FEMA’s Affordable Housing Pilot Program

FEMA’s Alternative Housing Pilot Program

New housing in Ocean Springs, Mississippi. September 2011

PD&R has been involved in the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) Alternative Housing Pilot Program (AHPP) from its beginning in 2006. In that year the AHPP awarded grants to four states bordering the Gulf of Mexico to develop and evaluate better ways to house disaster victims with the understanding that PD&R would conduct research to assess the pilot program as well as provide technical engineering guidance and other support to the grantees. AHPP grantees have recently completed homes for disaster survivors in Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana.

Each of the states with active AHPP grants has employed slightly different approaches to building homes for disaster survivors that are suitable for permanent residency. Their projects sit at the nexus of emergency response and community planning, and highlight the need for rapid action and inclusive planning. A disaster affects all members of a community, but recovery within a community depends on the ability of the disaster survivors to respond. Those with resources, financial and emotional, are expected to recover faster than those without such resources. As families regain, gain, or move to permanent housing, that housing serves as the foundation for continued recovery from trauma and physical loss. As time goes on, those who remain unhoused may require additional support as they may have issues that predate the disaster.

The AHPP state grantees designed their projects differently. Mississippi constructed small temporary units on homeowners’ lots during reconstruction of damaged or destroyed homes. Over 2,500 such homes were constructed and occupied, demonstrating it is possible to rapidly procure, construct, deliver and occupy high quality housing following a disaster. A second strategy demonstrated the potential to improve communities by building quality housing units to replace those that had been lost. In Bayou La Batre, Alabama, the community used HUD CDBG funding for site development of a new 200 lot neighborhood above the flood zone and within walking distance of two new schools. FEMA AHPP grant funds paid for the construction of 100 affordable rental homes in the development. In Ocean Springs, Pass Christian, and Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, local partners, Mercy Housing and Habitat for Humanity, are building affordable, durable housing for their communities with AHPP funds. In some cases the homes must be significantly elevated to provide protection from floodwaters of the nearby Gulf of Mexico. Finally, in Louisiana, the state partnered with local organizations to build housing in New Orleans and the metro area, Baton Rouge and Lake Charles, providing rental and home ownership opportunities.

The AHPP demonstrated that high quality housing can be built, deployed, and occupied in quantity. As with traditional housing programs, post-disaster housing solutions must consider a full range of services to capitalize on the newfound stability provided by the housing. While such housing programs may appear to rely on deep subsidies, funding for such programs generally pales in comparison to the long-term social services costs that are avoided through rapid development of high quality housing for survivors of disasters.