The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has allocated almost $28 billion in grants for communities hit by natural disasters.
The funds will come from the agency’s Community Development Block Grant – Disaster Recovery Program and will go toward helping damaged housing, businesses and infrastructure in hard-hit areas in nine states, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands that have been impacted by natural disasters since 2015.
The grants represent the largest single amount of disaster recovery in HUD’s history and include more than $12 billion for natural disasters that occurred in 2017, and almost $16 billion to mitigate disasters that have occurred since 2015. Congress specified that at least $11 billion of this amount be targeted to Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, with $2 billion targeted to repair and upgrade the electrical grid in these jurisdictions.
“It’s clear that a number of states and local communities are still struggling to recover from a variety of natural disasters that occurred in the past three years,” said HUD Secretary Ben Carson. “These grants will help rebuild communities impacted by past disasters and will also protect them from major disasters in the future.”
The funds will come from the agency’s Community Development Block Grant – Disaster Recovery Program and will go toward helping damaged housing, businesses and infrastructure in hard-hit areas in nine states, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands that have been impacted by natural disasters since 2015.
The funds will come from the agency’s Community Development Block Grant – Disaster Recovery Program and will go toward helping damaged housing, businesses and infrastructure in hard-hit areas in nine states, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands that have been impacted by natural disasters since 2015.
Grant recipients will have to put together a plan for how they intend to spend the funds, put it forward for public comment and submit to HUD for review before gaining access to monies.
See the full breakdown of funding allocation here
