Meeting unmet community disaster recovery needs

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) provides flexible Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) funds to help cities, counties, and states recover from Presidentially declared disasters. Grantees must develop and publish an Action Plan documenting the proposed use of the CDBG-DR funding and publish for public input.

In our experience, while Action Plan aims among CDBG-DR grantees can vary greatly, there are ideas and lessons with respect to improving grant use, effectiveness, and efficiency that are universal. In this issue brief, we explore approaches to increasing CDBG-DR use, efficiency, performance, and accountability, as state and local governments prepare to develop and implement CDBG-DR Action Plans.