ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. – UPDATE: The Orange County CARES Act portal reopened at 8 a.m. Monday and closed about 45 minutes later.
PREVIOUS STORY: Orange County residents can apply for financial assistance on Monday as the county reopens its CARES Act portal for the sixth time.
Mayor Jerry Demings discussed the reopening during a news conference on Friday.
“With the news of so many permanent layoffs from different businesses here in our community that you heard announced this week, we know that our families are in need of crisis assistance,” Demings said.
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Demings said the portal will start accepting applications on Monday, marking the sixth time the portal opened since launching in June. Orange County households are eligible for a one time payment of $1,000 to help cover expenses.
“We will open up our portal this coming Monday on October the 12th at 8 a.m. and the second date we have chosen at this time is Saturday, October 24 at 8 a.m.,” he said.
The decision to reopen the portal comes as the county has $56 million in federal funds left to be allocated before the end of the year, according to Demings.
Demings said so far the county has spent $30 million and helped 30,000 households. He hopes to help thousands more with these latest rounds of financial assistance.
“It is our plan to look at opening up the portal to 10,000 different households each time we open it up,” Demings said.
The county launched the portal this summer and it got off to a rocky start, reaching capacity in minutes each time it opened.
With two more chances for assistance, Demings wanted to be clear about who is eligible to apply.
“If you’ve already received in the past funds from this effort you will not be eligible this time around. We want to help as many different households as we can within our community,” he said.
The mayor also hinted the portal could open again.
“There will be likely an additional date or dates in the future. We will see how these two dates go,” Demings said.
More information about Orange County’s Individual and Family Assistance program and details on how to apply can be found at ocfl.net/OrangeCARES