Transcripts For CSPAN2 Executive 20240703

Examining the impact of Climate Change on u. S. Household finances, especially for those living and foldable communities. The Treasury Department released a report that they of this event. This is hosted by the urban institute in washington, d. C. And runs about one hour and 20 minutes. Welcome, and good afternoon. I am signemary, Vice President urban institute on the center of labor, Human Services and population. And also a Financial Wellbeing expert. So this topic, todays topic is there into to my heart. Thank you to all of us could joint joined both in the room today and online and before i jump in here are a few notes on housekeeping. One, the event is being recorded and the recording and relevant links will be posted online after thehe event. If youre joining us virtually the life captions are turned on and you can adjust those at the bottom of your screen. And if youre b in the room you can use the qr code that is on all of your table to submit your questions, and the 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 postsurvey, postevent survey, and would ask that you share your feedback with us. Its helpful for us and for panelists to you what youre thinking about andou to shape hw we do events in what we look at in the future. If you would like to join the conversation online on twitter, please use liveaturban. Okay, so with logistics behind us, i want to thank all of our speakers for joining us for a discussion of how Climate Change impacts household Financial Wellbeing. We are going to be asked going both what drives the risks and also the pathways to building resilience. So far in 2023, the United States has suffered 23 billion disaster, many of them fueled by Climate Change. The increasing frequency, severity, and the cost of the disasters and the warmer temperatures is having an impact on peoples Financial Health. We know that many families in the unitedam states live paychek to paycheck, and that disasters can push households in the financial instability and distress. So it is imperative we both consider climate and are policies and programs, and that we consider them when were looking at those policies and programs aimed at both Financial Health and wealth. So 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. In a few moments im going to be joined on stage by graham steele, assistant secretary for Financial Institutions at the u. S. Department of the treasury. And were going to discuss treasuries work on Climate Change an American Household finances. Prior to his role as an assistant secretary to serve as director of the corporations and Society Initiative at Stanford Graduate School of business, that the Research Initiative that examined issues at the heart of markets, business and government to promote more accountable cabinet capitalism and governance. So we are pleased to have him here with us today. And please join me in welcoming assistant secretary graham steele. [applause] great to have you. Thanks for coming. Good to be here. Thanksomom to urban for lettings joined them. We often talk about climate in a a variety of different contexts, and today you released the report, treasury released the report, the impact of Climate Change on American Household finances. And so such an important intersection here, these two. Can you give us some background on the framework that you used in the report and why you chose a framework . Sure. I think we all know we are seeing today up in new york in particular the event of wildfires, flooding, heat waves are as you said in opening getting more and more frequent and more and more intense we know that theres a fivefold increase in the number of billion dollar disaster in the u. S. Going back to 1980, and thats even adjusted for inflation per week that things like Hurricane Ian last year we had 157eo people died and cost assessment to be over 100 billion. So were saying intensity and impacts here. As you know we released this report on the impact of Climate Change and index American Householdha today. Trying to get a close look at more because we see these numbers. E we see headline numbers around events like the wildfires in maui where we think they will cost around 4 6 billion. We want to get a little more of a human face on this kind of highlevel events and these numbers come kind of impact with the impacts are to households. Then we will take a step back a moment because some f folks, in the positions of income something to get like what is a Treasury Departments talking about Climate Change, like what is your agency have to do with all ofr this . But i with a number one, the white house has told all the cabinet agencies that we need to take a whole of government and hope of executive branch approach to climate picsan all e agencies need to think about what our goal is here in addressing the problems and then creatingcr solutions to address the challenges of Climate Change. Change. The secretary herself has spoken repeatedly about the urgency of addressing Climate Change both the cost and the toll that it imposes on the nation and the globe. But also think about what we can bring to bear as an agency to do that. So she is encourage all of our office to think that what were we could be doing to both analyze the problem and then think about solutions. And so we have done work through the Financial Stability Oversight Council about looking at thehe o broader risks to the Financial System caused by Climate Change. I am also responsible for the federal insurance offers which we can talk a a little bit abt more about later but there are things t happening in the propey and Casualty Insurance market due to Climate Change that were looking at. But weser office of consumer policy and through our partners in the Financial Literacy and Education Commission, we want to take a closer look at the Household Level and individual level impact of some of these events to rethink a particular about how the impact Household Level finances. To go back to the example of the wildfires, you can think about when the country that happens, what are the impacts on the ground . I do think theres aro of life that happens for folks that are exposed to the wildfires but there are also people that do work on maui who may now come the business may be closed down, there may besi Agricultural Workers enough you can go to the place of business anymore. So its either not accessible or theyve had their hours cut come serve and not getting income. At the same time there might be costs related to relocation, rebuilding their home after the fact. There could be less access resources on the island which could lead to Higher Energy or food prices. So that was really our goal with this report was to try to