In a press release last week, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced that it has awarded $28 billion in funding to support long-term disaster recovery in nine U.S. states, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. According to the press release, the grants are funded through HUD’s Community Development Block Grant–Disaster Recovery (CDBG–DR) program. They include more than $12 billion for major disasters that occurred in 2017 and nearly $16 billion to support “mitigation” activities in areas that were impacted by major presidentially declared disasters since 2015. Mitigation is broadly described as “actions taken to protect communities from the predictable damage from future events.” A complete breakdown of the awards by year, grantee, awards based on remaining 2017 unmet needs, awards for mitigation, and the totals can be found in the press release.
The PIH office has also updated its Excel spreadsheet listing PHAs that offer preferences for families displaced by disasters. Information on preference systems and any related data is provided for 680 PHAs. The list, which has been updated to show preference data as of April 13, is intended to serve as a resource for PHAs, families, and HUD staff in locating potential housing options.
PHAs that wish to supply additional information or to correct erroneous spreadsheet data may contact the disaster preference project team at disasterpreferences@hud.gov.
