Disaster Assistance Equity Act

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DISASTER ASSISTANCE EQUITY ACT OF 2017

REP. MARK SANFORD

Background

• The Stafford Act empowers the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to provide federal assistance to individuals and communities affected by natural disasters.

• There are two primary forms of federal disaster assistance:
  • The Public Assistance (PA) Program is focused on enabling communities to recover through helping municipal governments clear debris and repair damaged infrastructure.
  • The Individual Assistance (IA) Program focuses on providing assistance to individuals and households including home repair and providing temporary housing and other essential consumer goods.

• Over 70 million Americans live in homeowners associations, housing cooperatives, and condominium associations that provide common services in lieu of a municipal government such as roads and wastewater systems.

Problem

• Natural disasters often impose crippling costs on homeowners associations, housing cooperatives, and condominium associations, and especially have an adverse impact in areas that have been affected by frequent natural disasters.

• Despite that municipal governments and public buildings can receive federal assistance to recover after a natural disaster; homeowners associations, condominiums, and housing cooperatives are often unable to receive assistance unless they go through a time-consuming process to try to receive a waiver from FEMA.

• This is unfair considering that these community associations provide services similar to that of a government to their residents and residents pay taxes to the federal government.

Solution

• The Disaster Assistance Equity Act would close this gap by making two changes to the Safford Act.

1. Make homeowners associations eligible for Public Assistance for debris clearance and repair of common infrastructure.
2. Enable condominium associations and housing cooperatives to be eligible for Individual Assistance.