Last month, the U.S. Economic Development Administration (EDA) announced a new $1.5 billion Disaster Supplemental Grant Program (DSGP) for local communities hit by natural disasters in 2023 and 2024. The EDA has a long legacy of supporting disaster recovery, often through funding individual construction projects and other economic development programs. And this year’s DSGP marks a notable evolution for the agency: the inclusion of an “Industry Transformation Path” that can provide regions with up to $50 million to invest in a strategic industry opportunity.

By linking industry development to economic resilience,1 the DSGP bears close resemblance to the suite of other place-based programs the federal government has implemented in recent years, offering nearly half of U.S. counties an opportunity to secure funding for regional economic transformation. This piece assesses the EDA’s historical role in disaster recovery, the transformative potential of place-based approaches to economic resilience, and what types of communities stand to benefit from this new funding opportunity.

The EDA’s Role in Helping Local Economies Recover From Natural Disasters

Federal disaster declarations are a multistep process facilitated by agencies across the federal government, each with designated roles in resilience planning, short-term assistance, or long-term recovery. The EDA’s role in this interagency approach, while still relatively small within the entire federal disaster recovery budget, has expanded substantially since the inception of the Natural Disaster Recovery Framework in 2011, which designated the EDA as the lead coordinating agency for economic recovery support.

With oversight from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which manages immediate response assistance and implementation of emergency protective measures, the EDA is responsible for the federal government’s role in helping reinvigorate local economies in the aftermath of natural disasters. Since undertaking this role, the EDA has received supplemental congressional appropriations for regional recovery and resilience seven times, five of which have been for targeted recovery and resilience planning in communities impacted by major disasters. More than one-fifth of the EDA’s total budget authority between 2011 and 2024 came from these disaster supplementals.

Read the full article about the Disaster Supplemental Grant Program by Glencora Haskins and Joseph Parilla at Brookings.