Significant portion will be allocated for wildfire recovery, will help efforts across the state
In a statement released on April 11, California Representatives Jared Huffman and Mike Thompson announced that California had been awarded $212 million in federal funding through the Community Development Block Grant – Disaster Relief (CDBG-DR) program to provide long-term recovery from the fires of 2017. The statement says Huffman and Thompson advocated to the administration and congressional leadership to help secure disaster relief funding through the Bipartisan Budget Act.
“From the Redwood Valley and Potter Valley fires in Mendocino, to the Pocket Fire in Geyserville, to the Tubbs Fire in Santa Rosa, the communities we represent were hit with an indescribable level of devastation from one of the worst wildfires in our state’s history,” said Huffman in the statement. “As we join together and move forward in rebuilding our communities, houses, and lives, I’m glad to see California receive this much-needed federal support. I will continue to work with local and federal partners and advocate for all the resources that the North Coast needs during the long road to recovery.”
“Our district was hit hard by the fires of last fall, but we have come together as federal, state and local partners to support each other, rebuild and recover. This is about our community and the people who have been deeply impacted by these terrible disasters and it’s why I am pleased our state has been awarded more than $200 million in CDBG disaster relief funding,” said Thompson in the statement. “Our work is not finished; I will continue working with partners from across our district as we rebuild our communities.”
The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) awards CDBG-DR grants to support many different recovery efforts, including but not limited to housing needs, economic revitalization and improvements to infrastructure.
California will receive $212 million, with $124 million to unmet needs and $88 million for mitigation efforts. The state will determine a recovery plan, allotting these funds to the most affected regions and that plan will then be approved by HUD.
California’s $212 million is part of a $28 billion relief package; $12 billion will go to support disaster recovery in areas hit hard in 2017, including California, Florida, Georgia, Texas, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virginia Islands and Missouri.
Those areas, along with Louisiana, the Carolinas and West Virginia, the city of San Marcos, Texas and the South Carolina counties of Lexington and Richland are receiving an additional $16 billion for mitigation, broadly described in a HUD statement as “actions taken to protect communities from the predictable damage from future events.”
According to Felicity Gasser, policy and communications liaison for the Sonoma County Community Development Commission, the specifics of the funding are still unknown, but will likely become clear after the “federal register,” essentially the guidelines and rules for the funding, comes out in about a week.
“Right now there is limited information about how much we will receive,” Gasser said. “A large portion will go to the city of Santa Rosa and then the county, because we had the largest impact from the October fires.”
Gasser said that there is a layer of rules governing the types of projects which can be paid for with Community Development Block Grants, primarily infrastructure, housing and economic revitalization.
The disaster relief component will likely add additional layer of options, including new housing construction, disaster preparedness and mitigation measures, which can include things like the use of fire resistant materials or relocation, and repair or replacement of damaged infrastructure.
While it isn’t yet clear how the money will come to the county, Gasser says it’s likely to come through the state and that collaboration will be key. “(The other thing) the register will tell us is whether the money is coming as direct allocation or coming through state. We are hearing, because it’s a relatively small amount of money, it will likely go through the state,” she said. “We are operating under that assumption, and have already begun conversations with the state department of housing. We are all being very collaborative and working to make sure we get the money on the ground as efficiently as possible.”
The county has started conversations on a “wish list” of projects, according to Gasser, with various officials, but the final selection process will be a public one, at both the local and state levels.
“Generally, the register will give 90 days for the recipient to prepare an action plan that describes the unmet need and describes proposed projects and programs and they will be made public for a set period,” she said, adding, “One important caveat, the recipients of these grants are state and local governments. These are not funds to make individual cash assistance to survivors. They will fund projects that aid them, but these are not direct monies. Anything that gets this funding has to be supported by data that what is being funded addresses impacts of the fires.”
