Question 1: Give us a breakdown of the money FEMA has spent in Texas.
FEMA has set aside $740 million so far to help Texas recover from Hurricane Beryl and another $250 million for the tornadoes we saw around the state this spring.
That’s going to be spread around to 700,000 different families and businesses around the state. Only about 20% of that money has actually been paid out to families so far, the rest is sitting in the bank.
That’s a lot more money than we’ve seen Texas receive in the past. Hurricane Hanna and Laura back in 2020 both cost less than $50 million. Tropical Storm Imeda $70 million in 2019.
Question 2: How is that money being dispersed? Are some cities getting more than others?
Travis County hasn’t gotten any money yet.
Most of the money paid out so far has gone to Houston.
The amounts are all over the place. Every family whose application was approved got at least $750, but some got as much as $61,000. Cooke County families got $4,700 on average, that’s the most.
It's all individual assistance (vs. public assistance).
Question 3: That’s $1 billion set aside for the two storms. Has that affected FEMA’s ability to help the rest of the country?
There’s been 19 disasters this year around the country that each cost over $1 billion. That’s after a record 28 last year.
Over the summer FEMA’s disaster fund was over $
6 billion in debt.
So recently we saw storms in Michigan and Massachusetts where the governor asked FEMA for financial help, and FEMA told them “we don’t have enough money.” They’re only giving funds if it’s a “life-saving initiative.” They spent it all in Texas and other states.
They’ll get more funding soon, but Congress has to stop arguing and pass a spending bill to avoid a government shutdown.
Question 4: What does that mean exactly? How is it possible for FEMA to just run out of money?
There’s a couple of reasons.
The biggest problem is that FEMA is being way too slow to give out disaster funding from past years. They have over $8 billion in “unliquidated obligations” for storms before 2012. That’s money they’ve set aside to spend but haven’t actually used yet.
So the
$8 billion is just sitting in FEMA’s bank account, but they can’t use it to help storm victims from this year. They’ve already promised the money to states affected by Hurricane Katrina or other storms from over a decade ago.
But FEMA requested funding from Congress based on the inaccurate estimates, and now they don’t have enough money to respond to future disasters.