A new competition for federal disaster relief funds will reward creative and forward-thinking proposals that build resilience within communities, rather than those that simply rebuild in the same places according to older methods, said Harriet Tregoning, director of the Office of Economic Resilience at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).
In remarks to attendees of ULI’s Building the Resilient City: Risks and Opportunities conference held in San Francisco September 4–5, Tregoning laid out the specifics for the National Disaster Resilience Competition, first announced in June. The competition promises nearly $1 billion in federal aid to communities across the United States devastated by floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, and torrential storms that have occurred with greater frequency in recent years due to climate change.
Launching this month, the competition has generated enormous interest among all 50 states and 17 additional localities eligible to apply. The goal is to “make resiliency the ‘new normal’ and the new ‘business-as-usual’ ” in areas that received a major disaster declaration from the federal government in 2011–2013, Tregoning said, adding that there were over 200 major disaster declarations during this period.
The $1 billion in HUD community development block grants the competition offers will reward ideas that address a spectrum of community needs beyond disaster preparedness and relief, Tregoning said. She urged states and localities to consider whether they have the right mix of housing, transportation choices, amenities, and sufficient economic diversity so that job loss and industry closure don’t become additional casualties of natural disasters.
“Let’s not just think about disaster recovery,” she said. “What are the ways we can provide people the things they want and need and that will benefit them every day? . . . What are the other goals and objectives that can be realized even as that community gets made more resilient?”
This competition continues many of the themes highlighted by Rebuild by Design, the 2013 HUD competition in which high-profile design firms created regional resilience strategies for Northeast communities hit by Hurricane Sandy. Proposals submitted to the National Disaster Resilience Competition will be judged in two phases: the first, focused on risk assessment and planning; and the second, focused on design and implementation of the plans.
Tregoning emphasized that the private sector will be critical partners in helping states and localities develop resilience. She described resilience as just one of many “real estate fundamentals” that investors seek out in “places of enduring value.” Along with a strong transportation network, a well-educated workforce, and amenities, resilience completes what she calls the “bundles of attributes” that investors and developers look for before making capital investments.
She encouraged applicants to think big and enlist corporate, philanthropic, and nonprofit partners to execute plans: “You’re not going to win unless you’ve got a lot of skin in the game . . . unless you’re doing things that HUD isn’t going to pay for.”
She also cautioned applicants that although federal funds awarded through the competition are intended to stimulate resilience planning, resilience as an overarching principle needs to be woven into daily decision making on how tax dollars are spent. Right now, disaster relief funds are rarely used by local and state governments to “vault themselves into the future and to prepare themselves in every way for the future that is coming.”
“Every day, states and localities spend hundreds of millions of dollars on roads, on parks, on buildings, and on infrastructure—all of it oblivious to [resilience],” she said.
