Where FEMA's direct relief money is going
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Florida, Louisiana and Texas residents have received the lion's share of FEMA direct assistance since 2015, per newly gathered data.
Why it matters: The numbers illustrate Americans' urgent financial needs in the immediate aftermath of natural disasters, and reflect the toll of storms like 2017's Hurricanes Harvey and Irma.
- More help is now needed in the wake of Hurricane Helene, and more still is likely to be needed after Hurricane Milton, now bearing down on Florida's western coast.
Driving the news: The map above shows the total amount given to recipients in each U.S. state as part of FEMA's Individuals and Households Program (IHP) between January 2015 and April 2024.
- It's based on data collected by Sarah Labowitz of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace through Freedom of Information Act requests, and assembled into the "Disaster Dollar Database."
- The database covers 170 incidents for which IHP was activated, including hurricanes, floods, fires and more.
How it works: IHP is meant as an immediate financial lifeline for people whose lives have been upended by natural disasters, not as an insurance replacement.
- The average IHP award over the covered time frame was about $5,700, and around 40% of applicants were deemed eligible.
Context: IHP is just a portion of FEMA's post-disaster relief spending.
- FEMA spent about $12.7 billion on IHP over the covered period, compared to about $52.3 billion on "Public Assistance," which helps fund community rebuilding efforts.
- The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, meanwhile, runs its own long-term disaster recovery programs.
Threat level: FEMA is running out of money to cover the rest of this hurricane season, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas warned last week.
What they're saying: "The disaster recovery system is cracking under the strain of more frequent and devastating disasters and the reality of a divided Congress that is struggling to fund the federal government at all," Labowitz recently wrote.
- One big problem, she noted, is that natural disaster victims aren't getting enough help "to rebuild differently or elsewhere," continuing an expensive and destructive cycle.
What's next: "Helene is going to change the map," Labowitz tells Axios — expect big jumps in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Tennessee.
