The U.S. House Financial Services Committee’s Housing and Insurance Subcommittee held a hearing on local needs in disaster recovery, where Subcommittee Chairman Mike Flood used his prepared opening remarks to argue that the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery program is structurally flawed. He said the program is not authorized in statute, relies on supplemental appropriations after disasters, and requires HUD to effectively rewrite the rules for each allocation, which has slowed funding, complicated use by local governments, and weakened oversight. Flood cited a January HUD Office of Inspector General report showing that of USD 109.8 billion allocated through CDBG-DR since inception, USD 64.7 billion has been spent, or about 59%. He pointed to lower spending rates in specific allocations, including about 4.5% of USD 2 billion provided to Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands for 2018 electrical power outages and about 16% of USD 16.1 billion allocated for mitigation activities from 2015 to 2018. He also said the program’s placement within the broader CDBG framework forces disaster recovery funds to fit national objectives that are not designed around recovery needs, creating further administrative difficulty for HUD and grantees. In his remarks, Flood questioned proposals to permanently authorize CDBG-DR in its current form and said the hearing would examine whether federal disaster recovery assistance should be structured differently rather than codifying the existing approach.
U.S. Financial Services Committee2026-06-10
U.S. House Financial Services Committee hearing highlights slow spending and structural flaws in HUD disaster recovery program
The U.S. House Financial Services Committee’s Housing and Insurance Subcommittee held a hearing on disaster recovery, where Chairman Mike Flood argued that HUD’s Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery program is structurally flawed and lacks statutory authorization. He cited low disbursement rates—only 59% of USD 109.8 billion allocated—and particularly low spending in Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and mitigation projects. Flood said integrating CDBG-DR into the broader CDBG framework complicates administration and oversight, questioned permanently authorizing the program in its current form, and said the hearing would examine alternative federal disaster recovery structures.