Transcripts For CSPAN2 Executive 20240703

Welcome and good afternoon. I am Vice President here at the urban institute the centron labor, human services. And also a Financial Wellbeing expert. So todays topic is near and dear to my heart. Thank you to all of us who joined both in the room today and online. Before a jump in here are a few notes on housekeeping. One the event is being recorded. The recording and relevant links will be posted online after the event. If you are joining us virtually the are turned on you can adjust those at the bottom of your screen. And if you are in the room you can use the qr code thats on all of your table to submit your questions and that virtual audience can submit your questions directly into the question and answer box at any time. We are going to be sharing a link with a post event survey and we ask that you share your feedback with us. It is helpful for us and for panelists to hear what you are thinking about and to shape how we do events in what we look at in the future. If you would like to join the conversation online on twitter please use the live at urban. With the logistics behind us i want to thank all of our speakers for joining us, for a discussion of how Climate Change impacts house hold Financial Wellbeing. We are going to be exploring what drives the risks and also the pathway to building resilience. So far in 2023 the United States has suffered 23 billiondollar disasters. Many of them fueled by Climate Change. The increase being a frequency, severity, the cost of the disasters and the warmer temperatures is having an impact on peoples Financial Health. We know that many families in the United States live paycheck to paycheck. Disasters can push households into financial instability and distress. It is imperative we both consider claimant and our policies and programs we consider them when we are looking at those policies and programs aimed at Financial Health and wealth. This conversation today brings together both leading Research Insights and also the perspectives of federal agencies working at the intersection of climate and Financial Health. And a few moments i will be joined on stage by grandma steeles assistant secretary for Financial Institutions at the u. S. Department of treasury. We are going to discuss the treasurys work on Climate Change in American Household finances. Prior to his role as assistant secretary he served as director of the corporations and society initiatives at Stanford Graduate School of business. That is a Research Initiative that examines issues at the heart of market, business, government. Promote more capitalism and governance. We are pleased to have him here with us today. Please join me and a welcoming assistant secretary. [applause] great to have you. Thank you for coming. Thank you thanks to urban. We often talk about climate in a variety of different contexts. And today you released a report the treasury released a report the impact of Climate Change on American Household finances. It is such an important intersection here of these two. Can you give us some background on the framework you used in the report and why you chose that framework . Short. I think we all know we are seeing today up in new york in particular the event of a wild fire, flooding, heat waves are you say in the opening more and more frequent and more and more intense. There is a fivefold increase in the number of disasters in the u. S. Going back to 1980 and thats adjusted for inflation liver things like Hurricane Ian last year where we had people die the cost that is estimated to be over 100 billion. We are seeing the intensity and the impact here. We released the report on the impact of Climate Change and on the American Household today. Get up close a little bit more we see these numbers. We see headline numbers around events like the wildfires in maui we think theyll cost four 6 billion. We want to get a little more of a human face on these highlevel events and these numbers at impact with the impacts are two households. We take a step back for a moment because some folks a bit in the position ive been and sometimes i get why is the Treasury Department talk about Climate Change . What does your agency have to do with all of this . Number one the white house has told all of the cabinet agencies we need to take a whole of government whole of executive branch approach to climate all agencies need to think about what our role hears in addressing the problems and in creating solutions to address the challenges of Climate Change. The secretary herself is spoken repeatedly about the urgency of addressing Climate Change with the cost and the toll that it imposes on the nation and the globe. But also thinking about what we can bring to bear as an agency to do that. She is encouraged all of our offices to think what more we can be doing to analyze the problem and think about solutions. And so we have done work to the Financial Stability Oversight Council looking at the Financial System caused by Climate Change im also responsible for the federal Insurance Office which we can talk a little bit more about later. Obviously there are things happening. The consumer policy through our partners the Financial Literacy and Education Commission we want to take a closer look at the level of the individual impacts in particular how the impact Household Level finances. To go back to the example of the wildfires we think about when that kind of event happens once the impact on the ground . Obviously theres a catastrophic loss of life that happens of folks that are exposed to wildfires but there are also people who do work on maui their business may be closed down for it may be Agricultural Workers who now they cannot go to the place of business anymore. Were there on accessible, theyve had their hours cut their not getting income. At the same time there might be costs related to relocation to rebuild think their home after the fact. To compete less access to resources on the island which could lead to Higher Energy and food prices. That was really our goal with this report was to try to put the granular household focus on some of the broader events will be see the macrolevel impact on the cost but understand that really reflects in peoples daytoday lives. So important to go in the day today it lives on people. I know the report primarily focused that includes extreme weather events events, sea level rising flooding related to wildfires, extreme heat. Researcher might urban institute colleagues and others demonstrate disasters like this can have a long and uneven process in terms of both recovery and rebuilding after. And that it can be really unequal and how people are affected. I know the treasury report also looked at the different impacts. What did you find there . Or try to do a couple of things. One was look at the broad impact Climate Change is having across all households. For places like maui and that is what i described. You have vents and other places that have unsafe working conditions for all workers regardless of what their Household Condition looks like. You can imagine events increasein the cost of healthcar example on people or increased property destruction that happens with hurricanes. You can also look at the broad impact of chronic Climate Change thats happening out the summer it was the hottest summer on record what is that mean for workers who work outside and many things like that. I wasnt happy with Energy Prices and raise the cost of things like air conditioning. What are the ways this impacts all households . But then we wanted to drill down some the most financially vulnerable households to better understand the implications would be for those folks. So people like folks in this room who do research