Long-term effects of disasters: an ongoing threat to public health
2025 was a costly extreme weather year. January kicked off with the Palisades and Eaton wildfires, which caused an estimated 31 deaths in Los Angeles County and billions of dollars in economic damages. Texas experienced some of its worst flooding in decades in July, resulting in the deaths of more than 100 people, many of whom were children staying at an overnight summer camp. In October, flooding in Alaska led to at least one person’s death and the displacement of more than 1,500 others as whole villages were inundated from the remnants of Typhoon Halong.
However, even though 2025 is over, the effects of these disasters are not.
There is considerable interest from both sides of the political aisle in reforming FEMA. The reform conversation has largely focused on where responsibility for disaster response should sit – with the federal government, or with the states? But from a public health perspective, we should be talking about something even more important: our hyperfocus on short-term disaster effects that causes us to neglect the longer-term needs of disaster-affected survivors and communities.
Disasters create ripple effects on health that can extend into the months, years, and even decades after fires are put out, winds die down, and floodwaters recede. While these effects are hard to precisely measure, they are undeniably potent. Official data, for instance, indicate that hurricanes and other tropical cyclones cause an average of 24 deaths per storm. That number is too high – every death is a tragedy – but it pales in comparison to the 7,000 – 11,000 deaths that studies estimate actually come from storms’ longer-term consequences.
With extreme weather events becoming ever-more common, there is a national and moral imperative to rethink not just who responds to disasters, but for how long and to what end. This issue brief presents an overview of the ways in which disasters affect public health and well-being in the long term, as well as suggestions for disaster governance reform viewed through a public health lens.
Disasters impose sustained effects on physical and mental health
The evidence is clear: disasters cause suffering that persists long after national attention turns elsewhere. The same study cited above also found that the adverse health effects of hurricanes and other tropical cyclones were most pronounced in infants under the age of one almost two years after a given storm. If you do the math, this means the storms continued to increase the infants’ risk of death despite them not having even been conceived at landfall, suggesting that the true damage from hurricanes (and likely other natural hazards) comes from the stress they put on families and communities. This doesn’t just apply to infants, but other vulnerable groups, such as older adults. For example, older adults who lived through Superstorm Sandy had higher risks of cardiovascular disease and all-cause mortality five years after the storm had passed.
Why do exposures to extreme weather events have these long-term health impacts? More research is needed, but so far at least three likely pathways have been identified.
Disasters can expose survivors to hazardous conditions that increase their risk of chronic illnesses. For example, hazardous particles from wildfire smoke can settle into people’s lungs and negatively affect lung function for years, which is especially dangerous when individuals have pre-existing respiratory conditions like asthma or COPD. This decreased lung function has been shown to last at least two years after the wildfire for some individuals. Individuals living in high-risk areas where wildfires frequently occur may never get the chance to fully recover.
The physical damages from a disaster to the built and natural environments that surround survivors can become hazardous to human health. For instance, when disasters knock out power during a heatwave or cold snap, individuals can be exposed to dangerous temperature extremes. Heatwaves alone can increase the risk of chronic kidney disease, and can even make the body age faster, while those who have experienced heat illness and heat stroke are at risk of organ damage, including damage to the brain. Other disasters can spread harmful toxins. Floodwaters often contain hazardous waste from runoff and sewage system overflow, increasing the risk of illness in the months following the flood. Homes and businesses that flooded are also at risk of growing toxic mold, especially in warm and humid environments (like the hurricane-prone Southeast United States). What is especially challenging about mold is that it can be difficult to detect and can persist for years unless treated, leading to families living in toxic environments without ever knowing it. Exposure to mold increases the risk for various diseases and health problems, including asthma attacks and infections, and are particularly concerning for sensitive individuals, like those who are immunocompromised. Similarly, when wildfires burn houses, vehicles, and other infrastructure, this releases toxic ash and other debris into the air for hundreds of miles, contaminating the lands and waters of communities for years. Airborne toxins released during wildfires can settle on indoor surfaces and in heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems. These harmful exposures can contribute to serious long-term health conditions like cardiovascular and respiratory diseases and cancer.
Living through a disaster and then navigating a byzantine recovery landscape can contribute to chronic stress that takes a toll on mental and physical health. Several studies suggest that exposure to disasters increases the risk of mental health challenges like depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress, affects people of all age groups, including children, and can last for years. One study found that survivors of Hurricane Katrina were still dealing with post-traumatic stress symptoms twelve years later. Poor mental health can lead to poor physical health in the long term (such as an increased risk of chronic diseases and premature death), as people deal with the toll chronic stress can have on the body. This stress can also increase risk of cognitive decline and dementia, and considering that chronic stress is common among disaster survivors, it’s no wonder that wildfires, hurricanes, and heat waves have all been found to be associated with cognitive decline and dementia too.
