CQ NEWS
Senate appropriators push to authorize disaster recovery program
By Caitlin Reilly, CQ
Senate appropriators drew attention Tuesday to the shortcomings of the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s disaster recovery program caused by the ad hoc nature through which Congress funds and administers the work.
The department’s Community Development Block Grant-Disaster Recovery program is a lifeline for communities as they try to rebuild following a disaster. But the program suffers from long delays and unnecessary complexity because Congress has never authorized it, Senate Transportation-HUD Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, said at a hearing.
“By failing to authorize CDBG-DR, we force HUD to rewrite rules for funding every single time we get around to providing funding, meaning communities are left waiting for months or years for aid to arrive without certainty about when and how much aid will come,” Schatz said. “The program basically doesn't exist until we do individual appropriations.”
Congress has appropriated more than $100 billion over the last three decades to fund long-term recovery from natural disasters through HUD’s Community Development Block Grant program, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center. But Congress has never authorized CDBG-DR, which witnesses and senators at the subcommittee hearing said had hampered its effectiveness.
“The statutory framework for this program exists only in individual supplemental appropriations acts,” the subcommittee's ranking member Cindy Hyde-Smith, R-Miss., said. In some cases, Congress may end up providing funding for the recovery from a single disaster through multiple appropriations packages.
“This ad hoc approach to CDBG-DR has meant some grantees have had to administer multiple grants concurrently, applying slightly different rules and requirements for each grant,” Hyde-Smith said. “This approach has also had the unintended consequences of slowing down the delivery of the assistance to communities sometimes by several years.”
Ran Reinhard, director of operations for the South Carolina Office of Resilience, said federal money to fund the long-term recovery from 2018’s Hurricane Florence didn’t arrive until December 2020.
“Delays in funding significantly impact low-income, low-resource and historically underserved communities,” Reinhard told the subcommittee. “Many citizens lacking monetary resources or insurance just choose to leave. When they leave, their departure erodes the community’s tax base, which puts additional challenges on rural and low-resource communities.”
Permanently authorizing the program and funding it through annual appropriations would help HUD get money to communities faster, Reinhard said.
“This will reduce or prevent citizens from losing hope and leaving their communities,” he said.
Shaun Donovan, CEO and president of the affordable housing nonprofit Enterprise Community Partners, said the current setup in many cases actually increases the costs. Permanently authorizing the program would save the federal government money, he said.
Donovan, who was HUD secretary and later director of the Office of Management and Budget during the Obama administration, shared a story of a couple who needed to rebuild their home following Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
Without knowing whether they would receive more substantial aid from HUD, the couple used the relatively small amount of immediate assistance they received from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to start rebuilding their house. But that wasn’t enough to rebuild properly. The home developed mold in the walls, which eventually had to be ripped out, Donovan said.
“When we went into the home, they had been living for months with just bare studs, a senior couple waiting to know whether CDBG would be available to them. It was heartbreaking,” Donovan said.
Permanently authorizing the program would bring certainty to survivors of disasters and allow them to rebuild more efficiently and effectively, he said.
“Think about that family. Had they known what they were getting, they could have done it once. Not only done it better and not had the human and the fiscal costs to them, but also longer-term made their home safer,” he said. “They could have lowered the cost in the next disaster.”
Long road ahead for legislation
Schatz introduced a bill (S 1686) in May that would permanently authorize the program. And while the legislation has 14 Democratic and Republican cosponsors, including Hyde-Smith, Schatz said it’s a struggle to bring others on board.
“We've got to collectively figure out a way to talk about this that expresses the urgency fiscally, but also at the human level,” he said. “When we describe it, I find myself neck-deep in acronyms, which thankfully I now understand, but still makes it very difficult to sell to other members because they've got other priorities.”
The bill was referred to the Senate Banking Committee, but hasn’t received a markup.
Rep. Al Green, D-Texas, introduced a companion bill (HR 5940) in the House in October. Rep. Ed Case, D-Hawaii, is the only cosponsor so far.
Hyde-Smith urged HUD to look for ways to improve administration of the program in the meantime. Witnesses suggested HUD provide technical assistance and convene smaller communities with similar needs before disaster strikes.
“I recognize that there remains a potentially long road ahead with many conversations yet to be had in the Senate, as well as with the House before getting this authorization enacted,” Hyde-Smith said. “It is clear that program and process improvements should not wait until we get the authorization across the finish line because we know how slow this can be.”