on Financial Capability and wellbeing will be aware of things of the survey one third of households could not cover more than eight months worth of expenses that they lost their income. Are the annual Federal Reserve essay over 60 of households could not even afford a 400dollar expense out of their cash and other available resources. That was one of the things we really wanted to look at in addition to the broad impact Climate Changes how does that get exacerbated when the household is vulnerable . We are in washington. If folks are here this past summer this was what i was used to coming from california. But that wildfire smoke from the canadian wildfires here in washington d. C. Even this past summer break Agricultural Workers, construction workers who dont want to or unable to inhale wildfire smoke and then cannot work but it creates unsafe conditions what it means for lowwage workers. Households with Health Conditions who are ingesting the smoke and have increased medical costs what is that mean in terms of increasing and again this will be a return with consumer policy on the Property Damage that comes out of this the households that cant barely afford to absorb that expense. Thats what were trying to do is think about the broad impact of Climate Change what it means for the most vulnerable. The one section of the report i recommend people look at is a little bit of geospatial mapping try to see where they are community are happening. Front heat wildfire and flooding. A little more than 50 of counties in the u. S. Are exposed to the impact of climate and one of these three different ways. You overlay the vulnerability on top of that. You see this about 20 of counties that have the overlay of exposure to Climate Change and Financial Vulnerability as well. I think thats really important for someone who works the federal government to understand Climate Change is a global phenomenon. We are experiencing ed at National Level but different communities are experiencing this a very different ways and you try to understand where those pockets of the community are but what they are experiencing and think how do we respond to that as well. That mapping is so important. Where do we go first . I guess where i want to turn to shoot next we talk a lot about the problems. What are these solutions . What can we do here . How can we support . How is treasury thinking about supporting the state as they are look at their policies and programs . I sure pray wish this report had all these solutions and all the issues we raise. Unfortunately it is not that ambitious of a project. But yes you are absently right. Treasury does have two play at some degree in offering assistance to different kinds of businesses are state and local governments. Treasury was given historic appropriations to administer to the inflation reduction act. With different kinds of clean energy investment. Individual households invest in things and other kinds of heat pumps and energy efficiency. Also how to invest in some the Technology New products and services that might help reduce the impact some of the technologies are having on the climate as well. That is an important part of it. Some folks were at the white house yesterday for the introduction of the resilient framework is another way to try to get out ahead of the stuff. That is one piece of the report we can talk more about the recommendations how households could be aware and try to protect themselves on the ways are impacting them. Its important thing for policymakers in particular to realism that look at the impact of Climate Change. Some these can be ham on the hae back and in terms of protections but theres a lot of fun investment that has to happen. And at times policymakers might not connect those two things and see the way the investments might lead to some of the Better Outcomes in area where the department would try to think about that is a third office of mine is office of comedian economic development. Work with Financial Institutions to hear from them what investment work they are doing to try to help address both the Energy Transition will also make it more resilient to the physical impact of Climate Change. Hackley partner with them to make that job easier. Again consistent with the whitee asses told the department try to think about the tools and how we can bring them to bear to address a lot of these problems. Next i was just thinking about your last mention of the Financial Institutions. I know when the government went out with covid relief checks often people needed them the most got them at last it. Its because they did not have the connections to some of the mainstream Financial Institutions. You have touched also make different aspects and submit different places to come in. I know the report touches on credit reports two. And what happens to credit and price of credit. So that its great. In terms of statelevel programs like in terms of people what kind of people are impacted by this what resources might you point them to . Sure. This report is identified some issues and problems for academics and policymakers to pick up and think how their work overlaps with some issues in the report. We can talk more about this pieces as wellin a minute if youd like. But also trying raise awareness for households the challenges theyre making and equip themselves well. But also to tell them they are not necessarily alone and you get to the situations. Probably when people experience catastrophic events they can feel very isolating. And in particular may experience Financial Vulnerability that can feel even more isolating. They can solve ourselves that help is not available to us. One of the messages the report is trying to get across to households there are agencies like the ones that are joining us today like hhs and fema and Small Business administration that has product services, other tools to offer them. With there in the situations or resources they can draw on. There is a toolkit for theres also programs like Energy Assistance from the cost of their energy bills go up. We are trying to do a few different places. Make sure households are aware of some risks that are out there but also let them know they are not on their own. There are resources available. During the covid crisis everyone expected Financial Health to take a huge dip. Certainly not everybody fared equally well. But the programs and policies in place we did not do that over all. It can really work. We dont have a solutions that we are laying out the research. What additional knowledge or research do we need in order to get to them provide more solutions . There is potentially we view this report as a first step for additional policymakers. Academics, other type of research to hopefully pick up the baseline we are laying out and take it in a different direction to find out their interests are. The pieces that stick out to me as being of interest i would love to see other stakeholders really drill down. The psychological impact of these kinds of events. The trauma of experiencing some climate related disaster. But also the way Financial Stress impacts people Psychological Health and wellbeing. Im kind of what that does to peoples decisionmaking. How they respond to one of these situations. I think we know a lot of financial behaviors emotion driven in a lot of ways. The stress of a climate event on top of that and the threat of losing your home or your Community Just what that does to households. Then again how policy makers responding to those kinds of issues. It might be individual personal issue. But theres a role for others to step in and help them navigate this kind of situations. I think a second piece of this hopefully the geographic aspect of the report might