FEMA Disaster Housing: The Individuals and Households Program—Implementation and Potential Issues for Congress

Summary

Following a major disaster declaration, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) may provide three principal forms of assistance. These include Public Assistance, which addresses repairs to a community and states’ or tribe’s infrastructure; Mitigation Assistance which provides funding for projects a state or tribe submits to reduce the threat of future damage; and Individual Assistance (IA) which provides help to individuals and families.

IA can include several programs, depending on whether the governor of the affected state or the tribal leader has requested that specific help. These can include Disaster Unemployment Assistance (DUA) for workers made unemployed by a disaster and not covered by the state’s standard unemployment program. IA can also include Crisis Counseling that provides assistance to state and local mental health organizations to assist disaster victims traumatized by an event. IA may also include Case Management services that help a state to organize potential forms of assistance for disaster survivors.

All of those programs can perform important tasks in the post-disaster environment to aid disaster survivors in reorienting their lives and returning to normal. But the principal IA program to offer such assistance is the Individuals and Households Program (IHP), authorized by Section 408 of the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act. The IHP provides temporary housing assistance as well as the Other Needs Assistance (ONA) grants that can provide necessary assistance for the replacement of lost items such as furniture and clothing. Funds to assist any household are currently capped at $33,000. This amount is adjusted annually according to the Consumer Price Index (CPI).

Federal disaster housing assistance has a long history that is not always best understood by concentration on the exceptional circumstances presented by Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. In fact, the Hurricane Sandy experience of the last several years may serve as a better guide to explain the form FEMA housing assistance takes in most disaster recovery operations.

While the Katrina experience suggested a general reliance on motel rooms, travel trailers, mobile homes, and even docked cruise ships, the great majority of disaster housing help comes in the form of repairs to a home to make it habitable and financial assistance to cover the cost of temporary rental units, such as available apartments in the disaster area. The use of mobile homes and travel trailers, what FEMA terms “direct assistance,” is rare and generally considered a last resort to be employed only when other housing options are not available in the immediate disaster area. But improvements have been made in this form of assistance and are reviewed here.

This report explains the traditional approach for temporary housing through the IHP program following a disaster, how it is implemented, and considers if the current policy choices are equitable for disaster victims. As a part of this examination, the report looks at other forms of housing repair assistance such as the Small Business Administration (SBA) Disaster Loan Program for homeowners as well as assistance that is provided, in some instances, through the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) Community Development Block Grant (CDBG-DR) program.

In recent years FEMA has catalogued its use of various forms of housing and the associated costs of each. This report will review those expenditures and provide information on the relative costs, and applications of, several categories of assistance.