Three 2025 US disasters still await at least $10bn in long-term federal aid

CDBG-DR has no standing fund, requires disaster-by-disaster appropriations

Survivors of three 2025 United States disasters — the Los Angeles wildfires, an EF3 tornado in St Louis and flooding in Texas Hill Country — remain without long-term federal recovery funds more than a year after the events, according to The Guardian. Government officials estimate more than $10 billion is needed to rebuild affected communities in Los Angeles County and St Louis alone.

The Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery program, run by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, has not allocated money to any disaster since Hurricane Milton struck Florida in October 2024. CDBG-DR typically helps pay to rebuild homes and neighborhoods after FEMA’s emergency assistance runs out.

Since 1993, more than $111 billion has been appropriated and allocated for CDBG-DR, but the program has no standing fund, requiring Congress to appropriate money disaster by disaster. Survivors of the 2020 earthquakes in Puerto Rico waited 655 days after the disaster was declared for CDBG-DR funding to be allocated, according to a Bipartisan Policy Center report cited by The Guardian.

In July 2026, CDBG-DR was written into law for the first time, authorizing the program for three years. While advocates hoped the legislation would create a more reliable framework to disseminate disaster relief funds more quickly, no additional appropriations have followed.

Sylvie Andrews, who lost her home in Altadena in the LA wildfires, said she and other survivors have been waiting 21 months since the fires were declared a disaster. “To find out that your own country can’t even do what it has historically done for other survivors of disasters, that’s very disheartening, and it’s also what kind of galvanized me to get involved,” Andrews said.

Demetrice Davis’s home in north St Louis still shows damage from the EF3 tornado that tore through the area in May 2025. “The insurance didn’t cover much of anything. And the Fema just kind of backed you up for a little while, but didn’t get you back on track,” he said. “The government agencies are not really doing what they’re supposed to do.”

Andrews and Davis traveled to Washington last month with climate disaster survivors from Rebuild: the National Disaster Survivors Association, who have made three trips to the capital so far. During each visit, survivors spoke not only with their own lawmakers but with one another, and Davis said conversations about the experiences of people in California and Texas who also lack long-term recovery funding stayed with him.

“I just hope we are all whole at some point,” Davis said. “It’s devastating to not be able to go home, or to go into a neighborhood that you grew up in and you expect to look a certain way. I’ve been in this neighborhood all my life. Some of the houses that got wiped away had been there since I was kid.”

“There are people in Congress who are resistant to the idea of pre-funding anything when they’re not sure there’s going to be a disaster, and the reality is there will be more disasters every year because of climate change,” Andrews said. “I guarantee there will be communities that need it.”

Davis described his conversations with members of Congress as “passing the buck.” “It’s just a matter of asking, as a taxpaying citizen, what are we paying for?” Davis said. “As a taxpaying citizen, we are putting in the pot. We are supposed to get some type of return. But it seems like that’s not happening. And there seems to be a lot of excuses and passing the buck because most of the lawmakers we talked to blamed it on other lawmakers.”

Ginny Goldman, a co-founder of Rebuild, said the shared experience of disasters cuts across political lines. “We have folks from rural and urban areas. We have folks from both parties. The disaster strips all of that away,” she said. “Everyone in this country is a survivor of a disaster or will be very soon. We can all come together and build the system we all deserve.”

One partial win came on October 7. After Los Angeles County wildfire survivors spoke with Rep. Judy Chu, the congresswoman wrote a letter alongside three other lawmakers urging FEMA to release more than $6 million in additional funding for the Disaster Case Management Program that the agency had already approved. After weeks of sustained pressure and the looming threat of a major funding cliff, FEMA released the final installment.

“Suddenly, we saw an additional 6.6 mil come our way,” Andrews said. “So it was a tiny win, but basically there’s so much more that needs to come our way.”

Chu, a Democrat, said in a prepared statement in September: “I welcome today’s release of funding for Eaton and Palisades Fire survivors, but let’s be clear: this is funding FEMA had already approved and that we have been demanding the agency release for weeks. And while today is progress, President Trump still has not delivered the long-term federal disaster recovery funding Los Angeles communities need to rebuild.”

An estimated 137 million people lived in areas of the US affected by a disaster in 2024 alone, according to an analysis by the International Institute for Environment and Development cited by The Guardian. A 2023 nationwide survey by FEMA found that 54% of people said they or their family members had experienced the effects of a disaster.