tee up for others is how certain populations are impacted by these kind of events. At the household and Community Level. We are looking at it from the perspective but we know financial certain communities are particular impacted as well. And might also beat front line in communities now. So really drilling down on the specific populations that are most impacted by Climate Change in the Financial Vulnerability i would be grossly negligent if at any time i did not again mention the it is early stages of piloting a nationwide zip code level data call for the Pricing Availability of property and Casualty Insurance policies. We need it on a national scale. Some states have been collecting some of the information but they are not all doing it but we need at granular zip code level. So a few different areas where i would love to see additional support, research, conversation not that we think we have all the answers on the issues. With that, i sassy thank you very much, secretary for joining us today and next i wanted to introduce andrew, who is going to tell us hes a senior fellow and colead of urban institutes climate and communities practice area and we will hear about some research, thank you. Hello. Thank you and welcome, everyone, to urban. Everyone here in the room but everyone joining online well. So as mary said im irwin, im the coleader along with sarah who you will meet in the next panel. Technical assistance, policy analysis and communication, all with the goal of helping to helping change makers to build safer more prosperous and more resilient communities for all. Okay. So if anyone was skeptical that Climate Change was a pressing issue before 2023, i hope you send them this image that comes from scientists at the climate brink. Daily temperature anomalies over the last 50 years or so. 2023 has been the hottest year on record by far and it continues a trend that we have been seeing for a long time now. We heard a lot of numbers billion dollar disasters. Another number that gets talked about lets. This is from the census, in 2022, 1. 3 of all households in the u. S. Were displaced from their homes by disaster. 15 of homes in louisiana in that year were displaced by a disaster. Just remarkable numbers when you start to think about the cumulative impact people. We get lost in those numbers as researchers sometimes. What does that mean on the ground on the daily lives of people . Well, it seems like this, folks that are escaping from 31 Straight Days of 110degree temperatures in phoenix going to a local cooling center, these are peoples lives disrupted, businesses disrupted, these are many unknown Health Impacts all in one photo and we could have shown any number of thousands of photos just from this last summer. We know Climate Change is an urban problem. Citizens, they all need highquality Reliable Research to help them make decisions to deal with this urgent problem and we think that urban along with peer organizations, along with university partners, we have a role to play in this larger climate challenge and what does urban say, im glad that you asked. In the climate communitys program this is a Diverse Group of researchers with a lot of different backgrounds from economists to community planners, we talk about our shared beliefs as we look at climate from different angles. One of the shares is that Climate Change is an everything problem. Its not a silo over here. Its not fema, one organization with the government, its something that we need to start thinking about Climate Change as problem that touches all of our work. And so in that spirit and as i was trying to chose a study to really feature today from urban, i couldnt do it because theres too many and theres too many diverse everything kind of studies and i will give you 7 studies in 7 minutes that i have left. All come from different centers, approaches, all of the links in the event page and also email today you afterwards. I hope this is an appetite, you know, whats your appetite and you go and look at the studies in greater detail. Number 1, disasters lead to broad and often substantial negative impacts on Financial Health. We know this at large level but when we dig into the data we start to see this and the researchers are looking at all of the different measures of Financial Health and wellbeing including Credit Scores, mortgage delinquency. One of the most interesting aspects of this report which is insult to injury is that they find mediumsized disasters and this is close to my heart. We call lowattention disasters, the kind of events that happen much more frequently but often dont get a declaration or Disaster Assistance. One point from the Research Communities of color, 31 decline in credit score, 4point declines in majority White Communities in terms of chronically stressed communities in terms of Financial Health. Number 2, under insurance after the marshal fire in colorado. This is a longitude survey effort by the university of colorado and Public Health along with researchers at urban and Duke University surveying household as they recover over the long term. And not surprisingly but incredibly important under insurance has become the major issue in recovery. So what you see most households were underinsured. They thought they had enough to cover but they dont because of inflation, rapidly cost of labor and so as a result highincome households that can fill the gap are recovering much quicker and that shows in the data which you can read in the report and much more data about the disaster. Number 3, mobile homes park residents suffer chronic impacts. Invisibility matters a lot. The populations who are least visible in the data are often those who suffer the worst impacts of the events because its hard to design policies for them. Mobile home parks to us fit perfectly. They dont show up in the census. Highly vulnerable population, they house 7 million people, 3 times to be in poverty than conventional homeowners and we cant measure them in a sense as we have a hard time accounting for them in emergency plans. Mobile home in reality its not mobile. Mobile homes never move and actually stuck in place. These households that are modest means often have all of their savings tied up in the home and when a disaster strikes oftensometimes they are not ensured an they cant get programs that work for them. They lose all of their Financial Assets and then lastly, they tend to be in hazardous areas where they suffer these events again and again b. Number four, i lost count already. Migration after Hurricane Maria had no measurable effect on the Financial Wellbeing of receiving communities. This is the fascinating study just published relatively recently. Funded by the national academies. Were looking specifically at migration from Hurricane Maria to Central Florida which is one of the main receiving areas and they looked at the question how rapid influx of puerto rican migrants, how would that Impact Financial Services there but also the larger Financial Health of the community, well, they found that there were limited Financial Services and these organizations struggled to ramp up and will continue to struggle over time. But due to a lot of really interesting work thats outlined in the government from organizations, they show Credit Scores and saw no impact on the receiving community which means it is possible to absorb the migrants but and again this is another belief we have in the climate Communities Program Place Matters a lot. Central florida is not everywhere, so what is it about Central Florida that allowed them to be healthy, absorb the population and not suffer negative financial consequences, as a result a lot of lessons for other receiving communities. Number 5, North Carolinas Rapid