Disasters disrupt healthcare delivery and operations
Access to healthcare, including going to doctor’s appointments, getting prescription refills, and receiving specialty treatment (like chemotherapy or dialysis), is critical for keeping people healthy and maintaining quality of life. Unfortunately, disasters often displace people from their homes, communities, and from the healthcare services they depend on. For many people, displacement after a disaster is permanent. These people must then navigate entirely new environments, find new healthcare providers, and become re-established with the medical system all the while securing a place to live, meeting their other needs, and dealing with the stress of losing their life as they knew it. Medical care often falls to the wayside in the chaos of disaster recovery, leaving survivors vulnerable to worsening health conditions over time.
Disasters often displace people from their homes, communities, and from the healthcare services they depend on. Take for instance, these flooded homes adjacent to the Red River in North Dakota, via Wikimedia Commons
Even if displacement is only temporary, when residents return to their homes and communities they may find that their healthcare options no longer exist, as disasters can disrupt or destroy entire healthcare systems. Damaged clinics and hospitals may be temporarily or permanently shut down, creating healthcare “deserts” that lack sufficient healthcare infrastructure to treat people. Rural areas are particularly vulnerable to these disruptions, as they already face limited budgets and fewer resources – leaving less “cushion” to absorb disaster impacts. Disasters can also disrupt supply chains, impacting the quality of medical care for entire regions. This occurred when Hurricane Helene flooded one of the major medical IV suppliers in the United States, leading to IV shortages at healthcare facilities that persisted even months after the hurricane.
Disasters drive housing insecurity
Having an affordable and stable place to live is one of the most important social determinants of health. Access to housing that is safe, clean, and sheltered from the elements can affect everything from risk of hospitalization, the number of medications someone takes, mortality, and overall quality of life. Unfortunately, housing is also one of the most vulnerable and deeply personal domains to be affected by disasters. Many are forced to flee from fires, floods, high winds, or other dangerous conditions presented by natural hazards, and people can be displaced from their homes for months or years at a time – or even permanently. This displacement is associated with numerous mental and physical health issues, including risk of death. And as insurance premiums continue to increase or insurance companies withdraw from states altogether because of the increasing frequency and intensity of disasters, homeowners may be unable to afford property insurance altogether in the near future, further reducing the chances of ever being able to return home.
Even for those who could return home, the cost of recovery may be too prohibitive. For wildfire survivors, many insurance companies do not include smoke damage testing and remediation costs under their policies, and even some plans that cover smoke damage may refuse to remediate, which can cost thousands of dollars out-of-pocket. For flood survivors, mold can be difficult to detect and may require the services of a professional cleaner, which can be prohibitively expensive. Even if someone has flood insurance through the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), mold remediation is not typically covered, creating barriers for people trying to make their homes healthy to live in again. If someone’s insurance plan covers mold remediation, many plans make exceptions if action to prevent mold growth is not taken in the immediate days after the flood, which can pose a problem for those blocked from returning under emergency orders. These policy barriers result in survivors having to either relocate away from their homes and communities, or continue to live in unsafe conditions that can chronically affect their health.
Opportunities for Action
Our nation needs policies that understand and address the true public health effects of disasters over the months and years after the disaster is technically “over”. Opportunities for action include:
Update how health impacts are measured. Tracking of health impacts from disasters is generally limited to the direct impacts of disasters (i.e., injuries and deaths, like drownings from floods and smoke asphyxiation from wildfires). Few official data sources capture the indirect effects of disasters that take more time to manifest. Impact assessments should include epidemiological methodology that can capture these indirect effects, such as excess death calculations, to begin to truly understand and quantify the extent of disasters on peoples’ health.
Reinstate disrupted grants and other funding for health research relevant to disasters. Recent budget cuts, terminated grants, and increased hostility towards public health threaten our ability to understand – and therefore effectively address – the health impacts of disasters. Policymakers should reinstate such funding, and look for opportunities to prioritize research related to the longer-term and often overlooked impacts.
Invest in the physical resilience of healthcare infrastructure. Investments in the physical resilience of healthcare infrastructure (such as the installation of hurricane-proof glass, flood barriers, air filtration systems, etc.) strengthens disaster resilience and reduces the overall health impacts of disasters in the short and long terms. Studies show that these investments pay off in the long run, with every dollar dedicated to resilience yielding multiple dollars in avoided societal costs – and providing strong justification for state and federal resources to catalyze and support such investments.
Strengthen medical supply chains. The Strategic National Stockpile (SNS) provides a critical reserve of essential medical equipment, buffering health supply chains against disruptions from events like disasters. Congress should act to increase the SNS, particularly in locations that could provide rapid response of medical provisions to disaster-affected areas, and ensure that key medical suppliers are adequately prepared for future disasters.
Help with housing. One of the most efficient and effective means of disaster recovery is ensuring survivors have access to stable, safe, and healthy housing. One way to achieve this is by creating a centralized agency or entity (such as the Joint County-State Housing Task Force established in the wake of the 2025 Los Angeles wildfires) to handle housing-specific needs from disasters and for those displaced. At the federal level, this could look like integration of housing-relevant capabilities and authorities across agencies such as the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA, particularly FEMA’s National Flood Insurance Program), the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the Small Business Administration. Other options could include streamlining access to housing relief funds (such as by creating a consolidated hub for applications for assistance), creating pre-approved resilient home designs that can be fast-tracked for permitting and construction, and establishing well-defined responsibilities for remediation efforts, including cleaning of contaminated lands and homes. (Note: many of these issues are addressed in the proposed FEMA Act of 2025.)
