Hurricane Florence struck North Carolina in 2018. Will recovery money come in 2020?
North Carolina communities devastated by Hurricane Florence in September 2018 are one step closer to more than half a billion dollars in federal recovery money.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development allocated a total of $3.8 billion in two disaster recovery acts, one passed in October 2018 and the other in June 2019. North Carolina stands to receive $542.6 million in the Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) funds.
Before the state gets the money, though, it must use a notice HUD published Friday to outline how it will spend it. The N.C. Office of Recovery and Resiliency (NCORR) plans to release the action plan in February, after which it will undergo a 30-day public comment period and a HUD review of up to 45 days before the state can access the funds.
“This is an important step by the federal government to get additional funds to families still recovering from Hurricane Florence,” Gov. Roy Cooper said in a statement. “North Carolinians have waited for these funds since 2018, and we will continue to push for federal legislation to help the federal government to speed up this process and get assistance to the people who need it.”
North Carolina’s plan
Laura Hogshead, NCORR’s chief operating officer, said the department has already been working on parts of the action plan in anticipation of HUD’s announcement. For instance, the unmet needs analysis that will make up much of the plan is complete.
CDBG-DR funds are meant to cover unmet needs, or recovery projects that remain once all other funding has been exhausted.
Beyond that, Hoghshead added, the plan is likely to look similar to North Carolina’s plan for its $236.5 million HUD grant for recovery from 2016’s Hurricane Matthew. Much of that money is focused on housing, with $112 million for rehabilitating and repairing owner-occupied housing; $23.2 million for rebuilding or repairing larger rentals; $18.2 million for repairing rentals with four or fewer units; and about $10 million for repairing public housing units.
NCORR also plans to direct $25 million of the Matthew CDBG-DR funds to buying out homes in flood-prone areas.
“One of the lessons that we learned form Matthew is don’t set up too many different programs, set up a few programs that work really well,” Hogshead said, noting that the Florence money would likely address affordable housing shortages and a need for buyouts in heavily impacted areas.
A key part of Friday’s notice was defining what HUD labels “most impacted and distressed communities,” hard-hit areas where grant recipients must spend 80% of their recovery funds.
In North Carolina, that means the state will need to spend $434.12 million of recovery money in a wide swath of Eastern and Southeastern North Carolina, including Brunswick, Carteret, Columbus, Craven, Duplin, Jones, New Hanover, Onslow, Pender and Robeson counties. Heavily damaged sections of Bladen, Cumberland, Pamlico and Scotland counties are also defined as hard-hit areas.
In Robeson County, which was also heavily damaged during Hurricane Matthew, NCORR has used the HUD money from that storm to rehabilitate 85 homes, replace 76 damaged mobile homes and rebuild 20 homes to be safer during flooding, according to Emily Jones, a county spokeswoman. There is also a need for new affordable housing, with some victims from Florence still living in hotels, she said.
“Talking to some people, there is frustration,” Jones said, “but also people are very blessed because they’re in the process of getting a new home or they’re getting it elevated.”
Calls for disaster relief reform
In the aftermath of Hurricanes Matthew and Florence, North Carolina leaders have called for reform to the disaster recovery process.
The News & Observer has previously reported that Cooper and U.S. Rep. David Price, both Democrats, support formally authorizing the CDBG-DR program, allowing funds to move without waiting for notices to be published in the Federal Register. A federal bill authorizing the program has lain idle in a Senate committee since passing in November.
Price, in a statement released Tuesday, said: “The $542 million in federal funds from HUD will facilitate long-term recovery for communities impacted by the hurricane, as well as help mitigate the impact of future disasters. I will continue advocating for North Carolina as our state rebuilds, and I call on the Senate to take up the House-passed Reforming Disaster Recovery Act of 2019 to speed up and improve the recovery process.”
U.S. Rep. David Rouzer, a Wilmington Republican whose district suffered heavily in Florence and Matthew, supports scrapping the HUD program entirely and sending the recovery funds to states through the Federal Emergency Management Management Agency.
Hogshead, a former HUD chief operations officer, said that at the end of November 2016, a month after Matthew hit North Carolina, a bill containing nearly $200 million in recovery funds for North Carolina became law. The necessary notices were published in mid-January 2017.
By comparison, it has been about 460 days since the law containing the first pot of HUD money for Florence became law.
“It can be done much more quickly than this,” she said.
This reporting is financially supported by Report for America/GroundTruth Project and The North Carolina Local News Lab Fund, a component fund of the North Carolina Community Foundation. The News & Observer maintains full editorial control of the work. To support the future of this reporting, subscribe or donate.
This story was originally published January 21, 2020 at 12:45 PM with the headline "Hurricane Florence struck North Carolina in 2018. Will recovery money come in 2020?."