Rehousing Program helped households with financial instability to find stable housing. Program of evaluation published on lane and what they looked at is really interesting and Innovative Program in North Carolina that helped a thousand people who were living in post disaster shelters who has been housed either homeless or suffering from housing instability, what programs and services do you give them coming out of the shelters. They gave them concentrated suit of services and upon exit, the household that they have data on, 85 exited disabled housing and if you compare that with unstable and unhoused before it seems to be a really interesting success but in the report theres also a lot of interesting benchmarks for other communities as they implement these kind of programs to think about especially how long this took to implement and why it took so long its an interesting question that we should learn from. Number 6, in the last two, in the spirit of positive thinking about tools and Solutions Rather than just problems although the last one was a success story, i want to talk about really neat data tools that urban has published that i think will be helpful. First, i come from a Disaster Management background, speaking to my brother and sister out there, oftentimes when we think of health being we are thinking about income and poverty rates an we are not seeing in complex ways as experts in the room are doing this way. Its a fantastic tool from urban where you can look at any puma in the u. S. Which is a Geographic Area from the census and you can look across ten different indicators of Financial Health and wellbeing and from an Emergency Management perspective why dont we go beyond thinking about poverty and income and start thinking how healthy are communities, how well can they manage a shock, how can we use a data to design better programs. Finally, we need tools to connect to climate challenges. Amazing social net programs across the country that are often doing work well beyond and allows you to go online and lack at where all the head start programs in the country, the density of head start per the population not just climate hazards but like legacy pollution and its a fantastic mapping tool. Covers the entire United States. It allows you to generate all kind of interesting characteristics and this is an example of the kind of tools that programs across the federal government need in order to incorporate Climate Change in their everyday work. Like i said, i hope you will visit our website and i hope you will take a look at individual reports and many others that are on urban website and thank you very much for being here and looking from hearing from the next panel. [applause] thanks, my name is sarah. Thank you very much for joining us today and thank you for the panelists. Theres many complex forces changing resilience to climate demanding coordinated response across all levels of government as well as nonprofit, private community factors. So all the bios are available on the website. I will spare us the time and on the qr codes if youre here in the room. I want to start by enlighting panelists to briefly introduce yourselves and your agencies in stabilizing households in the short and long term after disasters. I will start with you natalie. Good afternoon, everyone, my name is natalie grant, director of the office of human service, Emergency Preparedness and response at the administration for children and families at the u. S. Department of health and human services, long title. I know. Long title, very big real and capacity that we serve. We are the basically consider us the safety net for the nation. We are the largest funder and provider of human and social services in the government. Our budget annually is 62 billion. We have a presence in every Community Across the country and we factor prominently in some of the programs that you heard earlier from the direct services and assistance that come forward from temporary assistance to needy families, the lowincome home Energy Assistance program, water Assistance Programs and so onto child and family services, child welfare, head start, child care benefits, foster care, run away and Homeless Youth to other social programs such as Domestic Violence and Community Block grant. And what it ties back into some of the Climate Risks and so on, we serve and support those persons, individuals households and communities that are this crisis every day. Thats why they rely upon our services an support holistically, our role in this is to partner with our colleagues especially in times of emergency so that were looking across the communities and especially at the margins because we know that there are underserved persons that are more vulnerable to some of the shocks an threats holistically at they continue to expand and as we continue to understand Climate Risks across the country. All right. Thank you, good afternoon, everyone, pleasure to be with you today. Im erin levy, preparedness in fema which means i have the best job in the agency. Femas Mission Helping people before, during after disaster is one of the nobelist government, for us when we think about helps households in the aftermath of the disaster a couple of things come to mind. First off is our individual Assistance Program run by our friends in the office of response and recovery which in the case that should the president declare a major disaster, fema has the ability, i want everyone to listen carefully in the room and at home, to help folks with their immediate needs and uninsured needs. Thats key. The whole concept of the stafford act, theres assumption out there that the private sector specifically private insurers is taking on a majority of the risk and what weve realized is and what the assistant secretary talked about and what andrew talked about is a lot of americans who are not getting the assistance that they need and that is not a knock on my colleagues or our previous colleagues that came before us. I can tell you that every fema employee when they go to the field would run through a wall to help an individual or family after a disaster. Whats a realization is that our programs need to improve to meet the climate challenges of today. Second thing we are really focused on is the National Flood Insurance Program which im sure many of you have heard of and im going to give you a thought. 1 inch of flood water can cost 25,000 worth of damage. Theres the other thought. Only 36 of americans believe that their Home Insurance policy will cover flooding. It doesnt in those cases. And of all of the properties that is looked at and floodplain, only 4 are brought into the National Flood insurance. No matter what else you take away today encouragement, give folks, anywhere from a think tank in washington to a bodega in new york city. Ive done it. I always tell folks if you can talk to your insurance, buy flood insurance. Some of the things we talk about trying to help people who might not have that ability. A bulk of what fema does, a lot of the programming focus in response and recovery and supporting local, partners and from my team and community preparedness, resilience, talk about that a little bit, but most of all, to really think about, give you a question to think about before its my turn again. If i told you you have a minute to get out of your house, do you know where drivers license, bank account information, your mortgage information, would you know where that is especially if you left your phone in your house . Looking forward to it. Think about it. Good afternoon, a pleasure to be here. Im shannon van zant. Professor at texas a m university. Ive been studying social vulnerability to disasters and particularly the intersection of Affordable