Support on-the-ground efforts. Federal and state agencies can support nonprofit rapid response teams (such as SBP) equipped with cleaning and rebuilding supplies. These teams can be rapidly organized and deployed to mitigate physical damage from disasters, making it faster and safer for survivors to return home. As these teams often include members of affected communities, they often have a deep understanding of what the needs of survivors truly are, enabling more efficient use of resources.
Conclusion
Disaster survivors want reform – but drastically reducing FEMA’s workforce without investing in any new disaster-response capabilities isn’t the type of reform they want. Rather, survivors are looking for leaders to institute more holistic disaster-governance strategies that include efforts to minimize long-term negative impacts, instead of the drop-in/rapid withdrawal pattern historically demonstrated. If we are to make (and keep) Americans healthy, then it’s time to make sure considerations for the long-term health needs of disaster survivors are being met, even after the winds, floods, and fires are gone.
Turning the Heat Up On Disaster Policy: Involving HUD to Protect the Public
This memo addresses HUD’s learning agenda question, “How do the impacts, costs, and resulting needs of slow-onset disasters compare with those of declared disasters, and what are implications for slow-onset disaster declarations, recovery aid programs, and HUD allocation formulas?” We examine this using heat events as our slow-onset disaster, and hurricanes as declared disaster.
Heat disasters, a classic “slow-onset disaster”, result in significant damages, which can exceed damage caused by more commonly declared disasters like hurricanes due to high loss of life from heat. The Federal Housing and Urban Development agency (HUD) can play an important role in heat disasters because most heat-related deaths occur in the home or among those without homes; therefore, the housing sector is a primary lever for public health and safety during extreme heat events. To enhance HUD’s ability to protect the public from extreme heat, we suggest enhancing interagency data collection/sharing to facilitate the federal disaster declarations needed for HUD engagement, working heat mitigation into HUD’s programs, and modifying allocation formulas, especially if a heat disaster is declared.
Challenge and Opportunity
Slow-Onset Disasters Never Declared As Disasters
Slow-onset disasters are defined as events that gradually develop over extended periods of time. Examples of slow-onset events like drought and extreme heat can evolve over weeks, months, or even years. By contrast, sudden-onset disasters like hurricanes, occur within a short and defined timeframe. This classification is used by international bodies such as the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC).
HUD’s main disaster programs typically require a federal disaster declaration , making HUD action reliant on action by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) under the Stafford Act. However, to our knowledge, no slow-onset disaster has ever received a federal disaster declaration, and this category is not specifically addressed through federal policy.
We focus on heat disasters, a classic slow-onset disaster that has received a lot of attention recently. No heat event has been declared a federal disaster, despite several requests. Notable examples include the 1980 Missouri heat and drought events, the 1995 Chicago heat wave, which caused an estimated 700 direct fatalities, as well as the 2022 California heat dome and concurrent wildfires. For each request, FEMA determined that the events lacked sufficient “severity and magnitude” to qualify for federal assistance. FEMA holds a precedent that declared disasters need to have a discrete and time-bound nature, rather than a prolonged or seasonal atmospheric condition.
“How do the impacts, costs, and resulting needs of slow-onset disasters compare with those of declared disasters?”
Heat causes impacts in the same categories as traditional disasters, including mortality, agriculture, and infrastructure, but the impacts can be harder to measure due to the slow-onset nature. For example, heat-related illness and mortality as recorded in medical records are widely known to be significant underestimates of the true health impacts. The same is likely true across categories.
Sample Impacts
We analyze impacts within categories commonly considered by federal agencies–human mortality, agricultural impacts, infrastructure impacts, and costs for heat, and compare them to counterparts for hurricanes, a classic sudden-onset disaster. Other multi-sectoral reports of heat impacts have been compiled by other entities, including SwissRe and The Atlantic Council Climate Resilience Center.
We identified 3,478 deaths with a cause of “cataclysmic storms” (e.g., hurricanes; International Classification of Disease Code X.37) and 14,461 deaths with a cause of heat (X.30) between 1999-2020 using data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC). It is important to note that the CDC database only includes death certificates that list heat as a cause of death, while it is widely recognized that this can be a significant underaccount. However, despite these limitations, CDC remains the most comprehensive national dataset for monitoring mortality trends.
HUD can play an important role in reducing heat mortality. In the 2021 Pacific Northwest Heat Dome, most of the deaths occurred indoors (reportedly 98% in British Columbia) and many in homes without adequate cooling. In hotter Maricopa County, Arizona, in 2024, 49% of all heat deaths were among people experiencing homelessness and 23% occurred in the home. Therefore, across the U.S., HUD programs could be a critical lever in protecting public health and safety by providing housing and ensuring heat-safe housing.
