U.S. Rep. Garret Graves (R-LA) wants to ensure that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) directly provides disaster relief funds to more than one Louisiana parish impacted by hurricanes and flooding.
“HUD has introduced new criteria that have not been approved by Congress. We have strong concerns that this could be an attempt to politically direct funding rather than simply getting the dollars to those most impacted and those with the greatest need,” Rep. Graves said in a March 23 statement. “It took HUD six months to simply say how much total funding would be available for Louisiana’s hurricane and storm victims. The last thing we need is some opaque, discriminatory process that further delays and distorts recovery funding to our impacted families.”
According to a March 22 letter the congressman sent to HUD Secretary Marcia Fudge, Congress in September 2021 passed a law to appropriate $5 billion to the Community Development Block Grant-Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) fund. HUD also recently announced its completed allocation of the down payment of recovery funds for natural disasters in 2020 and 2021, and directly provided $10.77 million to Lake Charles and $4.64 million for Baton Rouge to help communities recover from the severe storms of May 2021.
“However, it is concerning that only two local governments are directly receiving funds,” Rep. Graves wrote. “This leaves many of the hardest-hit and most impacted areas subject to the state’s determinations and an arduous bureaucratic process, which will mean many months before these areas know their unmet needs eligibility.”
Rep. Graves asked Fudge to detail what factors led to HUD’s decision to provide funds directly to Lake Charles and Baton Rouge, but not to other cities or parishes. “Was this choice a function of HUD’s existing CDBG entitlement formula, or were other determinations involved? If so, what were they?” he asked in his letter.
The congressman also questioned a reference in HUD’s recent funding announcement to “historically marginalized communities” and “underserved communities, especially communities of color” and how this might affect assistance to Cajun and native communities, according to his letter.
“I have previously voiced my concern about our broken disaster recovery delivery system to the Biden administration, particularly when new (and often political) eligibility criteria are injected into a disaster,” wrote Rep. Graves. “I am concerned that HUD is heading down a similar road with these new, vague criteria referenced in your announcement.”