Housing and disasters for about 15 years really since hurricane ike struck the texas coast in 2008. A lot of people dont remember that because it happened the same week this the market crashed but hurricane ike still hands as one of the top 5 or 6 most expensive storms in u. S. History and it was my introduction to hazards. Before that i was a houser. I studied the impact of Home Ownership on lowincome families for my dissertation work and got into disasters when i went to texas a m and in particular im interested in land developing patterns and discrimination and housing and lending market that have perpetuated segregation. I study mostly hurricanes and flooding but lowincome people live in lowquality homes and lowlying areas and that captures the intersection between physical vulnerability which is lowquality homes, lowincome people and risk for exposure which is lowlying areas and so i have had an opportunity in texas to study a number of disasters as you might imagine. Ive done a lot of work with Community Partners. I serve on the board of texas housers which is a very important advocacy group, not just in texas but across the nation in terms of advocating for lowincome residents to have adequate housing with a particular interest in disasters since it is kind of a constant state of being in the part of texas that i live in and most of texas so ive done work along in the lower rio grande valley. Texmex border which is one of the highest poverty areas in the country and i have done work in houstonvalue gueston area, communities of color, the city of houston and also unincorporated harris county. One of the interested fact choice that i like to mention about harris county, half of the population of the houston metropolitan area is in unincorporated harris county. In texas there are no building codes outside of municipal jurisdictions which means that we have about half a million People Living in areas that have no building codes. And, of course, when we have effects like Hurricane Harvey and the flooding that was accompanied with it, the impact on our most vulnerable populations is tremendous and a lot of my research has focused on what the longterm impacts through the Recovery Process for those households is understanding that the the housing types that are most likely to be occupied by socially vulnerable populations take much longer to recover, 2 to 4 times as long as regular singlefamily detached own eoccupied housing and that its much more volatile and so we see that sometimes those homes never remain their prestorm value which, of course, is for many of those homeowners is their single most important asset that is not only not gaining equity during that period of time but in most cases is actually losing equity during that period of time. My name is suzanne pittsburgh, im the Deputy Assistant secretary for Capital Access of the department of treasury where i lead work on Consumer Finance with a particular focus on Financial Inclusion and addressing historic disparities and i will pause for just a minute because we are launching to note that the report was produced with significant contributions from hhs, from fema and such a unique group to have a chance to talk about these issues with and im grateful with to urban for facilitating this conversation. We see this as a significant initial contribution to treasuries work with a household lens on Climate Change and we accept that will move forward in a number of ways including way that is focus on Household Level and also the overall Financial System but as secretary steel mentioned, treasury has a role in helping mitigate climate related risks more broadly in the Financial System. Theres activity led by the Financial Stability Oversight Council, the federal Insurance Office, treasury released zero principles intended to help guide private net zero commitments. At the Household Level i want to highlight a couple of things. First, obviously we know people need tremendous resources to recover from disasters and to build resilience. My colleagues here are part of ensuring that those resources reach the people who need them. Theres an effort treasury around the implementation of the ira, also representing transformative investments in preparing for Climate Change. We also need to recognize that alongside resources and alongside consumer ira its Important Information and the Financial Information that can help plan for future and react to disasters. This report is part of that and part of the Overall Mission of the Financial Literacy and Education Commission which as i mentioned consulted with treasury throughout the production of the report. I want to take one step further and just note, you know, as secretary steel highlighted, in this report, theres a laser focus on vulnerability and exposure to hazard, communities that have been historically underserved or subject to disparities are disproportionate risk of physical and financial harm even though they are not the communities that have benefited largely from the activities that drive Climate Change. So we know managing financial risk is not a new challenge especially for lowincome and underserved communities and who are often extremely sophisticated budgeters but it is an emerging risk and its complex, it has both nearterm and longterm challenges and we think its really crucial part of treasury not only to combat Climate Change but also to advance equitable Economic Growth and tuned that we see that risk very clearly and that we take action to build Financial Resilience with a focus on underserved households and that leads us back to a number of activities that treasury leads in investing in communities, in working to expand access to credit and capital in ensuring that people across america have products, tools and information that they need in order to mote their needs and their goals, you know, my colleagues here know and probably many of you know what its like to spring into immediate action in the aftermath of a disaster and i think the challenge for treasury is to support and undergird that work with efforts to strengthen the security of communities across the United States. Great, thank you very much for the introductions. We already got many facts. As we are going into the next set of questions, i want to invite everyone online and in the room to submit questions using qr code or event platform. We are trying to save time. But aaron, i want to do turn to you to talk about impacts on the ground. What are some of the main drivers for financial burden in the wake of disaster and if you can think ahead to some of the main individual Household Level and Community Level action that is can be taken to support preparedness . Sure, i wily. One of the drivers that we are seeing obviously it would be the insurance gap and americans that are lacking Home Insurance and flood insurance. I think thats number 1. And as i mentioned before in my remarks, the Current System and i use that word carefully its very much dependent that the private sector would take on most of the risk. That is something that we will be working with the partners and we already have to mitigate the risk and help reduce the challenges. Thats number 1. Another challenge and i will be frank with you. Its not easy at the moment to navigate the federal assistance process and one of is things i know that our administrator chriswell and secretary mayorkas is finally started work on consolidated system thousand which americans can employ for Disaster Assistance so you might be familiar with the disaster in. Gov but when you are going to sba to get a no interest loan as your first entry point for your uninsured needs, if youre someone who doesnt deal with the government or dealing with government