NLIHC president and CEO Diane Yentel and Ariadna Michelle Godreau Aubert, executive director of Ayuda Legal Puerto Rico, sent a pair of letters on May 18 to officials at FEMA and the Puerto Rico Department of Housing urging action on what could be a significant barrier to the receipt of assistance in Puerto Rico this coming hurricane season – the lack of flood insurance.
FEMA requires households who have received assistance from FEMA and live in flood hazard areas to maintain flood insurance in order to receive FEMA assistance after subsequent disasters. This requirement often penalizes low-income communities whose residents often cannot keep up with rising flood insurance premiums. Insurance policies also require homeowners to have title to their homes, something that many low-income homeowners may not have because they own their home as “heir’s property,” or in the case of Puerto Rico, homeowners use other systems of ownership that do not necessitate creating a title document. While FEMA has moved to ease title documentation requirements in recent years, the requirement that households have flood insurance requiring title documentation effectively preempts those reforms.
For areas such as Puerto Rico, where only a small fraction of the population can afford flood insurance, this requirement means that many of those impacted by Hurricane Fiona in 2022 would be ineligible to receive FEMA assistance should a hurricane impact them this year. They would also not be able to collect insurance payments for damage to their homes, touted by FEMA as a significantly better alternative to relying on FEMA assistance alone.
To address the issue, the letter to Puerto Rico’s Department of Housing requests that funding be reallocated from several stalled programs administered by the agency and paid for through Community Development Block Grant – Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) long-term disaster recovery funding. The reallocated CDBG-DR funds should be used to purchase group flood insurance for the lowest-income, highest risk, communities on the island. This would allow households to receive FEMA assistance and receive insurance payouts should future flood damage occur. The letter to FEMA requests that the agency move to address the issue by applying a waiver removing the flood insurance requirement for Puerto Rico and allowing time for the issue to be addressed without harming low-income households.
Ayuda Legal is a member of the Disaster Housing Recovery Coalition (DHRC), a coalition staffed by NLIHC comprised of more than 850 national, state, and local organizations, including many working directly with disaster-impacted communities and with first-hand experience recovering after disasters.
Read the letter to FEMA at: https://bit.ly/41N80r1
Read the Spanish language version of the letter to the Puerto Rico Department of Housing at: https://bit.ly/3Wittqx
Read an English language translation of the letter at: https://bit.ly/3Ojuxsj
More information about disaster housing programs is on page 6-52 of NLIHC’s 2023 Advocates’ Guide