The NLIHC-led Disaster Housing Recovery Coalition (DHRC) submitted a comment on July 22 in response to an Interim Final Rule (IFR) issued by FEMA in the Federal Register on January 22 amending multiple aspects of its Individual Assistance (IA) program. The IFR includes significant modifications to expand the amount of assistance available to disaster survivors and to address long-standing barriers that have prevented millions of disaster survivors from receiving the assistance they were owed. The changes created two new assistance programs, removed several administrative barriers that prevent low-income households from accessing federal disaster assistance, and increased eligible uses of assistance.
The DHRC is a group of more than 900 national, state, and local organizations, including many working directly with disaster-impacted communities and with firsthand experience recovering after disasters. The DHRC works to ensure that federal disaster recovery efforts reach the lowest-income and most marginalized survivors.
The comments, which included input from DHRC members, included a wide range of issues and requests, ranging from an expansion of eligible accessibility-related costs, implementing a previously successful program for providing rental assistance to disaster survivors, increasing assistance to individuals experiencing homelessness at the time of a disaster, and increasing access to FEMA data for researchers and academic institutions. The comments also requested that FEMA remedy several issues already identified in implementation of the rule changes during Hurricane Beryl and disaster declarations in Florida and Texas. These include ensuring that purchasing food was an eligible use of Serious Needs Assistance and that emergency assistance be made available prior to inspections of disaster damaged homes.
“The DHRC supports FEMA’s initial efforts to increase equity within its IA programs,” reads the DHRC’s comment. “However, there are additional opportunities to advance greater levels of equity within FEMA programs, which have historically provided households with lower incomes with less assistance than higher-income households. Further reforms would allow greater accessibility of federal assistance in the aftermath of disasters overall. FEMA must ensure that the lowest-income and most marginalized survivors – who are disproportionately people of color and other underserved groups – are not prevented from accessing the assistance they need to recover after disasters. While the recent history of the agency is rife with examples of how FEMA ignores and overlooks the needs of such disaster survivors, we are hopeful that the agency can move beyond these failures and ensure that all disaster survivors are able to fully recover. The recent IFR bolsters this hope.”
Read more about FEMA’s Interim Final Rule here.
Read the DHRC comment here.