HUD Publishes Federal Register Notice for $7.4 Billion CDBG-Disaster Recovery Funds

Last week, HUD published the long-awaited Federal Register notice that provides direction to Texas, Florida, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands pertaining to their allocations of the $7.4 billion Community Development Block Grant-Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) funds appropriated on September 8, 2017.

There are three notable provisions in the notice:

  • The notice retains  the regular CDBG law’s requirement that at least 70% of the funds be used for activities that benefit low and moderate income people. This provision has been waived in previous disasters.
  • The notice requires each grantee to primarily consider and address its unmet housing recovery needs. If a grantee chooses to use CDBG-DR for infrastructure or economic development, the notice requires a grantee to identify how any remaining unmet housing needs will be addressed, or how the infrastructure or economic development activity will contribute to the long-term recovery and restoration of housing in the most impacted and distressed areas.
  • Unfortunately, as in previous disasters, the notice reduces the public review and comment period regarding a state’s draft Action Plan from 30 days to 14 days, despite advocates’ urging to maintain at least 30 days. In addition, it waives the requirement for at least one public hearing. 

NLIHC prepared a preliminary summary of the advance notice. The intent of the summary is not to provide a comprehensive, detailed description but i nstead  points out differences in this Federal Register notice compared to one published on November 21, 2016 for flooding disasters. The summary also raises provisions that are in both the 2016 and 2018 notices that might be of interest to advocates.

Read the formal Federal Register notice, on which NLIHC’s preliminary summary is based, at: http://bit.ly/2EdocMr

Read the advance version of the Federal Register notice at: http://bit.ly/2nVQujm