Things To Do In SW Florida

Today’s column focuses on two time-critical updates on recent columns. The first is for younger families who are seeking financial aid for college through the FAFSA form. The second is for seniors who want to rethink their Medicare Advantage programs. Time is running out for both.

Millions of students and their parents are still caught up in the FAFSA debacle over applications for financial aid. To “simplify” this required filing using a new formula and an online format, the Department of Education has created an incredible logjam that threatens the entire college acceptance process this spring.

First, the new program got off to a much-delayed start, opening in January instead of this past September. As a result, as of Feb. 1, only 4 million of the 18 million applications expected to be submitted had been completed.

Since colleges determine aid packages based on FAFSA (even for many non-federal grants), the government delay has stalled the entire process, which is traditionally completed by March 1. That’s impossible now. And it means that student decisions on attendance, which are due by May 1, will also be impacted. read more

Proposed changes to a state grant program that provides up to $10,000 for home-hardening improvements would delay, for 60 days after the program resumes taking applications on July 1, consideration of grants for thousands of homeowners already in the system.

The My Safe Florida Home program has been an unexpected boon for 30,809 homeowners previously approved for funding to help them replace their roofs or harden exterior windows and doors with impact-resistant materials.

The program’s matching grant was particularly generous, offering $2 for every $1 spent up to $10,000.

As of Monday, 8,112 grant applicants from 2023 were still awaiting word that they are approved and can commence with their upgrades, according to Devin Galetta, spokesman for the Department of Financial Services, which oversees the program.

By the first week of March, those applicants should receive grant approval notifications, Galetta said this week.

Meanwhile, 59,547 homeowners have had required windstorm mitigation inspections completed but did not or could not submit a grant application before the program stopped accepting them last September, Galetta said. read more

“A dream has to start somewhere,” Donna Fang wrote in response to a Google review.

For Fang, that dream starts in a gas station.

Her small operation, Lan’s Kitchen, opened in a small stall at a Marathon in September and is the hospitality veteran’s entrepreneurial debut.

Fang has spent her life working in the family businesses, food-centric all: From her Korean-born father’s dumpling and noodle shop in her mother’s native Taiwan to her brother’s operation, Yumi Asian, a popular spot in adjacent Avalon Park, where she has been working since it opened in 2019.

“We stayed there through COVID,” she tells me. “We stuck it out and had a lot of amazing supporters in the neighborhood. He’s doing very well. His family is growing. At first, I had just one nephew. Now, I have two, plus a baby niece. One day, they will be working there,” she laughs. “And so I began thinking I am almost 40 and I have not built anything for myself.”

Similarly, Franceella Martin needed something to do after retiring in 2019 from a 33-year career as a civilian employee of the military. After waiting out the pandemic, she worked as a substitute teacher for a year before going full-time with the catering business she’d been offering to friends and family. read more