The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) issues this Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) to invite applications from eligible applicants for the program and purpose described within this NOFO.
Donor Name: Department of Housing and Urban Development
State: All States
County: All Counties
Type of Grant: Grant
Deadline: 07/19/2022
Size of the Grant: $600,000
Grant Duration: 24 months
Details:
This NOFO announces the availability of $600,000 to study the effectiveness of disaster recovery funding after wildfire. HUD anticipates awarding one or more cooperative agreements. The goal of the research is to increase the capacity of communities affected by wildfire to use disaster assistance to enhance resilience to wildfire, especially the resilience of low- and moderate-income persons and communities. HUD anticipates the need for such knowledge because in recent years wildfire disasters have become more frequent and destructive and HUD has sharply increased allocations of disaster assistance for wildfires through the Community Development Block Grant-Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) and Community Development Block Grant-Mitigation (CDBG-MIT) programs.
HUD’s Strategic Goals
HUD’s FY 2022-2026 Strategic Plan lays out this administration’s strategy for ensuring everyone has an affordable, healthy place to live. Over the course of the next four years HUD will pursue two overarching priorities focused on increasing equity and improving customer experience across all HUD programs. Five strategic goals undergird the Plan as follows:
- Strategic Goal 1: Support Underserved Communities
- Strategic Goal 2: Ensure Access to and Increase the Production of Affordable Housing
- Strategic Goal 3: Promote Homeownership
- Strategic Goal 4: Advance Sustainable Communities
- Strategic Goal 5: Strengthen HUD’s Internal Capacity
HUD’s disaster assistance funds, awarded as CDBG-DR and CDBG-MIT grants, could be a useful resource for supporting community adaptation to wildfire, especially for enhancing the resilience to wildfire of low- and moderate-income persons. Congress appropriates disaster recovery funds to HUD in response to specific disasters and the funds are flexible, facilitate local control, and must benefit primarily low- and moderate-income persons and communities. CDBG-DR and CDBG-MIT grants must be used for purposes that tie back to the specific disaster for which they were appropriated, but potential uses are broad and the funds are intended to support long-term recovery. CDBG-DR and CDBG-MIT grants typically
- Provide significant funding additional to other federal disaster response funding
- Are tied to Presidential declarations of major disaster
- Are often used to cover a grantee’s Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) cost share requirements
- Provide funds to cover needs not addressed by FEMA and Small Business Administration (SBA) disbursements
- Allow uses eligible under the regular CDBG program, which include a broad range of activities such as planning and capacity building, economic development, and relocation of displaced persons, among several others (Cecire and Jaroscak, 2020; HUD, 2001)
HUD intends to fund a study (or studies) that includes all of the following elements:
- Using a community studies approach
- Studying one or more communities affected by presidentially declared wildfire disasters that occurred during or after 2017, including at least one community that received CDBG-DR or CDBG-MIT funding
- Producing a picture that is as complete as possible of the disaster recovery and mitigation funding (including federal, state, and local public sources, and private sources) available to residents and to the community, and the activities supported by each source
- Describing community prioritization of resilience as part of the recovery process, and the role of disaster assistance in these processes, including prioritization of biophysical and social factors, individual and collective actions
- Assessing the extent to which the recovery activities supported by disaster assistance had positive, negative, and neutral impacts on the resilience to wildfire of low- and moderateincome persons and communities, looking at both biophysical and social factors that influence resilience to wildfire
- Including diverse perspectives from affected persons, considering especially forms of social exclusion (e.g., citizenship, homelessness, race or ethnicity, and disability) relevant in the studied sites
Funding Information
- Award Ceiling: $600,000
- Award Floor: $200,000
- Length of Project Periods: 24-month project period and budget period
Eligibility Criteria
- State governments
- County governments
- City or township governments
- Special district governments
- Public and State controlled institutions of higher education
- Native American tribal governments Federally recognized
- Native American tribal organizations other than Federally recognized tribal governments
- Nonprofits having a 501(c)(3) status with the IRS, other than institutions of higher education
- Nonprofits without 501(c)(3) status with the IRS, other than institutions of higher education
- Private institutions of higher education
- For profit organizations other than small businesses
- Small businesses
For more information, visit Grants.gov.