really put the granger Household Level focus on some of these broader events where we see the macrolevel impacts and the cost but understand it really reflects in peoples daytoday lives. And so important to go just see those total cost but also the daytoday lives on people. I know that the report primarily focused on flooding, and that includes extreme weather events, sea levels rising, flooding related to wildfires, extreme heat. Research from my urban institute colleagues and others demonstrate that disasters like this can have a long and and even process in terms of both recovery and rebuilding after, and that it can be really an equal in how different people are affected. I know the treasure report also look at the different impacts. What did you find . We tried to do a couple of things. One was just look at the broaded impact the Climate Changes have it across all households. So for workers in places like maui, that kind of dynamic that i i describe, but you could have events in other places that create unsafe working conditions for all workers regardless of what their Household Financial condition looks like. You c could imagine events increasing the cost of healthcare for example, on people or increase property destruction that happens with hurricanes. You can also look at the broad impact of chronic Climate Change that is happening this past summer was hottest summer on record, what does that mean for workers who work outside in the agriculture industry, and construction and manufacturing of things like that but also what does it do to energy prices, race a cost of like air conditioning . One piece of it is looking about the ways what other voices impacts all households, but then we really wanted to drill down on some of the most financially vulnerable households to better understand what the implications would be for those folks. People who do, people like folks in this room who do research on Financial Capability and wellbeing will be awareia of things like the cpd 2021 survey that found really onethird of households n could not cover moe than one months worth of expenses if you lost their income, or the annual Federal Reserve the set over 60 of households that even afford a shock 400 expense out of the cash and other available resources. That was one of the things we really wanted to look at in addition to the broad impact of Climate Change were how does that get exacerbated when a household is financially vulnerable . We are in washington. If folks were here this past summer this is a think i was there used to come from california, but there were wildfire smoke from the canadian fires here in washington, d. C. , even this past summer. So can Agricultural Workers comp construction workers who dont want to or are unable to inhale wildfire smoke within cant work, what does it mean if crates unsafe conditions . What does it mean for lowwage workers . Households with Health Conditions within our ingesting the smoke who then have increased medical costs, what does it mean terms of increasing the financial per carry . And again i think so be a term to repeat with consumer policy and insurance is probably times it comes out of this, for households that can barely afford to really absorb that kind ofaf expense. That is what were trying to do is think about the broad impacts of Climate Change, what does me mean for the most vulnerable. One section of the report i would recommend people take a look at his we tried to do a little bit oft geospatial mappig to try to see where those communities are located, where this overlaps are happening. The three rescue mission key, wildfire and flooding. What we saw is a little more than 50 of counties in the u. S. Are exposed to the impacts of climate in one of these three different ways. And then you overlay the Financial Vulnerability on top of that, you see theres about 20 of counties that have this overlay of exposure to Climate Change and Financial Vulnerability as well. Thats really important for someone who works in the federal government to understand that Climate Change is a global phenomenon and we are were experiencing it at a National Level but also the different committees are expecting this in very different ways and try to understand what those communities are,e what their experience he didnt try to think how we respond to that as well. Mapping is so important to help. Where to target resources. Where do we go first . I guess where i want to turn to talk a lot about the problems. What about some of thehe solutions . What can we do here . How can we support . How is treasury thinking that supporting states as they are looking at their policies and programs . I wish this report had all of thee solutions to all of the issues that we raised. Unfortunately its not that ambitious of a project. But yes, you are absolutely right. Try to does haveigig a role plao some degree and offering assistance to different kinds of businesses or state and local governments. Treasury was given historic to administer through the inflation reduction communities with various different kinds of clean energy investment, state and local governments, individual households to invest in things like evs and of the type of heat pumps, other types of energy efficiency. And also think about in the sense ofnv the technology and nw products and services that might help reduce the impact that some of these technologies are having on the claim as well. Thats an important part of it. Some folks were at the white house yesterday for the introduction of the resilient framework, another way we can get out ahead of this stuff. I think one piece of the report we can talk a little bit more about the specific recommendations is about households that have household can be aware and protect themselves and think about the ways its impacting them. An important thing for policymakers in particular realize when you look at the impact of Climate Change is some of these can be handled on the back and in terms of protection but also theres a lot of upfront investment that has to happenen which make communities and households more resilient. Atol times arsenic is might not connect those things and see the weight upfront recency and investments might lead to some of these Better Outcomes on the backend. And everywhere at the department were trying tohe think about tt is a third office the point is the office of community and economic development. Weve been trying to work in particular with community Financial Institutions to think, to hear from them what kind of investment work they are doing to try to help address both the Clean Energy Transition but also make committeesh more resilient to theit physical impacts of Climate Change is an accurate partner with him to make the