My name is Sue Haynes. I’m a 55-year-old stroke survivor which has left myself permanently disabled having very limited use of the left side of my body, in addition I care for my elderly mother of 83, who suffers from Dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.
In 2020, my sister from a previous marriage Jasmin and I pulled all our resources together emptying her 401K and purchased our dream home here in Fort Myers Beach. This required us to relocate over 2700 miles away, with the intent being that my mother and I could live on the ground floor while using the upper floor as a vacation rental. This gave us the income needed to pay our mortgage and support ourselves on a very limited income. We had found our forever home. We felt this was the perfect plan and life was wonderful. At least that was, until Hurricane Ian came to town.
As we all know on Sept 28, 2022 the Cat-5 storm that came ashore impacted each and every individual’s life in one way or another here on Fort Myers Beach. In our case our home, our business, our livelihood and everything we owned was washed away in an instant.
When we returned to the island all that was left was despair and rubble. Our home island was unrecognizable. Our hearts were broken. We found ourselves asking…can we make it through this, and against all odds we are rebuilding building our home back with our two hands as we can’t afford any other option.
At this point my sister of “55” and her boyfriend of “62” both work 8+ plus hours a day and come home and work on our new home construction project until dark ”laying block, building forms, mixing mortar and doing whatever has to be done for us to rebuild”.
The future of our island, including our own, changed overnight. We know that Fort Myers Beach will never be the same.
Over the last 2 years we have endured it all…. I believe this whole town has shown great resilience pulling together through this difficult time. We would love to have our small, tight niched, quaint little town back, but we are faced with the fact that’s not going to happen.
We are moving forward.
Fort Myers Beach has gone into overdrive, trying to figure out how not only businesses but all of our lives would come back to what we know and love. With this all the rules, permitting and variances being given. The big developers that are planning to build here intend to do so “BIG”, possibly bigger than our island can handle.
Traffic has been a concern since the island’s conception especially during season. This is going to intensify on a grand scale.
The original full-time residents who completely lost their homes are struggling to survive. We all want nothing more than to rebuild and get our lives back. I have reached out to every governmental organization but was denied at every turn for one reason or another.
The most heartbreaking was Lee Cares. In February of 2024, I applied for the Individual Housing Assistance program, designed for funding, low-to-moderate income property owners repair, reconstruct, and/or elevate property that suffered hurricane damage. We provided all the documents they required and completed the application which was submitted and accepted by Lee Cares.
I had met all the criteria, and a case worker was assigned to my case, who I worked with continuously for the next several months jumping through all the hoops they put in front of me, all along being very upfront with our plans and the rebuild process we had been working on for the last two years including architectural drawings , land surveyor, permits, a temporary power pole, fencing, poured concrete, and much more. All along sharing this information including photos and a complete description of the progress we were making.
All the while I was being told that things were looking good and we were on track. Unfortunately, all promises of help to rebuild our home were nothing more than false, misleading and completely untrue statements designed to keep us blinded to the facts. Lee Cares had no intention of helping us. The plan all along was to offer an impossible situation.
I was told they not only require us to destroy all the completed construction, they also want the money we have spent on getting us to where we are today. $79,000 is an insurmountable obstacle as we are barely scraping by and this is only a small part of the costs we have endured getting us to this point.
Needless to say the help never came.
We are coming up to the two-year anniversary of the storm and thus far it has been extremely difficult having been left to recover alone and rebuild our home with absolutely no assistance.
We are asking anyone, our community, our neighbors, our friends, any organization who would like to help us build back our home for assistance. We can’t thank you enough for any help and being a part of our success story as we will not stop and will continue to regain our dream and move back into a home, no matter how long it takes.
Reach out to Sue by e-mail at kellyjasminhaynes@gmail.com
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