Agricultural Labor
Farmworkers are particularly vulnerable to extreme heat, and housing can be part of a solution to protect them. According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), between 1992 to 2022, 986 workers across industry sectors died from exposure to heat, with agricultural workers being disproportionately affected. According to the Environmental Defense Fund, farmworkers in California are about 20 times more likely to die from heat-related stress, compared to the general population, and they estimate that the average U.S agricultural worker is exposed to 21 working days in the summer growing season that are unsafe due to heat. A study found that the number of unsafe working days due to extreme heat will double by midcentury, increasing occupational health risks and reducing labor productivity in critical sectors. Adequate cooling in the home could help protect outdoor workers by facilitating cooling periods during nonwork hours, another way in which HUD could have a positive impact on heat.
Infrastructure and Vulnerability
Rising temperatures significantly increase energy demand, particularly due to the widespread reliance on air conditioning. This surge in demand increases the risk of power outages during heat events, exacerbating public health risks due to potential grid failure. In urban areas, the built environment can add heat, while in rural areas residents are at greater risk due to the lack of infrastructure. This effect contributes to increased cooling costs and worsens air quality, compounding health vulnerabilities in low-income and urban populations. All of these impacts are areas where HUD could improve the situation through facilitating and encouraging energy-efficient homes and cooling infrastructure.
Costs
In all categories we examined, estimates of U.S.-wide costs due to extreme heat rivaled or exceeded costs of hurricanes. For mortality, the estimated economic impact of mortality (scaled by value of statistical life, VSL = $11.6 million) caused by extreme heat reached $168 billion, significantly exceeding the $40.3 billion in VSL losses from hurricanes during the same period. Infrastructure costs further reflect this imbalance. Extreme heat resulted in an estimated $100 billion in productivity loss in 2024 alone, with over 60% of U.S. counties currently experiencing reduced economic output due to heat-related labor stress. Meanwhile, Hurricanes Helene and Milton together generated $113 billion in damage during the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season.
Crop damage reveals the disproportionate toll of heat and drought, with 2024 seeing $11 billion in heat/drought impacts compared to $6.8 billion from hurricanes. The dairy industry experiences a substantial recurring burden from extreme heat, with annual losses of $1.5 billion attributed to heat-induced declines in production, reproduction, and livestock fatalities. Broader economic impacts from heat-related droughts are severe, including $14.5 billion in combined damages from the 2023 Southern and Midwestern drought and heatwave, and $22.1 billion from the 2022 Central and Eastern heat events. Comparatively, Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton produced $78.7 billion and $34.3 billion in damages, respectively. Extreme heat and drought exert long-term, widespread, and escalating economic pressures across public health, agriculture, energy, and infrastructure sectors. A reassessment of federal disaster frameworks is necessary to appropriately prioritize and allocate funds for heat-related resilience and response efforts.
Resulting Needs
Public Health and Medical Care: Immediate care and resources for heat stroke and exhaustion, dehydration, and respiratory issues are key to prevent deaths from heat exposure. Vulnerable populations including children, elderly, and unhoused are particularly at risk. There is an increased need for emergency medical services and access to cooling centers to prevent the exacerbation of heat stress and to prevent fatalities.
Cooling and Shelter: Communities require access to public cooling centers and for air conditioning. Clean water supply is also essential to maintain health.
Infrastructure and Repair: The use of air conditioning increases energy consumption, leading to power outages. Updated infrastructure is essential to handle demand and prevent blackouts. Building materials need to include heat-resistant materials to reduce Urban Heat Island effects.
Emergency Response Capacity: Emergency management systems need to be strengthened in order to issue early warnings, produce evacuation plans, and mobilize cooling centers and medical services. Reliable communication systems that provide real-time updates with heat index and health impacts will be key to improve community preparedness.
Financial Support and Insurance Coverage: Agricultural, construction, and service workers are populations which are vulnerable to heat events. Loss of income may occur as temperatures rise, and compensation must be given.
Social Support and Community Services: There is an increasing need for targeted services for the elderly, unhoused, and low-income communities. Outreach programs, delivery of cooling resources, and shelter options must be communicated and functional in order to reduce mortality. Resilience across these sectors will be improved as data definitions and methods are standardized, and when allocations of funding specifically for heat increase.
“What are implications for slow-onset disaster declarations, recovery aid programs, and HUD allocation formulas?”
Slow-onset disaster declarations
No heat event–or to our knowledge or other slow-onset disaster–has been declared a disaster under the Stafford Act, the primary legal authority for the federal government to provide disaster assistance. The statute defines a “major disaster” as “any natural catastrophe… which in the determination of the President causes damage of sufficient severity and magnitude to warrant major disaster assistance to supplement the efforts and available resources of States, local governments, and disaster relief organizations in alleviating the damage, loss, hardship, or suffering caused thereby.” Though advocacy organizations have claimed that the reason for the lack of disaster declaration is because the Stafford Act omits heat, FEMA’s position is that amendment is unnecessary and that a heat disaster could be declared if state and local needs exceed their capacity during a heat event. This claim is credible, as the COVID-19 pandemic was declared a disaster without explicit mention in the Stafford Act.
