HUD awards $206 million for NC Florence recovery, but $336 million remains on hold
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development announced Tuesday that North Carolina will be allocated an additional $206.1 million in Hurricane Florence recovery funds, causing Gov. Roy Cooper to express frustration about a process that has left storm-battered parts of the state still waiting for a $336.5 million allocation that was announced seven months ago.
“More money for storm recovery is important, but Hurricane Florence hit our state well over a year ago and we still can’t access money from HUD for survivors of that storm. It’s clear that we need Washington to make reforms to the way (these) funds are distributed so that we can help people faster,” Cooper said in a prepared statement.
Tuesday’s announcement brings the total awarded amount of Community Development Block Grant-Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) funds to $542.6 million, money that is typically used for housing and other recovery efforts that would otherwise go unfunded. But HUD has not yet published the Federal Register notice for the first tranche of Florence money, which was announced in May.
The current wait for the $336.5 million in Hurricane Florence money isn’t the first time North Carolina has been unable to access announced CDBG-DR funds. After announcing in April 2018 that North Carolina would receive $168 million in CDBG-DR funds in response to 2016’s Hurricane Matthew, HUD did not publish the Federal Register notice describing how the state could use the money until August 2019 — 16 months later.
N.C. Office of Recovery and Resiliency (NCORR) officials have been crafting a plan outlining how the Matthew funds will be spent, a document that HUD must approve before the state can start spending the money. That process will include public hearings Tuesday in Goldsboro and Thursday in Beaufort.
NCORR’s current draft plan for the Matthew mitigation money describes $109.2 million of the $168 million being used for strategic buyouts, while $42 million would be spent building affordable housing. The remaining $16.8 million would be spent on planning and administrative funds.
In total, North Carolina has received $404.5 million for Matthew, including two tranches of CDBG-DR funds totaling $236.5 million. When those funds are added to the Florence recovery money, the state stands to receive $947.1 million to aid with the recovery from the two storms.
North Carolina was long classified as a slow spender of CDBG-DR funds, but HUD in October switched the state’s classification to “on pace,” a designation meaning the state is using the money at a rate that leads HUD to believe it will use all funds before the grant closes.
Officials from both parties have expressed frustration with the amount of time it takes HUD to publish Federal Register notices. Cooper and U.S. Rep. David Price, both Democrats, support the formal authorization of CDBG-DR, which would eliminate the need to wait for publications in the Federal Register.
During a recent interview with The News & Observer, Price, chairman of the Appropriations subcommittee overseeing HUD, said, “As (CDBG-DR) becomes a more common form of assistance, there needs to be authorizing legislation. You reach a point in the development of a program where you need to regularize it, you need to make it more efficient, you need to make it clear to all concerned what the rules are. That’s what authorization does.”
Authorization of CDBG-DR is included in H.R. 3702, which passed the House in November.
U.S. Rep. David Rouzer, a Wilmington Republican, opposed H.R. 3702, citing the slow pace of CDBG-DR allocations. Rouzer intends to soon introduce a bill that would scrap HUD’s involvement and CDBG-DR entirely, instead using the Federal Emergency Management Agency as a pass-through agency and sending long-term recovery dollars to states as block grants.
“I don’t think any one individual is to blame,” Rouzer said of slow spending, “I don’t think any one agency is to blame, I think the process is too complex, too convoluted and I think it’s set up for failure. It’s set up to be exceptionally slow.”
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.
This story was originally published December 3, 2019 at 6:46 PM.