Alaska gets $38M federal grant for climate-related housing disaster recovery

The state of Alaska lately obtained $38 million from the Division of Housing and City Improvement with the intention to ease the burden of local weather change.

Margaret Salazar is HUD’s Northwest Regional Administrator. She oversees HUD packages in Alaska, Oregon, Washington, and Idaho. Final week she attended Arctic Encounter, the most important annual arctic coverage occasion within the nation, the place she made the announcement.

Salazar says the brand new funding is to assist villages get forward of pure disasters.

“We’re serving to people work upstream with issues like technical help to start out planning forward for housing growth, versus simply funding the sticks and bricks a part of housing provide,” she mentioned.

The cash was made accessible by means of the Group Improvement Block Grant Catastrophe Restoration Program. These funds are aimed toward serving to communities higher rebound from presidentially declared disasters, however Salazar says the state shall be allowed to allocate the brand new funds for preventative measures.

“Now when the state of Alaska, who’s our grantee, once they get these {dollars}, they’ll use a few of them for that planning work,” she mentioned. “That is brand-new coverage that we’ve rolled out.”

Salazar says she hopes to fund plans earlier than pure disasters occur.

“Village relocation, and rising water ranges and soil erosion are forcing people to make some not possible selections about relocating their properties,” she mentioned. “And one of many thrilling alternatives we now have proper now could be the chance for HUD to align and be part of forces with our different federal company companions.”

A few of the departments she listed embrace the Environmental Safety Company, the Division of Vitality, and the Division of Transportation.

However local weather change isn’t the one challenge Alaskans face in relation to housing. Not like communities on the highway system, people in bush Alaska can’t commute for work, so housing generally is a limiting issue for progress.

Salazar mentioned her journey to Kodiak final week gave her a brand new perspective on the problems Alaskans face when in comparison with their rural counterparts within the decrease 48.

“What we see and what we heard right this moment in Kodiak was simply the dearth of with the ability to increase financial alternatives due to an absence of housing,” she mentioned. “So if we are able to’t discover methods to accommodate our people, we are able to’t discover methods to increase job alternatives and it turns into a cycle.”

However growing new housing is very troublesome for communities that aren’t straight linked to Anchorage. Rural communities usually face excessive prices for delivery, problem accessing constructing provides, and even discovering employees to do the development.

To cut back among the obstacles native governments face, Salazar says HUD additionally accepted new grants to assist them work out rules that forestall housing growth.

“Whether or not it’s issues like zoning or constructing codes or allowing course of, we generally is a associate by way of federal {dollars} however we wish to ensure that the native people are doing their work to have a plan able to have shovel prepared filth in order that after we can funding housing growth, we are able to get that carried out shortly,” she mentioned.

And whereas she praised native entities just like the Kodiak Island and Cook dinner Inlet Housing Authorities, Salazar says there’s nonetheless extra work to do and appears ahead to persevering with partnerships with entities round Alaska.