demolish it. If they don’t give me my house, where am I going to live?” she replied.
Cormier says she never sought help from Rebuild Florida.
“I didn’t go looking for the program,” she said. “They were the ones who came by there.”
Florida Commerce told us that Cormier’s claims are not true but declined to elaborate, despite providing case-specific details in past interviews with our investigative team.
We’ve shared all the documents we received with the state and have not yet heard back.