Though FEMA’s official position has been openness to supporting an extreme-heat disaster declaration, the fact remains that none has been declared. There is opportunity to improve processes to enable future heat declarations, especially as heat waves affect more people more severely for more time. The Congressional Research Service suggests that much of the difficulty might stem from FEMA regulations focusing on assessment of uninsured losses makes it less likely that FEMA will recommend that the President declare a disaster. Heat events can be hard to pin down with defined time periods and locations, and the damage is often to health and other impacts that are slow to be quantified. Therefore, real-time monitoring systems that quantify multi-sectoral damage could be deployed to provide the information needed. Such systems have been designed for extreme heat, and similar systems are being tested for wildfire smoke–these systems could rapidly be put into use.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) plays a critical role in long-term disaster recovery, primarily by providing housing assistance and funding for community development initiatives (see table above). However, HUD’s ability to deploy emergency support is contingent upon disaster declaration under the Stafford Act and/or FEMA activation. This restriction limits HUD’s capacity to implement timely interventions, such as retrofitting public housing with cooling systems or providing emergency housing relief during extreme heat events.
Without formal recognition of a heat event as a disaster, HUD remains constrained in its ability to deliver rapid and targeted support to vulnerable populations facing escalating risks from extreme temperatures. Without declared heat disasters, the options for HUD engagement hinge on either modifying program requirements or supporting the policy and practice needed to enable heat disaster declarations.
HUD Allocation Formulas
Congress provides funding through supplemental appropriations to HUD following major disasters, and HUD determines how best to distribute funding based on disaster impact data. The calculations are typically based on Individual and Public Assistance data from FEMA, verified loss data from the Small Business Administration (SBA), claims from insurance programs such as the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), and housing and demographic data from the U.S Census Bureau and American Community Survey. CDBG-DR and CDBG-MIT typically require that at least 70% and 50% of funds benefit low and moderate income (LMI) communities respectively. Funding is limited to areas where there has been a presidentially declared disaster.
For example, the Disaster Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2025 (approved on 12/21/2024) appropriated $12.039 billion for CDBG-Disaster Recovery funds (CDBG-DR) for disasters “that occurred in 2023 or 2024.” HUD focused its funding on areas with the most serious and concentrated unmet housing needs from within areas that experienced a declared disaster within the time frame. Data used to determine the severity of unmet housing needs included FEMA and SBA inspections of damaged homes; these data were used in a HUD formula.
Opportunities exist to adjust allocation formulas to be more responsive to extreme heat, especially if CDBG is activated for a heat disaster. For example, HUD is directed to use the funds “in the most impacted and distressed areas,” which it could interpret to include housing stock that is unlikely to protect occupants from heat.
Gaps
Extreme heat presents multifaceted challenges across public health, infrastructure, and agriculture, necessitating a coordinated and comprehensive federal response. The underlying gap is the lack of any precedent for declaring an extreme-heat disaster; without such a declaration, numerous disaster-related programs in HUD, FEMA, and other federal agencies cannot be activated. Furthermore, likely because of this underlying gap, disaster-related programs have not focused on protecting public health and safety from extreme heat despite its large and growing impact.
Plan of Action
Recommendation 1. Improve data collection and sharing to enable disaster declarations.
Because lack of real-time, quantitative data of the type most commonly used by disaster declarations (i.e., uninsured losses; mortality) is likely a key hindrance to heat-disaster declarations, processes should be put in place to rapidly collect and share this data.
Health impacts could be tracked most easily by the CDC using the existing National Syndromic Surveillance System and by expanding the existing influenza-burden methodology, and by the National Highway Traffic Safety Association’s Emergency Medical Services Activation Surveillance Dashboard. To get real-time estimates of mortality, simple tools can be built that estimate mortality based on prior heatwaves; such tools are already being tested for wildfire smoke mortality. Tools like this use weather data as inputs and mortality as outputs, so many agencies could implement–NOAA, CDC, FEMA, and EPA are all potential hosts. Additional systems need to be developed to track other impacts in real time, including agricultural losses, productivity losses, and infrastructure damage.
To facilitate data sharing that might be necessary to develop some of the above tools, we envision a standardized national heat disaster framework modeled after the NIH Data Management and Sharing (DMS) policy. By establishing consistent definitions and data collection methods across health, infrastructure, and socioeconomic sectors, this approach would create a foundation for reliable, cross-sectoral coordination and evidence-based interventions. Open and timely access to data would empower decision-makers at all levels of government, while ethical protections—such as informed consent, data anonymization, and compliance with HIPAA and GDPR—would safeguard individual privacy. Prioritizing community engagement ensures that data collection reflects lived experiences and disparities, ultimately driving equitable, climate-resilient policies to reduce the disproportionate burden of heat disasters.
