Congress must permanently authorize a critical federal disaster recovery grant program to ensure a swift and efficient allocation of funds to disaster-struck communities, senators and disaster recovery experts said at a Senate appropriations subcommittee hearing on Dec. 12.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery program, or CDBG-DR, has never been authorized by Congress, despite being “a critical resource for disaster-affected communities,” Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith said at the hearing. That means that each year, the program relies on Congress to finance it with special appropriations.
Often, Congress leaves the decision to end-of-year spending negotiations, leaving disaster-affected communities and governments in the lurch as they wait to hear how much recovery funding they will receive, said Shaun Donovan, former HUD secretary and CEO of nonprofit Enterprise Community Partners, testifying at the hearing.
“To put that in perspective, all of the communities who've experienced tragedies this year, including Maui where the devastating wildfire took place over four months ago, are still waiting to find out if they'll receive funding,” he said. Once the money is appropriated, HUD writes new regulations that state and local governments must parse through to understand how to access financial support. This whole process can mean months or even years before recovery efforts get underway.
“Without certainty about when and how much aid will come, local governments end up doing some things twice and other things not at all,” said Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawai’i, who introduced in May a bill to permanently authorize CDBG-DR, create consistent regulations and provide the program with more steady funding. “From a governance standpoint, [the process is] wasteful and it's inefficient, and for survivors, the uncertainty and delay make the already difficult task of recovery even harder.” Schatz was adamant that “it is not cheaper to do things the way that we are currently doing.”
Witnesses at the hearing recounted the human suffering caused by long waits for federal funding. After Hurricane Katrina, an older woman with Alzheimer’s disease and her partner started improperly rebuilding their home while waiting to find out how much federal funding they could get, Donovan recalled. A year later, they found out that the mold was so bad that they had to rip the walls out and live in a home with bare studs. In wildfire-struck Maui, Hawai’i, “there are families still to this day walking around ... carrying their belongings in trash bags and buckets,” said Jennifer Gray Thompson, CEO of nonprofit After the Fire USA.
The lengthy wait for federal funding also drives out residents, eroding a community’s tax base and causing more challenges for underresourced local governments, said Ran Reinhard, director of operations at the South Carolina Office of Resilience.
HUD also needs to overhaul its minimum damage threshold for communities to get federal assistance, Reinhard said. The threshold is currently a dollar amount, which is easier for communities with more expensive housing to reach, but should instead consider poverty levels, population density, social vulnerability and the severity of the disaster's impact, he said. HUD should also require all states to have a resilience plan that maps how they will build back better after disasters, Reinhard added.
Technical assistance is also direly needed, speakers at the hearing said. “Grantees who do not regularly deal with large and complex federal grants can become easily overwhelmed, plan poorly and waste valuable tax dollars executing recovery programs to provide minimal outcomes, all with the best of intent,” Reinhard said. He suggested that HUD set up first-time or small-capacity grantees with immediate and competent technical assistance.
Responding to senators’ questions on how HUD can better serve communities even without permanent CDBG-DR authorization, witnesses urged the agency to let communities know as soon as possible if they are getting a grant. “That at least gives them hope,” Reinhard said, adding that HUD should “train those small communities that have yet to be hit on how [to do disaster recovery] if and when you get hit.”
