After a disaster strikes, relief can’t come soon enough for affected families. Immediate aid is generally provided by first responders, who are soon followed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the Red Cross, and other charitable organizations. Rebuilding follows more slowly as insurance claims and federal loans are processed. But resources are not always available for low-income households, and these sources of funding aren’t always enough to rebuild the housing stock.

For larger disasters, Congress has frequently authorized additional funding for neighborhood revitalization and housing reconstruction and rehabilitation through the Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) program. Yet CDBG-DR appropriations are intermittent, and the overall timeframe from disaster to grant closeout varies widely. Legislation working its way through Congress would reform this process, permanently authorizing the CDBG-DR program and, ideally, reducing the time between disaster and reconstruction.

Last week, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) released an Urban Institute report that examines the CDBG-DR program to uncover patterns in the pace of recovery across a sample of 88 grants for disasters from 2005 to 2015. Five facts emerged from our research that can inform efforts to improve federal disaster recovery:

  1. There is a lag between emergency assistance from FEMA and long-term housing aid from HUD
  2. Every place and every disaster is different
  3. Local capacity and rollout matter
  4. The time between a disaster and when Congress appropriates recovery funds is inconsistent, and funding isn’t guaranteed
  5. The speed of funding to state and local governments improved during our study period, but that doesn’t necessarily mean better outcomes

Read the full article about housing aid after a disaster by Daniel Teles, Carlos Martín at Urban Institute.