The Disaster Housing Recovery Coalition (DHRC), comprising 850 local, state, and national organizations, urges Congress to ensure equitable distribution of federal disaster recovery resources, particularly to the lowest-income and most marginalized survivors who are often most severely affected and least equipped to recover. DHRC’s priorities include: 1) Directly appropriating funds for the Disaster Housing Assistance Program (DHAP) to provide longer-term rental assistance and case management for low-income survivors, addressing barriers to FEMA’s Transitional Shelter Assistance; 2) Increasing investments in the Community Development Block Grant – Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) program with enhanced public input requirements to ensure equitable distribution, especially benefiting marginalized communities; 3) Ensuring all federally subsidized affordable rental homes damaged or destroyed by disasters are replaced on a one-for-one basis through targeted resources from the Housing Trust Fund; 4) Requiring proportional allocation of CDBG-DR funds to address housing and infrastructure needs based on assessments, preventing diversion from low-income renters and people experiencing homelessness; 5) Granting people experiencing homelessness pre-disaster equal access to FEMA assistance and emergency shelter as renters; 6) Promoting job training and employment opportunities for low-income residents during recovery efforts using Section 3; 7) Enacting legislative reforms such as the “Reforming Disaster Recovery Act” and the “Housing Survivors of Major Disasters Act” to ensure fair and accessible assistance for all disaster survivors, including reforms to reduce wrongful denials of FEMA assistance and protect tenants from post-disaster evictions. These priorities aim to rectify historical inequities in disaster recovery and build stronger, more resilient communities for all survivors.

https://nlihc.org/explore-issues/projects-campaigns/disaster-housing-recovery/policy