FEMA administrator discusses expanding access to disaster relief

Last month, FEMA made what it calls the “most significant updates to disaster assistance in 20 years.” It expands access to money for food, water, and other essentials, funds immediate housing needs when people can’t return home, helps repairs not covered by insurance and reduces paperwork required for temporary housing. Amna Nawaz discussed the changes with FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell.
Amna Nawaz:
Last month, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, made some big changes to its disaster relief programs, changes that the agency called — quote — “the most significant updates to disaster assistance in 20 years,” among them expanding access to money for food, water and other essentials, funding immediate housing needs when people can’t return home, help for repairs not covered by insurance, reducing paperwork required for temporary housing and more.
For more on what these changes mean, I’m joined now by FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell.
Welcome back. Thanks for being here.
Deanne Criswell, FEMA Administrator:
Thanks, Amna. It’s great to be here.
Amna Nawaz:
So, as you know, FEMA’s long faced criticism, long before your tenure even, for being slow to respond in disasters, bureaucratic to deal with.
I guess the big question is, why couldn’t many of these changes have been made sooner, if they are so needed and significant?
Deanne Criswell:
You know, I think, Amna, the changes that we made, one, they’re transformational, for sure.
And we are extremely excited about them. But to make changes of this magnitude, it takes time. And part of the time was really spent listening and listening to people that have been impacted by these disasters, whether it’s survivors in communities or local emergency managers, state directors, hearing the problems that people faced.
And I think that, in the past, we have really approached delivery of our programs in this very generic one-size-fits-all approach. And what I have realized, having been a customer of FEMA previously and now in this role, that everybody’s situation is different and unique.
And so we really spent a lot of time after I first started in this role understanding the unique characteristics and nature of each community and understanding what their barriers are, and then how do we make changes to those barriers? How do we pull them down so more people can access our programs? And it just took time.
Amna Nawaz:
Can I ask you what role was played in pushing forward these changes in what we know are the growing frequency and intensity of more extreme weather events and the disasters that accompany them?
Did that help push these changes across the line?
Deanne Criswell:
I think that was really one of the driving forces of being able to actually get these moving forward and getting the people of our agency who have spent a lot of time thinking about the types of changes that were needed really knowing that more people are impacted, right?
We’re seeing more people impacted. We’re seeing recoveries become more complex. We’re seeing them take longer. And so how do we help these communities become more resilient? How do we help these individuals jump-start this road to recovery using the programs that we have, instead of creating this disparity between those who need our help the most, but really faced the most barriers?
And so I think, as we saw more and more people having to face this…
Amna Nawaz:
Yes.
Deanne Criswell:
… it really gave us an opportunity to really think hard about what we could do to change that.
Amna Nawaz:
There’s the insurance piece of it I want to ask you about. We mentioned it briefly in the introduction there.
You have given previously the example of a homeowner who has some $80,000 in damage after a disaster. If they only get $45,000 from insurance, FEMA could step in and fill the gap. We’re now seeing reports out of California, in particular, of insurers dropping homeowners because they live in areas that are too prone to wildfires.
We have seen similar issues in Florida. So how would this help those homeowners? I mean, would FEMA step in to cover the whole cost if insurers have dropped homeowners?
Deanne Criswell:
It’s a really good question because one of the things that we do provide is some financial assistance to jump-start recovery, but we don’t replace insurance.
And so with these changes, in the past, if an insurance company gave you what our statutory maximum is, which right now is $42,500, and it changes a little bit every year, every fiscal year, if an insurance company gave you more than that, then we couldn’t give you any more, even if you had uninsured losses.
So now we can at least cover uninsured losses, but still up to that max of $42,000.
Amna Nawaz:
So there’s still a cap on what you will be able to provide?
Deanne Criswell:
There is.
But the problem is, that insurance companies are dropping insurance policies because of the types of catastrophic risks that these communities are facing, which is why another thing that we are really focused on this year is building resilience in these communities, because if we can make a community more resilient, it’s an insurable community.
So resilient communities are insurable communities. So the more we can build their resilience and help them on that road, the more we think that we will be able to create the environment for the insurance market to stay in those neighborhoods.
Amna Nawaz:
There’s a resilience question. There’s also this question we have seen in conversations about where people are choosing to live, where they’re choosing to rebuild.
Should FEMA, should the federal government play more of a role in discouraging people to rebuild in areas that are continuously hit or supporting people to move to other areas?
Deanne Criswell:
I think it’s a really complicated question, because where you build is one part of the question, but how you build is also another part of the question, right?
There are certainly parts of this country that where you build is the conversation we should be having. But, sometimes, it’s just about how you build, right? Are we going to help you build in a way that makes you more resilient to the type of threat that you’re facing?
Like, if you are in an area that is prone to sea level rise, right, if you’re going to move into wildfire community, how you build is going to make a difference. Or if you’re going to build in the Midwest, where we saw tornadoes yesterday, how you build makes a difference.
Amna Nawaz:
There’s the price tag, which is worth a second look as well.
You said the expected new policies could increase federal disaster costs by some $500 million a year. We know these storms aren’t getting less expensive. Can FEMA afford to continue to fill these gaps and make these changes?
Deanne Criswell:
I think one of the things that we need to talk about with that is the costs that we’re going to be covering were covered by somebody. They were covered by state programs. They were covered by nonprofits.
They took time to put in place, which eventually slowed the recovery process down for individuals. And so I really believe that, even with an increased federal share, and there will be an increased state share as well in some of these, that it also helps them on their road to recovery.
And so the long-term benefits — we’re not going to know what those are right away, but those long-term benefits of people being on their road to recovery, staying in their community and not having to move, those are going to be the soft costs that are saved in the end that I think are going to be equally as important to have awareness of.
Amna Nawaz:
FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell, thank you so much for being here today. Great to speak with you.
Deanne Criswell:
Thanks, Amna.