While HUD or any other agency could lead the collaboration, much of the National Integrated Heat Health Information System (NIHHIS) partnership (HUD is a participant) is already set up to support data-sharing and new tools. NIHHIS is a partner network between many federal agencies and therefore has already started the difficult work of cross-agency collaboration. Existing partnerships and tools can be leveraged to rapidly provide needed information and collaboration, especially to develop real-time quantification of heat-event impacts that would facilitate declaration of heat disasters. Shifting agency priorities have reduced NIHHIS partnerships recently; these should be strengthened, potentially through Congressional action.
Recommendation 2. Incorporate heat mitigation throughout HUD programs
Because housing can play such an important role in heat health (e.g., almost all mortality from the 2021 Heat Dome in British Columbia occurred in the home; most of Maricopa County’s heat mortality is either among the unhoused or in the home), HUD’s extensive programs are in a strong position to protect health and life safety during extreme heat. Spurring resident protection could include gentle behavioral nudges to grant recipients, such as publishing guidance on regionally tailored heat protections for both new construction and retrofits. Because using CDBG funds for extreme heat is uncommon, HUD should publish guidance on how to align heat-related projects with CDBG requirements or how to incorporate heat-related mitigation into projects that have a different focus. In particular, it would be important to provide guidance on how extreme heat related activities meet National Objectives, as required by authorizing legislation.
HUD could also take a more active role, such as incentivizing or requiring heat-ready housing across their other programs, or even setting aside specific amounts of funds for this hazard. The active provision of funding would be facilitated by heat disaster declarations, so until that occurs it is likely that the facilitation guides suggested above are likely the best course of action.
HUD also has a role outside of disaster-related programs. For example, current HUD policy requires residents in Public Housing Agency (PHA) managed buildings to request funding relief to avoid surcharges from heavy use of air conditioning during heat waves; policy could be changed to proactively initiate that relief from HUD. In 2024, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary Richard Monocchio sent a note encouraging broad thinking to support residents through extreme heat, and such encouragement can be supported with agency action. While this surcharge might seem minor, ability to run air conditioning is key for protecting health, as many indoor heat deaths across Arizona to British Columbia occurred in homes that had air conditioning but it was off.
Recommendation 3. HUD Allocation Formula: Inclusion of Vulnerability Variables
When HUD is able to launch programs focused on extreme heat, likely only following an officially declared heat disaster, HUD allocation formulas should take into account heat-specific variables. This could include areas where heat mortality was highest, or, to enhance mitigation impact, areas with higher concentrations of at-risk individuals (older adults, children, individuals with chronic illness, pregnant people, low-income households, communities of color, individuals experiencing houselessness, and outdoor workers) at-risk infrastructure (older buildings, mobile homes, heat islands). By integrating heat-related vulnerability indicators in allocations formulas, HUD would make the biggest impact on the heat hazard.
Conclusion
Extreme heat is one of the most damaging and economically disruptive threats in the United States, yet it remains insufficiently recognized in federal disaster frameworks. HUD is an agency positioned to make the biggest impact on heat because housing is a key factor for mortality. However, strong intervention across HUD and other agencies is held back by lack of federal disaster declarations for heat. HUD can work together with its partner agencies to address this and other gaps, and thereby protect public health and safety.
Enhancing Local Capacity for Disaster Resilience
Across the United States, thousands of communities, particularly rural ones, don’t have the capacity to identify, apply for, and manage federal grants. And more than half of Americans don’t feel that the federal government adequately takes their interests into account. These factors make it difficult to build climate resilience in our most vulnerable populations. AmeriCorps can tackle this challenge by providing the human power needed to help communities overcome significant structural obstacles in accessing federal resources. Specifically, federal agencies that are part of the Thriving Communities Network can partner with the philanthropic sector to place AmeriCorps members in Community Disaster Resilience Zones (CDRZs) as part of a new Resilient Communities Corps. Through this initiative, AmeriCorps would provide technical assistance to vulnerable communities in accessing deeply needed resources.
There is precedent for this type of effort. AmeriCorps programming, like AmeriCorps VISTA, has a long history of aiding communities and organizations by directly helping secure grant monies and by empowering communities and organizations to self-support in the future. The AmeriCorps Energy Communities is a public-private partnership that targets service investment to support low-capacity and highly vulnerable communities in capitalizing on emerging energy opportunities. And the Environmental Justice Climate Corps, a partnership between the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and AmeriCorps, will place AmeriCorps VISTA members in historically marginalized communities to work on environmental justice projects.
A new initiative targeting service investment to build resilience in low-capacity communities, particularly rural communities, would help build capacity at the local level, train a new generation of service-oriented individuals in grant writing and resilience work, and ensure that federal funding gets to the communities that need it most.
Challenge and Opportunity
A significant barrier to getting federal funding to those who need it the most is the capacity of those communities to search and apply for grants. Many such communities lack both sufficient staff bandwidth to apply and search for grants and the internal expertise to put forward a successful application. Indeed, the Midwest and Interior West have seen under 20% of their communities receive competitive federal grants since the year 2000. Low-capacity rural communities account for only 3% of grants from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)’s flagship program for building community resilience. Even communities that receive grants often lack the capacity for strong grant management, which can mean losing monies that go unspent within the grant period.
