No, the $750 FEMA grant for disaster victims is not a loan

Hurricane Milton is forecast to make landfall in Florida as a major hurricane later this week, less than two weeks after Hurricane Helene wrought destruction on Florida, North Carolina, Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia.

Misinformation about the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and confusion over what the agency provides has spread in the midst of these disasters. A viral social media post viewed over 5 million times claims FEMA’s $750 Serious Needs Assistance is a loan and has to be paid back. Several VERIFY readers sent us questions to ask if this is true.

THE QUESTION

Is FEMA’s $750 grant a loan?

THE SOURCES

THE ANSWER

No, FEMA’s $750 grant is not a loan.

WHAT WE FOUND

FEMA’s Serious Needs Assistance, which is a program that quickly gives disaster victims $750 for immediate supplies like food and medicine, is not a loan and does not have to be paid back.

Disaster victims get $750 from FEMA’s Serious Needs Assistance grant if the disaster has displaced them from their home and they establish they have critical needs they’d like funding to help cover. The critical needs that the $750 is meant to cover include emergency supplies such as food and water, first aid, childcare items, personal hygiene items and fuel for transportation.

Survivors in the hardest hit areas of a disaster may receive Serious Needs Assistance before FEMA inspects their home. In these cases, the goal of the grant is to get survivors money quickly while the agency determines their eligibility for other, larger grants.

Serious Needs Assistance is just one of many FEMA grants. A person can apply for more than one grant and receive multiple if they meet FEMA’s eligibility requirements.

Jaclyn Rothenberg, public affairs director for FEMA, posted to X that the $750 Serious Needs Assistance is not a loan.

“We do not ask for this money back,” Rothenberg said.

FEMA says on its rumor control page that other FEMA grants besides the $750 grant also do not have to be paid back in most cases. A survivor has to pay FEMA back only if they receive a FEMA grant to cover certain expenses and then later receive benefits from insurance or another grant that cover those exact same expenses.

This might apply if a survivor’s insurance covers temporary housing costs, but the survivor asks FEMA to advance them money to help pay for those costs while the insurance payout is delayed, FEMA says. In this case, the survivor would pay FEMA back once they receive their insurance settlement.

The reason a person would have to pay FEMA back in this situation is because FEMA disaster assistance is meant to cover things a person wouldn’t otherwise have coverage for from another source, like insurance.

A survivor’s insurance would not cover emergency supplies such as food, medicine and childcare items needed immediately after a disaster. Therefore, a survivor wouldn’t have to pay FEMA back for $750 Serious Needs Assistance.

There are also low-interest loans available to homeowners and small business owners affected by disasters, but those are offered by the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) instead of FEMA.

The SBA says disaster victims can apply for loans to repair or replace real estate and personal property, such as automobiles, damaged by the disaster; loans to businesses of any size and private non-profits to repair or replace property owned by the business, including real estate, inventories, supplies, machinery and equipment; and loans to help small businesses, small agricultural cooperatives, small businesses engaged in aquaculture and most private non-profits meet financial obligations that cannot be met as a direct result of the disaster.