Read with me: The FEMA Act of 2025 - Individual Assistance
Some very exciting proposals in the housing assistance space
In the last two posts of this series I summarized the FEMA Act’s provisions that would make FEMA an independent agency and significantly reform the Public Assistance (PA) program. Tonight’s blog will focus on reforms to the Individual Assistance (IA) program, which provides financial resources and direct services to individuals and households after major disasters.
Individual Assistance programs cover a wide range of disaster-related expenses, such as:
Cash assistance in the days after a disaster for immediate needs;
Temporary housing assistance while a household is displaced from their primary residence;
Home repair or replacement;
Personal property replacement;
Transportation repair or replacement;
Funeral or burial costs;
Crisis counseling;
Disaster legal services;
Disaster case management.
It is hard to overstate the importance of IA in shaping the public’s perception of FEMA; for the vast majority of disaster survivors, the main way that they interact with FEMA is through these programs. It is also crucial to know that FEMA only provides assistance for expenses that are not already covered by insurance or from other sources. FEMA’s laser like focus on avoiding the duplication of benefits has been a major sticking point with the public and advocates, not so much in the concept but in its execution. Over the years I’ve interviewed hundreds or even thousands of disaster survivors and many of the common complaints I hear revolve around things like the rejection of IA claims, delays in assistance, competing application deadlines from different federal programs, and frustrating dances between different sources of recovery funds.
The FEMA Act reforms the IA program in many significant ways. I’d encourage you to read the text of the bill yourself or the committee’s section-by-section summary, but the main highlights for me are:
Sections 201-202 (finally!) establishes the data sharing and legal mechanisms necessary to create a unified application for federal disaster aid. Currently (and ridiculously) all of the different federal programs require their own applications, many asking for the same information. It is confusing, inefficient and a huge waste of people’s time.
It is worth noting that many past legislative efforts have also focused on this issue, and there has been lots of bipartisan support…though not enough to actually get something to the President’s desk.
Section 203 does a nice bit of work on the duplication of benefits, by reintroducing language into the Stafford Act that clarifies that loans are not considered a duplicate benefit. It also makes a small but important change to the Stafford Act by amending language in this way:
The President, in consultation with the head of each Federal agency administering any program providing financial assistance to persons, business concerns, or other entities suffering losses as a result of a major disaster or emergency, shall assure that no such person, business concern, or other entity will receive such assistance with respect to any part of such loss as to which he has received financial assistance under any other program or from insurance
or any other source.
This change clarifies that assistance from sources like charitable donations (or GoFundMe) does not duplicate FEMA benefits and therefore make someone ineligible.
Sections 205-206 create a new ability of FEMA to make permanent repairs to damaged homes, when doing so is more cost effective than providing temporary housing assistance. It also allows hazard mitigation to be incorporated into the repair of owner-occupied housing. This section is, for me, the most impactful changes to IA in the bill. Much more analysis to follow, but it sets the stage for faster housing recovery. It also raises some important questions about how renters will be treated.
Section 207 is another major change re: FEMA and housing that allows the agency to provide direct assistance to households for housing repairs, rather than just providing monetary assistance that the household then uses to secure repair services. This would allow FEMA to directly provide housing repair assistance in places with low capacity for rebuilding (i.e. by sending in FEMA contracted companies) or for households who are unable to effectively use financial assistance. It also allows (if I am reading it correctly) for FEMA to provide direct assistance for the repair of private infrastructure, which is a major stumbling block for recovery in places like Western North Carolina.
Section 209 improves some areas of major friction in the IA program. First, it extends the length of time for direct temporary housing assistance (i.e. FEMA trailers or directly paid leases) from 18 months to 24 months. It also provides applicants who are denied FEMA assistance with more information and clearer explanations for why they were denied.
Section 212 makes a small but meaningful change to the Stafford Act that pegs the amount of rental assistance provided to households who are displaced form their homes to the fair market rent in their locality (the current language) AND any “local postdisaster rent increases.” It should probably come as no surprise that when disasters happen and lots of people are displaced into the rental market, rents tend to go up. And yet under the current rules the ‘fair market rent’ is usually pegged to housing market studies from before the disaster, forcing households to go out-of-pocket for the additional expense.
Section 214 is another important change that makes clear that not having a permanent fixed address (through homelessness, or living in a recreational vehicle, or other situations) should not disqualify a person or household from receiving temporary housing assistance. As long as those survivors can show or attest that they lived in the area of the disaster at the time of the disaster, they should qualify for assistance.
Section 215 is another important reform for people with limited financial means, which clarifies that qualifying for non-congregate sheltering assistance should not be predicated on providing a credit card or paying a security deposit.
Section 216 is one final reform that could have major implications, especially in lower-cost housing markets…that when a homeowner suffers a total loss, and if the cost of replacing the house (minus insurance proceeds) is less than providing direct housing assistance (like FEMA trailers), then FEMA can directly replace the home. I suspect that this would have important implications for owners of manufactured housing, specifically, or replacement of lower-cost homes with factory-built homes that are very cost competitive.
Tons to unpack here, and looking forward to doing so in the future. Next time, we go to hazard mitigation reforms.