DCA Wants Your Opinion on Hurricane Ida Recovery Plan to Utilize over $228M in Fed Funds

The New Jersey Department of Community Affairs yesterday announced the opening of a 30-day public comment period for NJ residents to provide their thoughts on how to utilize the Hurricane Ida Recovery Action Plan.

The Hurricane Ida Recovery Action Plan details how the State will utilize $228,346,000 in federal Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) funds to help homeowners and communities to recover from the impact of Hurricane Ida.

The public comment period is currently open and will run through September 16, 2022, including in-person public hearings in Manville and Newark – among the municipalities hardest hit by Ida.

The current plan, currently up for public comment, was developed in consultation with residents, county and municipal officials, nonprofit organizations, and input received from thousands of residents who completed the Hurricane Ida Registration Survey.

The public comment period will help DCA incorporate residents’ feedback into the current action plan to determine the allocation of funds.

Currently, the State proposes to allocate $152 million to
housing programs that help homeowners restore their storm-damaged homes; supplement rental housing costs for low-income rental families impacted by Hurricane Ida; provide zero interest forgivable loans to owners of rental properties that require rehabilitation as a result of storm damages; subsidize the development of resilient and affordable housing in lower flood risk areas; buy out residential properties located in flood-prone areas.

An additional $1 million is proposed to provide supportive services such as housing counseling and legal aid to renters and homeowners impacted by Hurricane Ida.

The State also proposes to allocate $58 million to
infrastructure programs that help impacted communities become more resilient to current and future natural hazards, protect publicly funded recovery investments in impacted communities, and fund the non-federal cost share for State and local facilities eligible under FEMA’s Public Assistance program.

The State additionally proposes to allocate $6 million to
planning programs that develop a Statewide Housing Mitigation Strategy Tool to assess the housing stock in disaster-impacted and at-risk areas and that build on the existing efforts of Resilient NJ, a comprehensive climate resilience planning, guidance, and technical assistance program set up following Superstorm Sandy to support local and regional climate resilience planning.

Pursuant to HUD guidelines, at least 80 percent of the CDBG-DR funds must be spent in counties most impacted and distressed (MID) by Hurricane Ida, including Bergen, Essex, Hudson, Middlesex, Passaic, Somerset, and Union.

The remaining 20 percent of funds may be used in other Ida-impacted counties, including Gloucester, Hunterdon, Mercer, Morris, and Warren.

Under the guidelines, at least 70 percent of the total CDBG-DR funding must go toward projects that directly benefit low- and moderate-income residents or investments in infrastructure that serve a majority of these residents.

The public hearings on the Hurricane Ida Action Plan will be held:

Thursday, September 8, 2022 (6:00pm – 8:00pm)
Manville High School
School Auditorium
1100 Brooks Boulevard
Manville, NJ 08835

Monday, September 12, 2022 (6:00pm – 8:00pm)
New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT)
Campus Center Ballroom, Second Floor
150 Bleeker Street
Newark, NJ 07102

In addition to providing comments at the public hearing, residents may also submit their comments through the DCA website, by email to DisasterRecoveryandMitigation@dca.nj.gov, or by mail to the attention of Constituent Services, Division of Disaster Recovery and Mitigation, NJ Department of Community Affairs, 101 South Broad Street, P.O. Box 823, Trenton, NJ 08625-0823.

All comments must be received on or before September 16, 2022, at 5:00 pm EST.

DCA will submit the Action Plan for approval to the Office of Housing and Urban Development no later than September 28, 2022, for review and approval.

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