is postman and receiving social security, that sounds pretty odd to me. What we are trying to do is work with partners to explain the process better and streamline those operations to make it easier on folks. Pivoting to the question of what households can do, one of the things i always tell my staff is this, when we are developing program, because thats what my team does in the individual community prepared phase, i tell them that the person i want you to keep in mind is the person coming back from an overnight shift at a Public Hospital who is working an hourly job as a nursing assistant, they live in unincorporated harris county, i added that one. They live in a floodplain, they live in a mobile home thats not actually mobile. What program can we design that is inclusive of that person and what we think about is this idea of Financial Resilience is simple steps that individuals can take. Aknow the assistance secretary touched upon this a little bit. If you are able to organize your key Financial Information before an event happens, i guaranty you, its going the make your recovery a whole lot better. That i think is so important. Fema in conjunction can operation hope and Treasury Department, we have something called the emergency financial first aid kit. You can download it on ready. Gov and thanks to the leadership of secretary mayorkas on the fema app we have wallet, that you can go to and take photos an upload to Cloud Computing and even if you lose everything its saved on your cloud. I have two jobs, i have my day job in washington and part of National Incident management assistant teams. When youre getting a Disaster Recovery center up and nonprofit and privatesector partners there, people are walking there with nothing and its often their first interaction with government and when they walk in with nothing, the folks that have that data organized, they are going they will be able to jumpstart the recovery. Last thing i want to say and i will want to hear from my colleagues, under this administration we have taken monomentous steps to invest in communities. We announced Community Resilience zone, driving federal interAgency Partnerships particularly underserved communities that are especially vulnerable to natural hazards. We have already announced, we announced 483 of the initial tranche of Community Disaster resilience zones and theres more to come and the way to think about this is we went right down to census track data and i could spend hours up here nerding out about census track data amongst friends to look at the place that the highest risk across the nation and the idea is, is to put a laser focus on these communities so they can be the primary, really get the primary designation and get access to additional funding and Technical Assistance who are excited about, this a lot of Government Agencies talk a lot talking points about Publicprivate Partnership and this is taking it to a whole new level. This is a joint effort with interAgency Partners in the philanthropy world and private sector as well as the Profit Center to identify the communities so we can have the laser focus of the billions of dollars of Grant Funding and the Technical Assistance needed so we can change outcomes. So hope that answers your question. Thank you, aaron. Natalie, mitigating the disparities. Yeah, i think i will start with the second question first. My colleagues have alluded to this and my federal programs just are not designed to support historically underserved, marginalized communities, folks that are in the margins postop. I think therein lies a lot of our challenge. Human and social partners are working with run away and Homeless Youth. Individuals that are not emancipated from their parents. They dont have documents, theyy dont know how to navigate services or if they are survivor and there are unique challenges. That community has really challenged us to say lets take an equity lens to our disaster approach and disaster programs. Lets critically analyze and understand these human and social services and how they are being delivered on a daytoday basis such that we can bring them and really utilize them in a targeted fashion to complement the services and its not this or that. The programs and systems may necessarily present a barrier to me. At hhs and scs specifically we are looking at how our programs and services can be utilized through waivers and flexibilities that it really equip the Service Providers to o take immediate action. Right, we want to make sure that they can reach out and touch that community that they are already serving and supporting and also the let them know that they can take more action within this confines of the resources and tools that they have available to them. I would note that Even Congress recognizes the role that acs plays after since 2005 we received many disaster supplemental appropriations to the tunes of hundreds of billions of dollars through our routine and services so that indicates to me that theres acknowledgment awareness and understanding that these are critically important and that the need for these underserved and marginalized communities is increasing and part of what we really want to layer in there is how are we how are we allocating our funds. Who are we seeing, who are we hearing from and who are we in the hearing from most importantly so we can look and understand and then they tailor and Program Services to address an tackle that need as opposed to what we think may be the need. I appreciate that and the focus on research cord in addition and thinking about how our disastrous programs come together. Maybe i will shift to shannon the speak a little bit to what youre observing on the ground. So much of your work focuses on Affordable Housing and so im wondering if you can invite us in to that work. What are you hearing from Community Partners and the connection to Financial Health. I really appreciate what i heard from other speakers and one of the things that natalie said that really struck me is renters as as a less attended population and renters make up 40 of the population and in some in urban areas it may be even more than 50 . Houston, for example, is 50 owners and 50 renters. We know that the majority of Disaster Recovery programs are aimed at owneroccupied housing and that is missing out on one of our most vulnerable populations and its a large vulnerable population and its not its not marginalized, its actually quite mainstreamed and may seem very little attention to renters in particular and one of the things that we saw particularly after Hurricane Harvey was the renters and even, you know, renters of singlefamily homes but renters of multifamily and places like that who are very precariously situated financially. We mentioned earlier, i think secretary steel mentioned earlier, the families that are living paycheck to paycheck. When a disaster comes and youre transit is rendered useless, you cant get to work on time, you may lose your job immediately and even if you dont lose your job, you cant get to it so youre not getting paid and the loss of a single paycheck and missing work a handful of times can be the difference of surviving and not surviving for these families and doing all the right thing and maybe even saving money but its not enough. Its not enough to deal with even the 400dollar expense and so many of us would be, oh, sure, i can write a check for 400 but even in things that i experienced. I was without power a few days. It was not a huge deal and this often gets overlooked because our State Government doesnt like to talk about it. Somewhere 250 and 750 people died during that winter storm which is much greater loss of life than what we would normally see in a hurricane in texas. People