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Chicago's Millennium Park. Photo Credit: Center for Neighborhood Technology

Credit: Center for Neighborhood Technology, Creative Commons. Image.

 

Building Climate Resilience

 

Several HUD programs already provide significant resources to help communities recover from and build resilience to climate hazards and natural disasters, particularly low- and moderate-income communities who are especially vulnerable due to current and historic discrimination and disinvestment:

  • The Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program is both a flexible and widespread program, reaching over 1,200 local governments in all states and territories. The program’s scope and promotion of community-specific solutions make CDBG a powerful tool for climate resilience which requires jurisdictions to incorporate resilience to natural hazard risks into their Consolidated Plan and discuss how climate change will increase those risks and how they plan to address the impacts of climate change on low- and moderate-income residents.
  • The Indian Community Development Block Grant (ICDBG) Program provides eligible grantees with direct grants for use in developing Indian and Alaska Native communities, including the provision of decent housing, a suitable living environment, and economic opportunities, primarily for low- and moderate-income persons.
  • Through the Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery and Mitigation programs HUD has helped 137 communities of all sizes recover from recent disasters and mitigate the risk from future ones. The $89.8 billion appropriated for disaster recovery and $16 billion for risk mitigation are the Federal government’s largest investment in recovery and resilience in low-to-moderate-income communities.

Under the Climate Action Plan, HUD will work to increase the resilience of communities nationwide through improving climate resources and continuing investment in areas most vulnerable to the impacts of climate threats by:

  • Collecting more and more complete building- and community-level climate risk data;
  • Researching the effectiveness of resilience measures and using the results to drive decision-making;
  • Incorporating climate-related financial risk into underwriting standards, loan terms and conditions, and asset management and servicing procedures;
  • Integrating resilience and environmental justice principles into the CDBG-DR program;
  • Strengthening flood resilience standards for all HUD-assisted or FHA-insured projects; and
  • Providing new and updated community resilience, sustainability and environmental justice training and resources.

In addition, the Climate Action Plan identifies specific actions HUD will take to accelerate the process of recovery from historic natural disasters in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

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