Creating Strategies for Flood Preparedness

The National Center for Healthy Housing produced the Creating Strategies for Flood Preparedness series to highlight state and local flood assistance/preparedness programs across the country that represent efforts to make homes and communities flood resilient and aid in recovery efforts after flooding events. NCHH compiled a list of flood assistance/preparedness programs from the five regions of the United States: seven programs from the Northeast, two from the Midwest, two from the West, one from the Southwest, and three from the Southeast. The profiles for each program include background information, funding, impact, residents’ eligibility, program services, and challenges and/or lessons learned.

NCHH used publicly available information from the programs’ websites, state and local websites, articles, and Adaptation Clearinghouse to gather responses to the list of questions and attributes. With the use of the information, NCHH created detailed summaries of each flood assistance/preparedness program. This resource is intended to be a helpful model for other state and local agencies that are developing, funding, and/or implementing similar programs.

The programs summarized in this series provide information for protecting the health and homes of residents before, during, and after flood events. The series documents the services of flood assistance/preparedness programs, including providing funding to home flood resiliency projects and information about flood resiliency to the community and/or offering flood resiliency home improvements and upgrades to participants. The information documented in this series could be helpful to public health and housing organizations, policymakers, and government agencies to learn from others in the field.

The program summaries in this series are described below:

Ellicott City Safe and Sound Plan (Howard County, Maryland) 
Safe and Sound is a two-phased plan with projects to mitigate the impact of future floods through stream management, infrastructure resiliency, and increased green spaces.

FloodHelpNY (New York, New York) 
FloodHelpNY is a free, interactive website that provides low- and middle-income New York homeowners with education, training, and resources to prepare for flooding events.

Home Preparedness Assessment Program (Boulder, Colorado) 
The Boulder Home Preparedness Assessment Program was established as a home resiliency retrofit program to aid single-family and mobile homeowners who were affected by the 2013 flood.

Leak-Free Sacramento
The Leak-Free Sacramento program offers leak repairs and installation of water efficient products to qualified area homeowners.

Louisiana Watershed Initiative: Local and Regional Projects and Programs 
This initiative provides funding and support for flood risk reduction programs and projects locally and regionally across Louisiana.

Nebraska Silver Jackets Flood Management Program 
The Silver Jackets are a collaborative interagency team that works to reduce flood risk at the state level. They offer a web tool to assist residents with preparing for and enduring flood threats.

Residential Flood Assistance Program/RainReady (Chicago, Illinois)
RainReady’s Residential Flood Assistance Program provided free repairs and flood mitigation retrofits to low- and middle-income homeowners.

Resilient Affordable Housing Grant Program (Boston, Massachusetts) 
Boston’s Resilient Affordable Housing Grant Program used U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Section 4 Capacity Building Program grant money to fund resilient investments in multifamily affordable housing.

Shore Up Connecticut
The Shore Up Connecticut loan program offered low-interest loans to business and homeowners to make specific retrofits to properties for flood and extreme storm resiliency.

South Carolina Hazard Mitigation Plan
South Carolina’s natural hazard plan includes a risk and vulnerability assessment for rising sea level, floods, wildfires, and other threats.

Texas Infrastructure Resiliency Fund
The Texas Infrastructure Resiliency Fund draws from four accounts to finance flood mitigation, protection, projection, and preparedness.

Virginia Community Flood Preparedness Fund 
The Virginia Community Flood Preparedness Fund offers low-interest loans for projects to reduce flood risks and resiliency for possible coastal flooding.

 

This resource was made possible through a contract between the National Environmental Health Association and the National Center for Healthy Housing, funded through cooperative agreement NU38OT000300-04-05 between the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Environmental Health Association.

 

Latest page update: August 21, 2022.