HUD is asking whether to stop measuring two of the three disaster recovery needs and set them instead as a percentage of the third, and its own figures put planned economic development spending at a median of 2 percent

Zero to 7 percent. That is the range of the share of disaster recovery money grantees have actually planned to spend on economic development, across every major appropriation from 2011 onward, and the median is 2 percent.

The figure sits inside a notice the Department of Housing and Urban Development filed for public inspection on Wednesday morning, and it is doing work. HUD is asking whether to stop calculating economic revitalization need at all, and instead to presume it equals some percentage of the housing need already calculated. The department puts the same question to infrastructure, where the planned share has run from 9 percent to 31 percent with a median of 22 percent.

The formula in question decides how much Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery money a place receives after a catastrophic disaster. It rests on three estimates of unmet need: housing, economic revitalization, infrastructure. Under what HUD is floating, two of the three would no longer be measured.

Why the department says it wants out

Timing, in both cases. For economic revitalization the notice proposes dropping Small Business Administration business disaster loan data. For infrastructure it proposes dropping FEMA Public Assistance Category C to G estimates, on the stated ground that those estimates often change significantly over time and are not in alignment with the moment the allocation has to be made. The same reasoning is applied to the housing side, where HUD asks whether to stop matching to SBA data for the repair cost multiplier and use historic multipliers by disaster type instead, adjusted for geography with private sector construction cost data and for inflation.

There are other changes in the same list. A new damage category called destroyed, separate from severe, with a multiplier of its own. Different multipliers for rental units and owner units, on the ground that rentals are generally smaller. A question about whether local regulations are pushing rebuild costs up unreasonably.

The thresholds are older than most of the disasters

HUD asks whether the damage definitions it has used to sort properties, minor-low, minor-high, major-low, major-high and severe, should be updated, noting that they were originally established for Hurricane Sandy and have been used ever since. Sandy made landfall in 2012.

The notice also asks for a reserve. HUD wants comment on writing an extraordinary circumstances element into the formula, letting the Secretary use alternative data where a disaster produces a kind of need nobody anticipated. The example it gives is 2018, when it adjusted for undamaged homes made permanently inaccessible by lava in Hawaii.

What governs in the meantime

The January 2025 notice, at 90 FR 4759. HUD says it will use that formula for allocations to 2023 and 2024 disasters until a final rule is completed. Comments run for 30 days from publication, which is set for Thursday, and the notice asks commenters to keep electronic submissions to ten pages. It is signed by Reid Wilson, Deputy Chief of Staff to the Secretary, performing the delegable duties of the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy Development and Research.