PD&R Disaster Recovery Tool Kit

Hurricane Recovery

Guides and Manuals for Rehabilitation

Designing for Natural Hazards Series Volumes 1 - 5 (2023)
A five volume series providing technical content in a straightforward way that is easy for a layperson to understand, while also providing references through which design professionals, builders, developers, and public officials can obtain full details.

Building Moisture and Durability (2004)
This project develops recommendations for future research on moisture problems in housing and follows a review and analysis of the literature concerning problems created by bulk water and excessive water vapor in housing.

Consumer Tips for Post-Disaster Home Restoration (2015)
This short brochure, written in non-technical language, covers how to work with contractors and other housing professionals on repairs involving mold, lead-based paint, asbestos, home safety and utilities.

Creating a Healthy Home: A Field Guide for Clean-up of Flooded Homes (2008)
This guide is meant for do-it-yourselfers and contractors who need to clean up mold in flooded homes before starting to rebuild or renovate. This booklet tells how to clean up after flooding, but does not describe how to rebuild.

Design Details for Accessible Disaster Relief Housing (2013)
This is not a regulatory document, but is intended to illustrate possible solutions, provide guidance to designers wishing to create accessible disaster relief housing, and aid the manufacturing industry. It provides approaches that can be used as a “point of departure” for designers to create safe, accessible housing units.

Durability by Design 2nd Edition: A Professional’s Guide to Durable Home Design (2015)
This manual is an update of the 2002 Durability by Design publication. Through this updated guide, HUD offers new and refined guidance for designing durable homes for today’s housing industry—addressing critical topics, including water vapor management, envelope design, and natural hazards.

Guide for Team Leaders to Help Disaster Victims Get Back to a Healthy Home
This short brochure includes how to identify specific hazards resulting from flooding, how to work with contractors to remove the hazards, how to help ensure that repairs are done properly, and how to know when residents can return safely to their homes.

Healthy Homes Disaster Recovery Factsheets: English
These simply written factsheets highlight important areas and concerns in rebuilding.

Homeowner’s and Renter’s Guide to Mold Cleanup After Disasters: English, Spanish (2015)
These brochures can be used by homeowners as starting points for rebuilding. Jointly developed by HUD, FEMA, EPA, the CDC, and OSHA, they focus on remediation of indoor environmental air pollutants featuring mold, radon, lead and asbestos.

HUD Rehab Guide: Volumes One through Nine (1997-2000)
This series provides the design and construction industry with information on building technologies, materials, components, and techniques specific to the rehabilitation process. Each volume covers a distinct element of housing rehab – foundations; exterior walls; roofs; windows and doors; partitions, ceiling, floors, and stairs; kitchens and baths; electrical/electronics; HVAC/plumbing; and site work.

Moisture-Resistant Homes (2006)
This report advances the goal of designing, building, and maintaining houses in order to effectively manage moisture penetration. It addresses many common moisture-related problems that are well known to builders, homeowners, and insurers.

Rebuild Healthy Homes Guide to Post-disaster Restoration for a Safe and Healthy Home (2015)
This 72-page guide addresses each step in the rebuilding process, including proper equipment, what to look for, what to do, and when work should be handled by professionals. Information for 10 different types of natural disasters.

Rehabbing Flooded Houses: A Guide for Builders and Contractors (2008)
Rehabbing Flooded Houses is a guidebook for professional builders and contractors rehabbing flooded single-family houses. Homes flood for a variety of reasons (overflowing rivers, high coastal waves, hurricanes, etc.) but the methods for determining how badly the building has been damaged and how to repair it are relatively similar no matter where you are working.

Building In Resilience To Reduce Future Risk

Disaster Recovery and Community Renewal: Housing Approaches (2013)
How we understand and measure success in disaster recovery establishes the policy platform for how governments prepare for future events. In the past two decades, observers have recognized that the return to pre-event conditions is often unworkable—not only because the pre-event conditions were hazardous, but also because the disaster has created a new normal, requiring new ways of thinking and planning.

Federal Disaster Policy: Towards a More Resilient Future (2015)
As with other community planning principles such as smart growth, local engagement must be central to disaster resilience and recovery planning, with HUD and other federal agencies playing an integral but supporting role by providing needed short and long-term funding and technical assistance. Although federal agencies may be able to suggest best practices, such as developing land with multiple uses, only community residents can best decide how to manage complex local conditions and needs — for example, when a historic community facing repeated river flooding must decide whether to move its downtown to reduce the risk to residents.