Thanks to pressure from the NLIHC-led Disaster Housing Recovery Coalition (DHRC), the “Natural Disaster Recovery Program Act” (H.R. 1605), introduced by Congressmen David Rouzer (NC-07) and Garret Graves (LA-06), failed to be passed by the U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure following a tie vote on September 18. The bill would have created a long-term disaster recovery program managed by FEMA and duplicating HUD’s Community Development Block Grant-Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) program, making it more difficult for long-term recovery funds to make their way through Congress in the future. NLIHC sent a letter to committee members on behalf of the DHRC and coordinated a sign-on letter with 35 national organizations requesting that committee members oppose the bill.
NLIHC leads the DHRC, a coalition of more than 900 local, state, and national organizations, including many with first-hand experience recovering after disasters, that works to ensure that federal disaster recovery efforts reach all impacted households, including the lowest-income and most marginalized disaster survivors. NLIHC has advocated about disaster recovery issues since 2005.
FEMA’s existing short-term assistance programs largely fail to meet the needs of disaster survivors, especially those with the lowest incomes. FEMA programs are often designed in ways that make them inaccessible to those disaster survivors who need assistance the most, and the agency fails to provide the basic data transparency needed to improve its current programs while also lacking critical experience in long-term housing recovery and an understanding of housing markets.
H.R. 1605 would have created a new program managed by FEMA without addressing these long-standing barriers and without measures to ensure sufficient oversight regarding how disaster assistance funds are spent. The bill lacked adequate protections to prevent the misuse of scarce federal recovery funds and lacked requirements concerning whether critically needed long-term recovery assistance would reach low-income disaster survivors.
Instead, advocates encouraged committee members to support the bipartisan “Reforming Disaster Recovery Act” (RDRA) (S.1686/H.R.5940). This bill would permanently authorize the CDBG-DR program and put in place important safeguards and reforms to ensure that disaster survivors quickly receive the assistance they need to fully recover. Unlike FEMA, HUD has deep expertise in housing recovery, a long, successful track record of serving households with greatest needs, and established processes for public input.
Read the NLIHC letter to committee members here.
Read the national organization sign on letter here.