Recap of July 8 NLIHC and Hispanic Federation Joint Webinar on Disaster Recovery Citizen Advisory Committees

NLIHC's Disaster Housing Recovery, Research, and Resilience Coalition (DHRC) and the Hispanic Federation co-hosted a webinar titled, “Lessons Learned: Citizen Advisory Committees,” on July 8.

The webinar included advocates and organizers from NLIHC, Hispanic Federation’s Puerto Rico Office, Center for a New Economy, Centro para la Reconstruccion del Habitat, and Mujeres de Eslas, Inc., discussing Puerto Rico’s Citizen Advisory Committee (CAC), created to facilitate community input into the HUD-funded Community Development Block Grant (CDBG-DR) mitigation program following Hurricane Maria in 2017. Earlier this year, HUD published the long-awaited Universal Notice, outlining the new requirements and recommendations for the CDBG-DR program, including a recommendation that states and territories create and facilitate a group similar to the CAC. Puerto Rico is the first and only jurisdiction to implement a CAC fully.   

Maritere Padilla Rodriguez, Senior Director of Policy and Advocacy at Hispanic Federation in Puerto Rico, moderated the discussion and provided an overview of efforts to form and organize the CAC in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria. Presenters sought to foster and spread the use of CACs in long-term recovery to other regions of the country.   

Noah Patton, NLIHC's Director of Disaster Recovery, provided background on CDBG-DR and the recommendations surrounding public participation in the program, based on the rules published earlier this year.   

In a pre-recorded video, Rosanna Torres Pizarro, Director of the Center for a New Economy in Washington, DC and a former Senior Advisor to the Secretary on Puerto Rico at HUD, discussed how recommendations for this form of public participation were created, and how the efforts at HUD during the previous administration fostered this aspect of the program.   

Luis Gallardo Rivera, Executive Director of Centro Para La Reconstruccion del Habitat, a nonprofit focused on collaboratively repairing and redeveloping abandoned property in Puerto Rico into affordable housing. Gallardo detailed his experiences and impressions from his tenure as a member of Puerto Rico’s CAC. He also provided a series of best practices for encouraging the growth of CACs in other areas.   

Finally, attendees heard from Dulce del Rio Pineda, Organizational Coordinator at Mujeres de Islas, Inc.–a community sustainability and development organization based on the Puerto Rican island of Culebra–who discussed her participation in the CAC and gave her thanks to the Puerto Rico Department of Housing for their continued support of CAC activities. She also outlined the latest makeup of the board and where she hopes to focus in the future.   

The recording of the webinar is available on the Hispanic Federation's YouTube channel here.   

You can find out more information about NLIHC’s Disaster Recovery work here.