2019-11-15 HCHA Approved Minutes

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Special HCHA meeting November 15, 2019 The disaster recovery process, and again, I guess, I should apologize, the disaster recovery experience for the last 20 years has almost entirely flood related...and hurricane, floods. The rare earthquake and so a volcano recovery effort is a brand new thing for HUD, so we'll be learning a little bit and applying what we can apply from other experience. The way the disaster recovery funds come through it's a special allocation, it's not an allocation...annual allocation, so when congress decides its necessary they approve legislation allocating funds for eligible disasters over a specific time period, 2018, 2019. HUD actually crunches all the numbers. We use SBA and FEMA application data to come up with the form of allocating the funds across the country, all the grantees across the country based on the unmet need. It comes out in the federal register we talked about. It gets published there, then it's official. HUD awards the CDBG funds to specific grantees generally a state and local...mostly states, sometimes local governments, who actually administer the grant programs. CDBGs basic theory of operation since 1974 is that the local government knows best how to spend the funds, so we create general perimeters but the actual uses are determined as locally as possible so that's the basis of our...we'II allocate the funds, the local...the grantee will decide what the needs are, and decide what response, recovery efforts are appropriate for their community. They create the plan then we distribute the funds according to that plan. Like I said we've been here since...disaster funds since 1992. We do have...the basis of our funding is the actual CDBG regulations but there's with the federal register we operate with extensive waivers and special requirements to respond to the flexibility of individual grantees, grantees needs, they'll be a lot of waivers that you'll want to explore to make the funding work best for your community. The CDBG-DR funds were recover not response funds, the "R" stands for recovery, not response and it really is long term recovery and we want things...you don't put back what was there, you decides what's best to be done...bigger, better, stronger is often the case with that long term recovery resiliency mindset. Our funds are meant to fill the gap that others funding sources don't reach, whether that's private insurance or other federal programs, we will fund the unmet. Our finds are available for the unmet...unmet need gap after all the other funding sources have come in. We don't replace other federal funding sources. So what HUD does after the grant agreement has...after the grant funds have been awarded is we review the actions plans, your decisions on how to fund the program. We provide guidance, technical assistance, either through DRSI staff or consultants and then we will monitor throughout the course of the grant Page 3 of 31