Issue link: http://dsnews.uberflip.com/i/1045676
72 I N D U S T R Y I N S I G H T / D A V I D W H A R T O N With Puerto Rico having marked the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Maria's landfall on the island this past September, the long road to recovery still seems very long in many respects. USA Today reported in early October that, to date, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) had "approved more than 460,000 applications and more than $1.4 billion in direct individual and household assistance funds" for the island. In April, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development announced that Puerto Rico would receive $18.5 billion to go toward rebuilding its housing market. But even those grand totals seem like mere drops in a very large bucket. Even a year later, as other damaging storms have long since eclipsed Maria across the hectic 24-hour news cycles, the shadow of the hurricane looms large over Puerto Rico and her people. e Puerto Rico Builders Association estimated that the devastating storm damaged 250,000 housing units and outright destroyed 35,000. e island's government estimates it will require $139 billion to rebuild the island, with $33 billion needed to restore and reinvigorate Puerto Rico's housing. Even more sobering are the death tolls for the storm. An independent study from George Washington University's Milken School of Public Health, commissioned by Puerto Rico's Gov. Ricardo Rossello and released in August 2018, raised the official death toll attributed to the storm's impact on Puerto Rico from 62 to 2,975. A Harvard University study released in May 2018 pegged those numbers even higher, estimating that more than 4,600 people could have died as a result of the storm and delayed medical care during the chaos that followed. Puerto Rico is in need, and the mortgage and servicing industry has the tools to assist—so long as the will is there as well. at call to action underpins PR18, an upcoming leadership summit organized by the Five Star Institute (DS News' parent organization) and set to unfold this November 14–16 at the San Juan Marriott in San Juan, Puerto Rico. With the challenges many and the needs dire, DS News spoke to some of the participating industry leaders to More than a year after Hurricane Maria made landfall on Puerto Rico, the island faces many challenges along the road to recovery. DS News spoke to industry leaders working to facilitate that process, and about how the upcoming PR18 summit could help.