This is problematic because low-capacity communities are particularly vulnerable to natural disasters from flooding to wildfires. Out of the nearly 8,000 most at-risk communities with limited capacity to advocate for resources, 46% are at risk for flooding, 36% are at risk for wildfires, and 19% are at risk for both.
Ensuring communities can access federal grants to help them become more climate resilient is crucial to achieving an equitable and efficient distribution of federal monies, and to building a stronger nation from the ground up. These objectives are especially salient given that there is still a lot of federal money available through the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) that low-capacity communities can tap into for climate resilience work. As of April 2024, only $60 billion out of the $145 billion in the IRA for energy and climate programs had been spent. For the IIJA, only half of the nearly $650 billion in direct formula funding had been spent.
The Biden-Harris Administration has tried to address the mismatch between federal resilience funding and community capacity in a variety of ways. The Administration has deployed resources for low-capacity communities, agencies tasked with allocating funds from the IRA and IIJA have held information sessions, and the IRA and IIJA contain over a hundred technical assistance programs. Yet there still is not enough support in the form of human capacity at the local level to access grants and other resources and assistance provided by federal agencies. AmeriCorps members can support communities in making informed decisions, applying for federal support, and managing federal financial assistance. Indeed, state programs like the Maine Climate Corps, include aiding communities with both resilience planning and emergency management assistance as part of their focus. Evening the playing field by expanding deployment of human capital will yield a more equitable distribution of federal monies to the communities that need it the most.
AmeriCorps’ Energy Communities initiative serves as a model for a public-private partnership to support low-capacity communities in meeting their climate resilience goals. Over a three-year period, the program will invest over $7.8 million from federal agencies and philanthropic dollars to help communities designated by the Interagency Working Group on Coal & Power Plant Communities & Economic Revitalization on issues revolving around energy opportunity, environmental cleanup, and economic development to help communities capitalize on emerging energy opportunities.
There is an opportunity to replicate this model towards resilience. Specifically, the next Administration can leverage the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA’s) Community Disaster Resilience Zone (CDRZ) designations to target AmeriCorps support to the communities that need it most. Doing so will not only build community resilience, but will help restore trust in the federal government and its programs (see FAQ).
Plan of Action
The next administration can support vulnerable communities in building climate resilience by launching a new Resilient Communities Corps through AmeriCorps. The initiative can be launched through a three-part Plan of Action: (1) find a philanthropic partner to fund AmeriCorps placements in CDRZs, (2) engage federal agencies that are part of the Thriving Communities Network to provide resilience training and support to Corps members, and (3) use the CDRZ designations to help guide where AmeriCorps members should be placed.
Recommendation 1. Secure philanthropic funding
American service programs have a history of utilizing philanthropic monies to fund programming. The AmeriCorps Energy Communities is funded with philanthropic monies from Bloomberg Philanthropies. California Volunteers Fund (CVF), the Waverly Street Foundation, and individual philanthropists helped fund the state Climate Corps. CVF has also provided assistance and insights for state Climate Corps officials as they develop their programs.
A new Resilient Communities Corps under the AmeriCorps umbrella could be funded through one or several major philanthropic donors, and/or through grassroots donations. Widespread public support for AmeriCorps’ ACC that transcends generational and party lines presents the opportunity for new grassroots donations to supplement federal monies allocated to the program along with tapping the existing network of foundations, individuals, companies, and organizations that have provided past donations. The Partnership for the Civilian Climate Corps (PCCC), which has had a history of collaborating with the ACC’s federal partners, would be well suited to help spearhead this grassroots effort.
America’s Service Commissions (ASC), which represents state service commissions, can also help coordinate with state service commissions to find local philanthropic monies to fund AmeriCorps work in CDRZs. There is precedent for this type of fundraising. Maine’s state service commission was able to secure private monies for one Maine Service Fellow. The fellow has since worked with low-capacity communities in Maine on climate resilience. ASC can also work with state service commissions to identify current state, private, and federally funded service programming that could be tapped to work in CDRZs or are currently working in CDRZs. This will help tie in existing local service infrastructure.
Recommendation 2. Engage federal agencies participating in the Thriving Communities Network and the American Climate Corps (ACC) interagency working group.
Philanthropic funding will be helpful but not sufficient in launching the Resilient Communities Corps. The next administration should also engage federal agencies to provide AmeriCorps members participating in the initiative with training on climate resilience, orientations and points of contact for major federal resilience programs, and, where available, additional financial support for the program. The ACC’s interagency working group has centered AmeriCorps as a multiagency initiative that has directed resources and provides collaboration in implementing AmeriCorps programming. The Resilient Communities Corps will be able to tap into this cross-agency collaboration in ways that align with the resilience work already being done by partnership members.
There are currently four ACC programs that are funded through cooperation with other federal agencies. These are the Working Lands Climate Corps with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)’s Natural Resources and Conservation Service, AmeriCorps NCCC Forest Corps with the USDA Forest Service, Energy Communities AmeriCorps with the Department of Interior and the Department of Commerce, and the Environmental Justice Corps, which was announced in September 2024 and will launch in 2025, with the EPA. The Resilient Communities Corps could be established as a formal partnership with one or more federal agencies as funding partners.
