Gutting a Proactive, Trump-Era Program Keeps States and Americans Scrambling

When the second Trump administration chose to end the BRIC program (which was originally launched during his first term), it eliminated one of the very few proactive government funding programs that help communities build projects that help them to be more resilient BEFORE a natural disaster strikes. It’s critical to consider just how important — and rare — such a program is. Before BRIC, one of the most reliable ways for a community to receive funding for projects to protect them from floods, tornadoes, or other natural disasters was to experience a federally declared natural disaster. In other words, communities would have to live through the painful, demoralizing, tragic, and all too often deadly — and often avoidable — consequences of a disaster in order to unlock federal funding to both repair the damage they experienced and prevent future damage. Instead of this unreasonable and unsustainable cycle, BRIC turned that concept around by taking a percentage of any federal disaster dollars approved over time, plus allocations from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, to create a pot of funding that any eligible state, local, and tribal government could apply for to develop preventative projects in at-risk places; a more effective use of taxpayer dollars that helps to avoid the need for disaster recovery expenditures.

Impacts of Cutting BRIC

The impact of eliminating this program is both clear and immediate and will have devastating consequences going forward. Not only has the administration chosen to not grant the Congressionally approved $750 million to selected awardees nationwide, it has also chosen to renege on funding it had already committed to prior projects that it had not yet paid. This means that entities with projects currently underway or about to start which were counting on federal dollars must either find alternative sources of funding or cease development.

Further, what is less reflected in the specificity of the lost funding is just how much BRIC funding allows New York City to focus more of its own resources on other projects, like additional Cloudburst pilot projects. Federal dollars spent in one place allows for City dollars to be spent in others. The pool of funding has now significantly shrunk.

Return on Investment, not Wasteful and Ineffective

The administration’s justification of the cuts was that the program was ​“politicized,” ​“wasteful,” ​“ineffective,” and ​“more concerned with climate change than helping Americans affected by natural disasters,” according to a memo outlining this disaster of a decision. It also follows an executive order that puts into question the role of FEMA going forward, and how much the federal government will continue its role in aiding and preventing damage from disasters.

Rather than wasteful and ineffective, the National Institute of Building Sciences’ (NIBS) research has shown that disaster spending represents a 6:1 return on investment for states and the federal government. Specifically, the NIBS research team looked at the results of 23 years of federally funded mitigation grants provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), U.S. Economic Development Administration (EDA) and U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and found that for every $1 spent on mitigation funding can save the nation $6 in future disaster costs.

Averting, not Courting, Crisis

As we noted in our latest report, Averting Crisis, climate impacts continue to worsen, threatening the loss of as many as 82,000 units of housing in the City and its closest New York suburbs. Investing in resilience will become more and more important. New York City, New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut should do everything they can to ensure the federal government keeps its commitments. But, with the seeming reduction or even loss of federal support going forward, new streams of resilience funding will need to be developed at local, state, and regional levels. The safety and well being of our communities and our collective future depends on it.