The USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) administers a program that assists in many of these situations and is especially helpful to rural communities across the country. The Emergency Watershed Protection Program (EWP) responds to emergencies created by natural disasters and is designed to help people and conserve natural resources by relieving imminent hazards to life and property caused by floods, fires, windstorms and other natural occurrences. Funding is subject to availability. (Source: USDA)
HUD provides a variety of disaster resources listed below and also partners with federal and state agencies to help implement disaster recovery assistance. Its programs include:
For a presidentially declared disaster, FHA activates a mortgagee letter making a variety of insured loan programs available for disaster victims and putting into play use of special loan servicing and underwriting requirements.
Ginnie Mae encourages all single-family, manufactured housing and multi-family Ginnie Mae issuers who offer forbearance to provide it to mortgagors in areas receiving a presidential disaster declaration.
HUD provides flexible grants to help cities, counties and states recover from presidentially declared disasters, especially in low-income areas, subject to availability of supplemental appropriations. In response to presidentially declared disasters, Congress may appropriate additional funding for the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program as Disaster Recovery grants to rebuild the affected areas and provide crucial seedmoney to start the recovery process. Since CDBG Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) assistance may fund a broad range of recovery activities, HUD can help communities and neighborhoods that otherwise might not recover due to limited resources. (Source: HUD)
The FTA’s Emergency Relief Programwas established under MAP-21 and enables the FTA to provide assistance (when funding is available) to public transit operators in the aftermath of an emergency or major disaster.