In addition, the Resilient Communities Corps can and should leverage existing work that federal agencies are doing to build community capacity and enhance community climate resilience. For instance, USDA’s Rural Partners Network helps rural communities access federal funding while the EPA’s Environmental Justice Thriving Communities Technical Assistance Centers Program provides training and assistance for communities to build the capacity to navigate, develop proposals, and manage federal grants. The Thriving Communities Network provides a forum for federal agencies to provide technical assistance to communities trying to access federal monies. Corps members, through the network, can help federal agencies provide communities they are working with building capacity to access this technical assistance.
Recommendation 3. Use CDRZ designations and engage with state service commissions to guide Resilient Communities Corps placements
FEMA, through its National Risk Index, has identified communities across the country that are most vulnerable to the climate crisis and need targeted federal support for climate resilience projects. CDRZs provide an opportunity for AmeriCorps to identify low-capacity communities that need their assistance in accessing this federal support. With assistance from partner agencies and philanthropic dollars, the AmeriCorps can fund Corps members to work in these designated zones to help drive resources into them. As part of this effort, the ACC interagency working group should be broadened to include the Department of Homeland Security (which already sponsors FEMA Corps).
In 2024, the Biden-Harris Administration announced Federal-State partnerships between state service commissions and the ACC. This partnership with state service commissions will help AmeriCorps and partner agencies identify what is currently being done in CDRZs, what is needed from communities, and any existing service programming that could be built up with federal and philanthropic monies. State service commissions understand the communities they work with and what existing programming is currently in place. This knowledge and coordination will prove invaluable for the Resilient Communities Corps and AmeriCorps more broadly as they determine where to allocate members and what existing service programming could receive Resilient Communities Corps designation. This will be helpful in deciding where to focus initial/pilot Resilient Communities Corps placements.
Conclusion
A Resilient Communities Corps presents an incredible opportunity for the next administration to support low-capacity communities in accessing competitive grants in CDRZ-designated areas. It will improve the federal government’s impact and efficiency of dispersing grant monies by making grants more accessible and ensure that our most vulnerable communities are better prepared and more resilient in the face of the climate crisis, introduce a new generation of young people to grant writing and public service, and help restore trust in federal government programs from communities that often feel overlooked.
This action-ready policy memo is part of Day One 2025 — our effort to bring forward bold policy ideas, grounded in science and evidence, that can tackle the country’s biggest challenges and bring us closer to the prosperous, equitable and safe future that we all hope for whoever takes office in 2025 and beyond.
PLEASE NOTE (February 2025): Since publication several government websites have been taken offline. We apologize for any broken links to once accessible public data.
Funding for one AmeriCorps member in each of FEMA’s 483 designated Community Disaster Resilience Zones would cost around $14,500,000 per year. This is with an estimate of $30,000 per member. However, this figure will be subject to change due to overhead and living adjustment costs.
There are many communities that could benefit from additional support when it comes to building resilience. Headwater Economics, a research institute in Montana, has flagged that the CDRZ does not account for all low-capacity communities hampered in their efforts to become more climate resilient. But the CDRZ designation does provide a federal framework that can serve as a jumping-off point for AmeriCorps to begin to fill capacity gaps. These designations, identified through the National Risk Index, provide a clear picture for where federal, public and private monies are needed the most. These communities are some of the most vulnerable to climate change, lack the resources for resilience work, and need the human capacity to access them. Because of these reasons, the CDRZ communities provide the ideal and most appropriate area for the Resilient Communities Corps to first serve in.
Funding for national service programming, particularly for the ACC, has bipartisan support. 53% of likely voters say that national service programming can help communities face climate-related issues.
On the other hand, 53% of Americans also feel that the federal government doesn’t take into account “the interests of people like them.” ACC programming, like what Maine’s Climate Corps is doing in rural areas, can help reach communities and build support among Americans for government programs that can be at times met with hostility.
For example, in Maine, the small and politically conservative town of Dover-Foxcroft applied for and was approved to host a Maine Service Fellow (part of the Maine Climate Corps network) to help the local climate action committee to obtain funding for and implement energy efficiency programs. The fellow, a recent graduate from a local college, helped Dover-Foxcroft’s new warming/cooling emergency shelter create policies, organized events on conversations about climate change, wrote a report about how the county will be affected by climate change, and recruited locals at the Black Fly Festival to participate in energy efficiency programs.
Like the Maine Service Fellows, Resilient Communities Corps members will be integral members of the communities in which they serve. They will gather essential information about their communities and provide feedback from the ground on what is working and what areas need improvement or are not being adequately addressed. This information can be passed up to the interagency working groups that can then be relayed to colleagues administering the grants, improving information flow, and creating feedback channels to better craft and implement policy. It also presents the opportunity for representatives of those agencies to directly reach out to those communities to let them know they have been heard and proactively alert residents to any changes they plan on making.