HUD Awards $500 Million to Help Louisiana, Texas & West Virginia to Recover From Historic Flooding
Investor Update
October 13, 2016
Funding to address counties with most critical needs
WASHINGTON – U.S. Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Julián Castro today awarded a total of $500 million to help Louisiana, Texas and West Virginia to recover after severe flooding events that occurred earlier this year. Provided through HUD’s Community Development Block Grant – Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) Program, these recovery funds will assist the most impacted communities that experienced the most serious damage to their housing stock.
President Obama signed the Continuing Resolution into law on September 29, 2016. This stopgap spending measure directed HUD to allocate $500 million “in the most impacted and distressed areas” that experienced presidentially declared disasters in 2016, but prior to September 29th. As a result of this limitation, HUD considered all 33 major disasters that occurred within this period of time. Areas effected by Hurricane Matthew are not eligible as for these funds as disaster declarations for Matthew occurred after the Continuing Resolution became law.
“Immediately after President Obama signed this spending bill into law, my team began identifying the strongest cases to receive disaster recovery funds,” said Secretary Castro. “These three states – Louisiana, Texas and West Virginia – experienced intense and destructive flooding causing great damage to residents’ homes and draining state resources. Today, we make a critically needed investment to help these communities recover and help families rebuild their homes.”
HUD awarded the following disaster recovery funds based on each state’s proportional share of serious unmet housing needs:
For this allocation, HUD allocates CDBG-Disaster Recovery funds based on the best available data from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to identify the areas of greatest level of ‘unmet housing need.’ In the hardest-hit counties of Louisiana (6 counties), Texas (3 counties), and West Virginia (2 counties), more than 102,000 households experienced some level of damage to their homes including more than 41,000 families who saw the most serious level of damage or destruction and unmet needs.
HUD will shortly publish a notice in the Federal Register which will define the criteria for the use of these funds. CDBG-Disaster Recovery grants can support a wide variety of activities including housing redevelopment, business assistance and infrastructure repair.
Source: HUD (full press release)