Disaster Recovery
The natural disasters of 2008 prompted the designation of 88 Iowa counties to be
presidentially declared disaster areas. IDED received, through two (CDBG( Disaster
Recovery appropriations from Congress, nearly $800 million dollars to assist recovery
efforts. Implementation began as soon as the first appropriation was approved by
the president in anticipation of the receipt of these funds. A distribution
system was quickly initiated through a combination of entitlement cities and merged
Councils of Governments (COG) regions. Subsequently, allocation decisions for
each activity were determined and distributed to these entities. A Duplication
of Benefit process was designed, as required by the federal Stafford Act, and has
been named a model program by the HUD disaster office. The first CDBG dollars
were “on the street” within four months of HUD’s notification
of funds availability to the state. In other disaster impacted states, funds
did not flow for more than two years in many instances.
Activities designed and coordinated with other state agencies and the Rebuild Iowa
Office include:
- Jumpstart Housing - A program designed to provide funds to repair
damaged homes, bring them up to building standards and meet lead safe housing requirements. A
maximum of $60,000 per project was allowed.
- Jumpstart Express – A secondary housing repair program which
provided funds to repair homes, bring them up to building standards without the
abatement requirements of lead safe housing regulations. A maximum of $24,999
per project was allowed.
- Interim Mortgage Assistance - An activity was created to assist
disaster victims with mortgage assistance dollars on their flood damaged home. Initially
HUD allowed only three months of assistance but granted the state’s waiver
request and extended this benefit to 20 months of assistance or time of buyout whichever
came first.
- Homebuyer’s Assistance - This program provided up to $60,000
for disaster victims to use as down payment assistance on a replacement home and
also to bring the replacement home up to building standards if necessary.
- Rental Rehab Assistance – Landlords were the recipient of
this activity as it provided up to $24,999 per unit damaged in the 2008 disasters. Units
which were owner occupied were excluded.
- Single Family New Production - This program provided cities and
COG regions with an allocation of funds to incent developers to build new single
family homes by providing a 30 percent subsidy to the buyer of the home. The maximum
home price allowed was $180,000 and the maximum subsidy was $54,000.
- Multi-Family New Production - An activity was designed to incent
developers to build multi-family projects up to 12 units in disaster impacted communities
to replace lost units. The program provided a subsidy of $60,000 per unit and
required an affordability period of 5 years and restricted both rent levels on the
units and tenant income levels of those who could live there.
- Infrastructure Repair and Replacement - An allocation of $122 million
dollars was allocated to repair and replace damaged infrastructure in disaster impacted
areas. Since limited dollars were available in contrast to the need, efforts
focused on health and safety and flood mitigation projects. Program decision
making process worked closely with I-JOBS and FEMA funded projects to leverage dollars
further.
- Jumpstart Business - An activity designed to assist businesses to
recover from the initial impact of the flood. The award was based on
physical or economic damages as the result of the disasters. A maximum of
$50,000 dollars per business was provided.
- Business Rental Assistance - A program created to enhance viability
of disaster damaged commercial buildings by providing 6 months of rental assistance
to businesses that continued to occupy or agreed to newly occupy disaster damaged
commercial rental space. A maximum of $50,000 per business based on lease was
allowed.
- Steam heat system retrofit program - A central steam plant in Cedar
Rapids which provided heat for 150-200 businesses in the downtown core of Cedar
Rapids was damaged beyond repair. Businesses dependent upon this system had
to retrofit their buildings to provide their own internal mechanicals for heating
their buildings. $16 million dollars was provided to assist businesses in the
retrofit.
- Four new business programs were under development at the end of
FY 2009 which include an expansion of the Business Rental Assistance program to
include machinery and equipment, Business loan assistance which pays for interest
costs on business loans, Income Gap assistance for commercial building owners and
Income Gap assistance for residential rental owners.
- A new Buyout Duplication of Benefit policy was also under development
which provided gap assistance for survivors that were faced with the prospect of
purchasing a more expensive home after the buyout occurred.
- A full time staff of temporary employees have been hired to administer
this program in cooperation with the current IDED staff who are tenured employees
at IDED with years of experience in CDBG, Housing, Environmental and Lead Safe Housing
federal requirements. Many of these employees had been through the 1993 disasters
and were able to provide guidance through this massive effort. As a result,
the state was able to save tens of millions of dollars in consulting contracts that
other states have used to administer the CDBG programs in disaster appropriations,
which in turn provided more funds to survivors rather than to administration.