Sen. Andy Kim (D-NJ) (center) speaks with disaster survivors during a press conference in Washinton, DC on Dec. 11, 2024. (Courtesy Photo)
Disaster survivors from across the nation gathered in Washington, D.C., this week to demand a swifter, more comprehensive federal disaster recovery effort.
Survivors from Florida, Georgia, Hawai’i, New Jersey, North Carolina, Texas and Louisiana shared concerns about the speed and manner in which Congress has handled recent recovery efforts.
“I’m hear to talk about the urgency in which my community needs Congress to act,” said Jon Council, a disaster relief coordinator with Down Home North Carolina.“We’re just over two months out from the storm, and we have people falling through the cracks of the official relief effort, folks who are underinsured with little to no safety net. Our people are living in RVs, tents, uninsulated homes that cannot be winterized.”
Council noted that parts of western North Carolina had single-digit temperatures, high winds and snow this week.
“Many people who are still in their homes are currently not able to heat them due to lost wages and other financial circumstances,” Council said.
Full recovery is impossible without government assistance, Council said.
“We need Congress to act now before anymore time or lives are lost to the wash of bureaucracy,” Council said. “We need the funding now before our folks are force to endure more hardships and potential loss of life and livelihood at the hands of a brutal winter.”
Spotlighting a key federal disaster recovery program
The press conference came as Congress considers measures to fund the government. Meanwhile, communities impacted by storms and wildfires in 2023 and 2024 are pressuring lawmakers to find a way to fund a faster and more effective recovery system.
Survivors, for example, are demanding the permanent authorization and full funding of HUD’s Community Development Block Grant-Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) program. When the president declares a major disaster, Congress may appropriate CDBG-DR funds to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD if significant needs are unmet for long-term recovery.
Permanent authorization and full funding for CDBG-DR would help to fill the gaps left by short-term Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) aid and insufficient insurance payouts, the survivors said. It would also ensure that rebuilding funds are available when they are needed most—not years after the fact, they said.
Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, has called on Congress to use the disaster aid bill to improve the federal disaster recovery response, including permanently authorizing the CDBG-DR program. Schatz and other supporters of the move contend the lack of permanent authorization delays vital resources from reaching disaster-impacted communities and households. Every time Congress approves funds for the program to address specific disasters, HUD must publish a unique set of program requirements, which slows down the flow of funds to those in need, critics of the current process, they say.
In October, Acting HUD Secretary Adrianne Todman highlighted the vital role CDBG-DR funding plays in disaster recovery in a letter to the House’s and Senate’s Appropriation Committees’ Subcommittees on Transportation, Housing and Urban Development and Related Agencies.
“While the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Disaster Relief Fund supports emergency response and repair efforts and the Small Business Administration’s Disaster Loans provide relief to business owners, non-profits, homeowners and renters, CDBG-DR offers flexible support for remaining unmet recovery needs for housing, infrastructure, and economic development,” Todman wrote. “The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development is working diligently to develop needs estimates from the recent hurricanes given the critical role CDBG-DR and other Federal relief programs play in community recovery.”
The survivors want any new programs retroactively available for all disaster survivors since 2021.
“It was powerful to hear from so many today about the need for leaders to step up and do the jobs we were sent here to do so that FEMA remains fully funded and that disaster survivors have the support they need so that no one has to wait for help to rebuild their homes and lives after catastrophic events,” said U.S. Senator Andy Kim (D-NJ).
Kim said that some New Jersey residents are still working to recover from Superstorm Sandy (2012) and Hurricane Ida (2021) years after they occurred.
“There is so much to be done at the federal level to help communities across the country as we see a worsening climate crisis and severe natural disasters occurring at an increasingly alarming rate,” Kim said.
The federal government must take care of citizens when disasters strike, Kim said.
“You deserve to have the support that you need to rebuild your lives,” Kim said. “That’s so critical and I want you to know we stand with you on that.”
A growing need
The nation must also come to grips with whether it’s prepared for future disasters, Kim said.
“No, were not [prepared],” Kim said. “What are we doing? This shouldn’t be hard. We should be taking the steps to make our country more resilient by fixing these broken processes that you all helped expose.”
Jim Mangino with the New Jersey Organizing Project, a grassroots organization fighting for a fair recovery in the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy and Hurricane Ida lost a home, a business and part-time job after Sandy.
CDBG-DR funding helped his family to fully recover, Mangino said.
“Me, my wife and our two young daughters fought eight years to get home, and we made it because that funding [CDBG-DR] to get across the finish line,” Mangino said.
He said most survivors attending Wednesday’s press conference hadn’t received CDBG-DR funding, and still haven’t been made whole.
U.S. Rep. Frank Pallone, D-NJ, said CDBG-DR funding is the “program that is more likely to make you whole and to allow for rebuilding.”
“That’s something that would kind of bridge the gap, so we don’t have to constantly have these supplementals,” Pallone. “The authorization would be there for a plan to deal with the disaster, rather than having to — you still have to pass the money — but you wouldn’t have to pass the authorization every time.”
Pallone said the federal individual assistance program must be reformed as well as the federal flood insurance program.
“We’re hoping that it will be extended as part of the continuing resolution for the period of time until March, but that needs to be totally revised. There has to be a cap on the on the annual premium because it’s too high.”
Several survivors of he 2023 Lahaina fire on the island of Maui also called on Congress to fully fund the CDBG-DR program.