The “FEMA Act of 2025” (H.R. 4669) was introduced by House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Sam Graves (R-MO) and Ranking Member Rick Larsen (D-WA). This bipartisan bill re-envisions a more effective, responsive, and feasible alternative for the agency’s future. NLIHC and its Disaster Housing Recovery Coalition (DHRC) of more than 900 local, state, and national organizations provided reform recommendations prior to the bill’s release—many of which are included in the final text.
This bipartisan bill enacts multiple reforms to FEMA programs that will better ensure that people can access the assistance they need to fully recover from disasters, including:
- Moving FEMA out of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and restoring it as an independent agency.
- Making it easier for individuals without a fixed address, like individuals experiencing homelessness, to access post-disaster housing assistance.
- Increasing the duration of FEMA assistance to disaster-impacted households.
- Creating a unified disaster assistance application for all federal disaster assistance programs.
Additionally, the “Reforming Disaster Recovery Act” was introduced and advanced unanimously out of the Senate Banking Committee. This is the first time in 16 years that any substantial housing legislation has moved out of that Committee. This bill would permanently authorize HUD’s long-term recovery grant, the Community Development Block Grant – Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) program, which provides states, Tribes, and communities with flexible, long-term recovery resources needed to rebuild affordable housing and infrastructure after a disaster. The DHRC is circulating a 500+ organization support letter. Sign your organization on here.
Together, these bills represent the overhaul and systemic reform we need to fix our broken disaster recovery system to adequately provide support from the start of recovery to the end.