With funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law in-hand, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) announced a second funding opportunity for its Safeguarding Tomorrow Revolving Loan Fund (RLF) to provide capitalization grants to disaster-vulnerable communities.
Meant to help underserved communities, the program sees money given to eligible applicants, who can then offer low-interest loans directly to local communities and governments. Those loans support resilience projects, disaster impact reduction and, in theory, bolstering equity among the underserved. Eligible entities include states, the District of Columbia, territories and Tribes that have received major disaster declarations.
“We listened to our emergency management partners from across the nation and using their guidance, fine-tuned this new program and increased the funding to allow for more under-resourced communities to benefit from this opportunity,” FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell said. “Thanks to President Biden’s Investing in America agenda, these low-interest loans will fund even more mitigation projects at the local level, increasing our nation’s resilience to natural hazards and climate change.”
According to the Biden administration, the high level of interest seen in the first opportunity prompted it to triple the amount of money available in this second round of funding. The application process has also been simplified this time around, to reduce barriers to submitting information.
Requirements for applicants include increasing the resilience of major economic sectors or critical national infrastructure while reducing risk of harm to natural and built infrastructure, partnerships between two or more eligible entities and factoring in the regional impacts of hazards. That said this funding opportunity covers many areas not traditionally covered under other such FEMA funding opportunities, such as cases of extreme heat. In that regard, applicants and projects can actually use the loans to reduce impacts of drought and prolonged intense heat.
Benefit-cost analyses will not be required for eligible projects.