who literally froze to death and then even when the power is on the utility bills are ridiculously high. I know we mentioned phoenix with 30 days over 110. My community at college station, we were 60 days of 105, 60 consecutive days of 105 or greater with people not airconditioned or people not having heat during hurricane. So the financial the Financial Realities for many of these families really become a life or death situation and and i think of resilience and this goes back to what natalie was saying. When i think of resilience as a community planner, i think of it as communitylevel characteristic and in my mind what we should be doing is aiming all of our programs at those most vulnerable people. I think resilience is if you have a chain and one link is broken, then the chain doesnt work. We have a lot of the broken links in our communities and we can become more resilient as a community by targeting our resources to that link that needs to be fixed and that means that our programs should be targeting our most vulnerable and everyone else would be addressed by them but they really need to be getting to those that are that are most at risk of loss of life and loss of of stable living. Thanks so much, shannon. I want to ask followup question. Many questions that we received in advance covered that as well. Im just curious what youre observing on the Insurance Fund particularly in coverage and uptick issues, not necessarily the host this is a whole other issue. I think we mentioned a lot and i know that youre excited about the census track as a planner. I really want to drill down to the block group and part of the reason for that is theres so much variation in communities within a county, within a track, theres a lot of variation and in rural areas those tracks, of course, can be enormous and dont do a lot to target the particular communities but so many of those homeowners are, you neglect, they paid off their mortgage and so they dont have to have insurance and they dont. I remember one family in galveston when we were studying galveston and she was a small landlord, she owned her home and she rented the house next to her that she owned, so she owned both homes. She had a mortgage on the one that she rented. She had paid off her own home so she did not have Homeowners Insurance but she did on rental unit. I had never thought of Something Like that when we ran across it and it just reminded me that its great that she may be able to rebuild one of those homes and that may be the one she ends up moving into but then shes lost one of her major streams of income, she cant reproduce. So that coverage issue and recognizing, i dont know what the coverage rates are in texas to be honest with you but my i imagine that particularly in these rural areas an older neighborhoods where a lot of the homes have filtered down so they are more affordable and we are talking about older homeowners, theyre not insured. I have one friend actually i lived with a woman right after i graduated from college, my roommates mother who lives in houston and her home has been flooded at least four times in the last ten years and she refuses to move to the point that her daughter who was my roommate and are not speaking because they are tired of digging her out. Her son literally had the break hole open in the room to be saved after Hurricane Harvey and not because shes not well educated, shes perfectly well educated and not because shes poor, shes not, shes stubborn and shes old and shes connect today her community and so i think sometimes especially when we talk about relocation, we we take for granted the importance of that connection to community and all of the other services that are provided to families beyond just their housing unit and their household and thats something that a lot of our programs dont address very effectively. I appreciate that attention, challenging and pushing assumptions and bringing those personal experiences, so suzanne, i want to turn to you and on the theme of assumptions and what might surprise and to bring us deeper into the report that treasury just released today. What was the finding that stood out to you or surprised you . I want to start by commenting on whats been said so far and we were talking we talk about vulnerable communities. We talk about underserved communities, communities that experience disparities. This represents a lot of america. This is a tremendous number of people. If you look lack at Financial Security lens, if you look at the metric who is able to meet a 400dollar expense theres a large people who cant, if you look at whether people feel financially stable, that shrinks even more dramatically. So i think the principle that sharon mentioned sort of designing with vulnerable folks in the center is an important one but one that i think also encompasses really tremendous number of people and not small isolated examples. I want to give you actually, the first one ties in i think its come up several times around connections between Disaster Relief and social safety net. We found one of the areas, the impact of climate events in the availability of child care and education and, you know, we find relatively unsurprising that extreme heat in particular can have big consequences for the provision of child care and education which means not only that students and teachers and other professionals might be experiencing unsafe conditions while they are at work or while they are in school and conditions that interact the ability to leash and also providers and schools are forced to close and if we look at the past decade heat related School Closings in the u. S. Have nearly doubled and we have every expectation that that will continue to rise. So this is obviously an issue thats exacerbated by Outdated School infrastructure, very much exacerbated by the need for comprehensive child care funding that can better support providers and also avoid Family Budgets being impossibly squeezed in trying to afford child care in the first place. But there are significant consequences in the near and in the long term, you know, parents have to scramble to find a place that they can take their kid and many parents and in particular many women are likely to miss work the care for children and that has obviously direct income loss potential but also has capacity to interrupt equitable work participation and Career Advancement opportunities. I want to switch gears to highlight something that is unfortunately too common in the aftermath of disasters. You know, as my colleagues have mentioned, disaster aid plays crucial role in recovery but one extremely disheartening issue is the school legislation of fraud and scams in the aftermath of disasters, take charities, job opportunities, impersonation of fema, impersonation of a Financial Institution to give an example, right, you can have somebody who has experienced Property Damage and they get an email, it seems to be from fema. Theres aid available, you to pay application fee. They are trying to move quickly, its complex, they go ahead and do that and that was fraudulent. Fema is not going to ask you to pay application fee for aid and now you found yourself in position not only sustaining impact but taking financial hit and loss of private information that can impact and one more thing with disaster that can bring someone down in a negative financial spiral and, you know, we have seen, i think, the stat that in the last two or four years reported fraud and Identity Theft is up over 60 and i think that probably also reflects changes to reporting but thats hugely significant. We know older adults in particular are aggression ly targeted here and i know my aggressively targeted here and its important to continue to