During a hearing held by the U.S. Senate Committee on Appropriations’ Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, Chair Brian Schatz (D-HI) and Ranking Member Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS) both called for greater federal funding for long-term recovery efforts and the passage of the NLIHC-supported “Reforming Disaster Recovery Act.” The bill would permanently authorize HUD’s Community Development Block Grant-Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) program and ensure that long-term federal recovery funds quickly reach those most in need of assistance following disasters. Senator Schatz is the primary sponsor of the bill. Senator Hyde-Smith is a co-sponsor, along with 13 other senators.
The hearing, “Communities in Crisis: What Happens When Disaster Recovery Funds are Delayed,” featured testimony from Senator Peter Welch (D-VT), whose state is still recovering from catastrophic floods earlier this year, as well as Shaun Donovan, the CEO of Enterprise Community Partners; Jennifer Gray Thompson of After the Fire USA; and Ran Reinhard of the South Carolina Office of Resilience.
In his opening statement, Chairman Schatz explained the need for Congress to approve significant long-term recovery funds, just as it approved additional FEMA funding for short-term recovery and disaster response efforts earlier this year. He also called for such funds to be accompanied by reforms improving the long-term recovery process. “By failing to authorize CDBG-DR, we force HUD to rewrite rules for funding every time we finally get around to providing funding, meaning communities are left waiting months or years for aid to arrive,” said Chair Schatz. “And without certainty about when and how much aid will come, local governments end up doing some things twice and other things not at all. From a governance standpoint, it’s wasteful and inefficient. And for survivors, the uncertainty and delays make the already-difficult task of recovery even harder.”
“Natural disasters are not partisan in their impact, and our response should not be either,” said Ranking Member Hyde-Smith. “We should work on a bipartisan basis to improve existing programs like CDBG-DR. This ad-hoc approach to CDBG-DR has meant that some grantees have had to administer multiple grants concurrently, applying slightly different rules and requirements for each grant. This approach has also had the unintended consequence of slowing the delivery of assistance to communities, sometimes by several years, making it more challenging for communities to proactively design effective disaster response programs.”
In addition to the witnesses who appeared in person, Chairman Schatz entered several letters advocating for long-term recovery funds into the record, including letters from NLIHC and from the NLIHC-led Disaster Housing Recovery Coalition. One letter – sent in conjunction with Enterprise Community Partners, National League of Cities, and the National Association of Counties, and cosigned by 90 different organizations across the country – called for the quick passage of the Reforming Disaster Recovery Act. The other letter had 25 co-signers from areas of the country impacted by disasters in 2023 and called for additional recovery funding along with reforms to long-term recovery programs.