HUD Announces Allocation of $3.3 Billion in Disaster Recovery Funds, Creation of New Disaster Recovery Office

HUD announced on March 15 that the agency would release an allocation of more than $3.3 billion in long-term recovery funds to seven states and territories impacted by disasters in 2022 and that it would improve the agency’s disaster response and recovery capacity by creating a new Office of Disaster Management (ODM).

HUD announced that the $3.3 billion, allocated via the agency’s Community Development Block Grant-Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) program, would be distributed to the following states, territories, and municipalities:

State

Grantee

Total UnmetNeed

Mitigation

Disaster Total

Alaska

State of Alaska

$33,472,000

$5,021,000

$38,493,000

Florida

Lee County (includes Cape Coral and Fort Myers)

$963,375,000

$144,506,000

$1,107,881,000

Florida

Volusia County (includes Daytona Beach and Port Orange)

$286,009,000

$42,901,000

$328,910,000

Florida

Orange County (includes Orlando)

$191,054,000

$28,658,000

$219,712,000

Florida

Sarasota County (includes Sarasota)

$175,248,000

$26,287,000

$201,535,000

Florida

State of Florida

$791,847,000

$118,777,000

$910,624,000

Illinois

St. Clair County

$26,110,000

$3,917,000

$30,027,000

Kentucky

State of Kentucky

$259,125,000

$38,869,000

$297,994,000

Missouri

St. Louis County

$49,065,000

$7,360,000

$56,425,000

Missouri

St. Louis City

$22,464,000

$3,370,000

$25,834,000

Oklahoma

State of Oklahoma

$6,498,000

$975,000

$7,473,000

Puerto Rico

Commonwealth of Puerto Rico

$144,619,000

$21,693,000

$166,312,000

TOTAL

$2,948,886,000

$442,334,000

$3,391,220,000

CDBG-DR funds are flexible, meaning they can be used to address a wide variety of disaster impacts, including for the repair of storm damaged homes and the creation of new rental housing. Importantly, the funds come with a requirement that at least 70% of all funds benefit low- and moderate-income households. With the funds now allocated, each entity receiving funds will create an Action Plan detailing the proposed use of the funds. Action Plans will be subject to public comment and sent to HUD for approval.

In addition to the release of these badly needed recovery funds, HUD also announced the creation of the ODM within the Office of the Deputy Secretary. This new office is the second disaster recovery and resiliency-oriented office created by the agency this year. The first, the Office of Disaster Recovery, was created under the Office of Community Planning and Development. With the new administrative set-up, the agency stated its intent to increase its capacity to run its disaster recovery-related programs.

Read the press release announcing the allocation and new office at: https://bit.ly/3JpgU6N