HUD Stories

Iowa is still suffering from the flooding and storms it experienced last May and June. 

While some progress toward recovery has been made, we still have a long road ahead to overcome the massive devastation of the worst natural disaster in Iowa’s history. This disaster is also unique in that we lost so much public infrastructure, including city and county offices, courthouses, a major urban library and a central fire station.  We have had amazing support from our citizens, charitable foundations and employers.  However, this event was so extreme that the financial cost goes way beyond our ability as state to deal with the recovery.  We know we're going to be paying more for this in taxes, personal investment and personal charitable giving.

Iowa has had more than 24,842 individuals who have qualified for housing assistance. 

Many of these folks still are not back in their homes or are living in inadequate conditions – this even though it has been over seven months since the disaster.  Unlike the Flood of 1993, in which 40% of the federal aid went for prevention and mitigation, we have not even been able to fund basic housing needs.

Supplemental funding

The 110th Congress appropriated supplemental funding through the Community Development Block Grant program (CDBG) for Iowa, and other disaster-affected states (in P.L. 110-252 and P.L. 110-32) to help the state’s recovery efforts.  The legislation passed last Congress left the allocations of funds up to HUD. To date only 1/3 of the money has been allocated.  In that first allocation, Iowa did not receive the share that is necessary for it to meaningfully recover.

Either:

  1. We ask (Cong/senator) to reach out to HUD and ask them to review the next allocation carefully to ensure that the appropriated dollars go to the areas that suffered the greatest loss and are least able to recover on their own.
  2. We reinforce with HUD officials that the next allocation must come in a timely way for hope of recovery to be maintained. The new HUD leaders must take a comprehensive look at the flaws in the previous methodologies and correct those before moving forward, particularly by including, and properly weighting, public assistance.

The next allocation of disaster CDBG funds must better recognize the magnitude of the disaster that Iowa faces and will continue to face for the next decade or longer.