Billions are spent on housing after disasters. Why does recovery take so long?
Billions are spent on housing after disasters. Why does recovery take so long?
Just north of downtown Houston, Luisa Chavez gives a tour of one of four brand new houses on the block after a ribbon cutting ceremony. She’s a project manager for nonprofit developer Avenue. The house is a gray two-story with three bedrooms, a mud room and a backyard.
“They are energy-efficient homes,” she said. “And they’re built to endure a hurricane.”
Unlike most of the new homes popping up in this gentrifying, historically Latino neighborhood, these will rent at affordable rates. The new construction catches the eye of 61-year-old John Cortez who happened to be passing by after the ceremony. His budget is around $700 a month.
“I gave my final move out. I’m looking for a place quick,” he said.
Cortez may have stumbled into a new home. One that was seven years in the making and built with federal dollars in response to one of the costliest storms in U.S. history: Hurricane Harvey.
FEMA helped with initial repairs after the storm that flooded the city, but the big rebuilding dollars came from the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Houston ended up spending around $660 million, said Derek Sellers, deputy director of housing and community development for the city.
“This money was so needed,” Sellers said. He said the city normally gets around $50 million from HUD.
In addition to other Harvey housing recovery programs, the city is building some 3,500 multifamily units with disaster relief money — around 3,000 have rent limits to stay affordable.
It’s part of the $50 billion that’s been spent nationally on HUD disaster recovery in the last decade, according to Sarah Labowitz, a researcher with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
“If you get a billion dollars into your jurisdiction for affordable housing, you really can rebuild people’s homes in a more resilient way, and you can put more affordable rentals on the ground,” she said.
She said the problem with this money is the timing.
Her research looked at seven disasters between 2017 and 2022 and found that it took on average one year before the grant would appear in the Federal Register. Then, the money wouldn’t be available for use until roughly two years after a disaster hit.
Those delays may be longer for some of the more recent disasters, like Hawaii after the Maui wildfires in August 2023.
“Because Congress has not appropriated any money for affordable housing recovery for any jurisdiction since May of 2023,” she said.
Congress has to jump through extra hoops for HUD money compared to FEMA dollars, which delays the process.
“There is no bucket at HUD that is a permanent program for disaster recovery that recognizes the need for affordable housing and resilience after disasters that Congress can refill,” she said. “So every single time there’s a disaster, Congress has to choose to make that special emergency appropriation to that particular place.”
While FEMA money is flowing to places battered by recent natural disasters, like North Carolina, HUD money isn’t. And it’ll take time and politicking, according to consultant Mike Sprayberry, who used to oversee disaster recovery for the state.
“Right now, we know that our congressmen and women are up there lobbying for a big chunk of change,” he said.
Sprayberry supports permanent authorization of this bucket of funding. Bills to do that — like the Reforming Disaster Recovery Act — have failed in recent years.
“That (permanent authorization) would go a long way for a smoother and more successful program implementation,” he said.
In Houston, Chrishelle Palay also supports permanent authorization. She works for Organizing Resilience, which helps communities respond to disasters. She said many residents across the city wait years dealing with government delays and red tape. Like one family she knows, hit by Harvey.
“They went through the process, the application process and all, and they were scheduled to go and sign the final contract to get work underway. The husband dies,” she said.
But the home was in the husband’s name — not the wife’s.
“So now the house can’t be rebuilt,” she said.
Because of delays getting out funding, for that family, help never came.
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