The 2019 hurricane season in the Atlantic is underway and with it brings the threat of dangerous winds, storm surges and flooding to many coastal states. But hurricanes are not the only natural disasters that devastate American communities. President Dwight D. Eisenhower issued the first federal disaster declaration in 1953 after a tornado devastated four counties in Georgia. Since then, more than 4,000 disasters have received this designation. This year, 44 federal disaster declarations have been issued for 26 states and one U.S. territory. Since June 1, Louisiana, South Dakota, North Dakota, Idaho and Vermont have all received major disaster declarations. Responding to and recovering from disasters concerns everyone elected to protect and serve others.

But as I discovered leading the housing assistance mission after Hurricane Harvey, even though we are a nation of innovation, the federal disaster recovery process remains outdated, cumbersome and costly.

Hurricane Harvey was the second-largest storm in U.S. history, and it devastated my home state of Texas. About 30 percent of Texans were directly affected, and more than 750,000 people evacuated their homes. The scale of the disaster recovery was made even worse by the fact that two other major hurricanes struck American territory within 39 days: Harvey was followed five days later by Irma hitting Florida and then Maria decimating Puerto Rico.

I was in Houston mucking out homes with a group of military veteran volunteers, when I got a call from Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. The governor said he was tapping me and my agency, the Texas General Land Office, to partner with the Federal Emergency Management Agency on the short-term disaster housing mission. Traditionally, FEMA had sole responsibility for temporarily housing displaced residents, but the scale of this disaster was enormous. In addition to the deadly storms, wildfires burned more than half-a-million acres of California in 2017. With available federal recovery resources stretched extremely thin, this operation called for more direct oversight at the state level and we were eager to serve. For the first time in history, a state agency would partner with FEMA in carrying out a disaster housing mission. Over the next two years, my state agency and FEMA would help more than 60,000 Texans return home after the storm through assistance programs that provided both temporary housing units and repairs.

As I tackled this new mission, I quickly encountered two problems that impeded the short-term recovery process.

FIRST, WE LEARNED that federal law limits FEMA to providing “temporary” housing under the Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act of 1988. That definition tied our hands and prevented the use of innovative solutions. This language values short-term fixes over long-term solutions, creating an expensive and ineffective approach to distributing disaster recovery housing resources. The manufactured houses and travel trailers predominantly used by FEMA after natural disasters are extremely costly. After purchasing the unit, transportation, installation, recertification, other administrative costs, disconnection and removal, the costs per unit typically incur between $125,000 to $200,000.

A plethora of alternative housing options are available now that were not on the market when the Stafford Act passed in 1988, replacing the Disaster Relief Act of 1974. Some of these innovative housing solutions were developed in Texas, where we have a history of repeat disasters such as hurricanes, tornadoes, wildfires and floods. These options include stackable shipping containers, small modular homes and expandable “core unit” housing utilized under an initiative called RAPIDO, a temporary-to-permanent housing strategy that provides a safe, “core” home that is customizable to meet the family’s needs for about $60,000. Owners can add on to these units as needed later on. An Austin-based 3D home technology company, ICON, can print sturdy, 600- to 800-square-foot homes in less than 24 hours for $4,000. These homes can be placed quickly and left permanently for a fraction of the cost of a temporary FEMA trailer. They can also withstand subsequent hurricane or flooding events.

Even though many of these innovative options are cheaper, more durable and quickly deployable, “permanent” housing is ineligible under the Stafford Act. The manufactured housing units and travel trailers traditionally utilized by FEMA sit on axles, meaning you can haul it away after use – therefore passing the “temporary” housing test. After use, FEMA refurbishes former temporary housing units in good enough condition and the General Services Administration auctions them off, but typically for a small fraction of their cost. We can agree that the current disaster recovery process is not cost-effective.



SECOND, FEDERAL LAW prevented coordination with local officials to help displaced residents. With nearly 1 million applications for FEMA assistance submitted, county judges, mayors and other local leaders asked repeatedly for information on who needed help. FEMA controlled the application process and provided my team the names of only those deemed eligible for short-term disaster housing assistance. The federal assistance application process is daunting. It requires survivors to submit the same onerous application whether they need simple financial assistance, a small business loan, or short-term housing. Further, we had no information on who was found ineligible; therefore, community leadership had no ability to explain to constituents why they were declined for help. Many were deemed ineligible due to an error that could be easily corrected, but often the applicant gave up in frustration. Without knowing who was rejected, we could not work with survivors to file an appeal or find other forms of assistance until my staff was cleared after eight weeks of federal background checks.

Additionally, we were prohibited by the federal Privacy Act of 1974 from providing any “personally identifiable information” of eligible applicants to anyone outside the program. Local leaders trying to coordinate volunteer groups and potentially distribute donated resources were baffled by the unnecessary barriers to helping survivors at a time when expediency was critical. County judges and mayors from affected areas all along the Texas coast, such as Rockport/Fulton, Kingwood, Dickinson, Port Arthur and more, were calling me daily asking for help connecting those who needed help with the volunteer organizations that were showing up on the doorsteps of their county courthouses and city halls. I personally attended more than a hundred hearings, briefings, meetings and events in affected communities to relay information and answer questions, but I couldn’t provide a simple list of names and phone numbers for those needing help. During this time of crisis, federal privacy laws choked the flow of information and recovery resources to those in need and there was nothing those of us on the ground could do to fix it.

There are two relatively easy steps federal leaders could take to drastically improve the short-term disaster housing mission:

1. Congress should amend the Stafford Act to remove the word “temporary” from the requirements, therefore allowing cost-effective, permanent resources to house displaced residents.

2. FEMA should amend the application for assistance to allow people to voluntarily make their data available shareable with their state and local government authorities.

The lessons Texas learned in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey can help all states facing natural disasters. Congress should learn these lessons from Texas now, before catastrophic events hit Americans in other parts of the country. On the one-year anniversary after landfall, I released a lessons-learned report, Hurricane Harvey: Texas at Risk, with policy recommendations for local, state and federal officials to improve the disaster recovery process.

We can’t stop natural disasters from happening, but we can innovate the way in which we respond and rebuild.

George P. Bush is commissioner for the Texas General Land Office, the state agency tasked with leading the disaster recovery housing mission after Hurricane Harvey, the second-most destructive storm in American history.

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