bring awareness with trusted organizations, with folks on the ground who can do a good job ensuring that people who are already in vulnerable situation dont get taken advantage of again. Okay, thank you. Moments like the ones depicted in this picture, post disaster context, i wanted to invite you to briefly give a minute, talk of what we should be doing on, quote, unquote, sky days to proactively improve community and household resilience. Natalie, can i start with you . Sure. I think as we learn and understand tapestry of the community and who has access to goods and services and also in advance of for those noticed incidents what gives them agency, right, and i think at the present moment there is very much this, we are going the set up the shelters and those sorts of things which are prudent and important and if i can advance benefits. If i can give you more agency, more opportunity for you to opt into what is the best decision, how do i do that and how do i pursue that and how do i implement an action. We have seen that from covid19 with the child care subsidies and so on that people on . A. They make the right decisions, right, just as we heard that folks are good budgeters especially if they are lowincome. I think part of our focus is on how do we really start to restore agency to many of these communities and really equip them with those schools, with not only those tools and sort of techniques but also the resource that is they actually need to make those best determinations and see where those things shake out. Separately i would say, making sure theres portability. If people have to relocate, make it less burdensome to do so. Thank you. I love the term agency. I think its so important when people in the beltway talk about building resilience in the beltway. Im going to hammer that home. I cannot begin to stress the importance of communitybased organizations during blue skies and gray skies and one of the things that we have seen through research is a lot of these institutions from nonprofit medical providers, credit unions, senior care centers, these are the institutions including faithbased partners where many underserved americans depend on those services day in and day out. We develop organizations preparing for emergencies need or open and the goal to understand their supply chains, get a better understanding of continuity plan and take the other basic steps and give them direction where resources are available to do that. I never forget going to do this trading to a small nonperiod of time and im only one person with 5 volunteers how am i supposed to build a continuity plan because ive always been somewhat surprised when i said that in this world of just in time delivery, many local food banks are keeping supply available and when that need is going to jump by 100, 300 , we want to be able to give them resources to make that more resilient. Next thing that i would say, the assistant secretary touched on this, i will be super fast, the idea of emotional, social and physical resilience, Financial Resilience is important but many of you read recent article of david brooks why americans are so mad and why we are so sad in the atlantic and one of the things that fema will be working on is personal resilience, steps to take about federal Agency Partners to try to make an impact, perfect is the enemy of good in Disaster Management, my friends, to try and build help americans rebuild that physical, social and emotional resilience because the last thing i will say according to the National Housing survey only 8 of americans participated in a Community Event to help them build resilience over the 2023. Thank you. I think i would challenge us maybe not to think about it as blue sky and gray sky especially in my experience in houston and not to say that houston is the center of the world, maybe the center of my world, but houston is a constant state of disaster. I tell the story a lot when Hurricane Harvey hit i pulled up the city of houstons website to see what emergency programs they were standing up and i found that they had they had just stood up the one for harvey but they had 3 other one that is were still open from hurricane ike which took place 9 years as well as 2015 floods and the 2016 floods. Hay had four open emergencies at that time. What that tells me they are always in a state of emergency and especially for our vulnerable families they are constantly in a state of recovery. Yeah. Particularly because it takes them so much longer to recover in the first place. So anything that we can do to make them for resilient for life is going to be useful during a disaster as well. So as a planner, i want to say to to communities that they should be planning for disasters. They should include vulnerability assessments and their comprehensive plans, they should include predisaster plans as part of their comprehensive planning and they should integrate all of the plans documents that they have across the community including the Hazard Mitigation plan, the consolidated housing plan, the comprehensive plan or whatever plans they happened to be making because they are often in conflict with one another and they are being developed in isolation from one another. We can only be successful and im a planner so i really do believe that we have to think ahead and we have to we have to understand what is potentially happening to us. Sometimes i even get frustrated with seeing these pictures because these are the pictures of what captures the natures attention but they are really just the beginning for the families that are experiencing them. These families are going to be working for months and years to give back what they had. We need to remember those that period of time and not just the immediate what do we do today kind of reaction. I will try to be quick. I want to comment on so many good things that were just said. First let me just i think underline planning. I started my career in local government. We had a major storm one year and the mayor turned to me and said your job is to keep unsheltered Homeless People alive and we didnt have a plan to do that. We figured it out. We managed not to lose anyone who reflects tremendous work from a number of Community Organizations but for me it really highlights the importance of communities thinking both about what can happen and also about what i would think of as one of the absolutely most vulnerable communities as they conduct planning. I also want to underline the comments on agency, treasury has a lot of ongoing work on Financial Inclusion and we really are thinking about centering, how we Center Agencies and excuse me, Center Agency Consumer Agency as part of that work. Theres a number of Research Projects that will be additive and useful going forward. I know andy outlined several of them and then let me close by just underlying again the point of investing in communities in a way that is community led, communities have been at the forefront of challenging Climate Change of, you know, organizing to reduce local sources of pollution or organizing around local environmental or Climate Change goals and i think theres tremendous potential for especially the awe of investment thats coming through the Biden Administration initiatives to be taken advantage from Significant Community expertise and its certainly my hope that thats what we will see and i know my colleagues are working hard to make sure thats the case. Great, thank you so much. Please join me in thanking our partners and audience for joining. [applause] as a reminder the event was recorded and i hope this is an invitation for all of us for more dialogue, incites action for households in communities. I really appreciate that. Thank you. [applause] thank you