jump easier as well. So again consistently with the white house, has told the department and with the sect has told us what kind of thing but all the different tools and how we can bring them to bear to address a lot of his really important problems. I just was thinking about you last mention of the Financial Institutions. I know that when the government went out with covidnm relief checks, often the people and give them the most got the last because theyot didnt have the connections to some of the mainstream Financial Institutions. Youve touched on somebody different aspects and the so many different places to come in. In. I know the report touches on credit reports, too. And what happens to credit and price of credit. So thats great. In terms of that state level programs, terms of like people, what can people who are impacted by fisc and what resources might you point into . Sure. Part of this report is identify some of the issues and problems for academics and policy makers to pick up and think about how the work overlaps with some of the issues were racing on the report. We can talk more about those pieces well and if you would like. But also part of the report is trying to raise awareness for households about the challenges they may interact, the equipments also but also to tell the they are not necessarily about when they get into these situations. Probably when people experience catastrophic events, they can feel very isolating, and in particular when we experience Financial Vulnerability, that can feel even more isolating, like it is our problem to solve ourselves come help is not availables to us. But what of the messages the report is trying to get across to households is our resources available, that there are agencies like the ones that join us today like hhs and fema and Even Small Business Administration that have product services, other tools to offer them when to get into these comp winter in thesese precarious situations. There are resources they control on inside the use Climate Resilience toolkit and also programs like Energy Assistance when cost of the energy bills go up. Thats, were trying to do a few Different Things ino the report, make sure households are aware of some of the risk that are out there but also with no theyre not on their own. Are some resources available. Good. I know during the covid crisis we really expected Financial Health to take a huge dip, and certainly not everybody fared equally well, but the programs and policies in place meant that we didnt see that over all. So a can really work. And then you mention we dont have all the solution ship, we are laying out some of the research. What additional knowledge or research do we need in order to get to and provide more of those solution . There is potentially, i mean we view this report as a first step as i said for additional policymakers, academics, other kinds of researchers to really hopefully pick up the baseline that were laying out to take it in a different direction than what their interests are. Some pieces of the report that stick out to me as being of interest that i would love to see other stakeholders really drill down on, one is the kind of psychological impact of these kinds of events, the confluence of the trauma of experience g some sort of climate related disaster, but then also the way the Financial Security and Financial Stress impacts people Psychological Health and wellbeing and ten kind of t does to people decisionmaking, how they respond and react in one of these situations. I think we know the Financial Behavior is emotion driven in a lot of ways. But the stress of a climate if it top of that and the threat of losing your home or your Community Just sort of what that does to households and then how again policymakers, responding o those kind of issues, it might be individual personal issue but truly suitable for others to try to step in and help them navigate those kinds of situations. I think a second piece of this but hopefully the geographic aspect of the report might kind of tea up for others is how certain populations are impacted by these kind of events, again of household and Community Level. We are looking at it from the perspectivee of financial precarious but we know certain communities are to take a precarious as well and somewhat also be frontline and soberly joined drawing down on the specific population that are most impacted by Climate Change and an overlapping of Financial Vulnerability and then i would be negligent, grossly negligent if anyny kind of discussion i i didnt begin mention the federal Insurance Office and what it is doing. It is an early stages of piloting a nationwide zip code level data call for data on the pricing of availability of property and Casualty Insurance policies. I think if it doesnt go by that adult read an article in like the wall street journal or bloomberg about how Insurance Companies are either raising the cost of their premiums, reducing the coverage for the policies, or just say theyre not going to issue new policies and entire states or in communities as result of Climate Change. What we at getting the underlying data about the come what we empirically know about how the costs of insurance are going up as result of Climate Change or how a availability is being effective as result of Climate Change. We want on a nationwide basis to understand Climate Change is a global phenomenon. It is not respecting sec the National Borders but wet need on the nationalists deal. There are some states collecting not all doingre it. We also need at a granular zip code level to understand the way to reduce our impacted by. Those are a a few different ares where would love to see additional support, research, conversations but we really hope this is a conversation starter, not that we think weve all the answers on these issues. Excellent. So lots of different avenues to go forward. With that, i will say thank you very much, assistant secretary, for joining us today. The next i wanted to introduce andrew who is going to tell us, he is a senior fellow and call the Government Institute climate and communities practice area and will hear about some research. Thank you. [applause] hello. Thank thank you, and welcomo everyone to urban. And when youre in the room but also everyone whos joining us online as well. So as signemary said, im and aruba, a senior fellow at the Rebecca Skloot and also the coleader along with Sara Carnahan who you meet during the next panel for climate and committees program here. So climate and committees is a focused focus program of invective and Research Technical assistance, policy analysis and communication all with the goal of helping, helping changemakers to build more resilient committees for all. Okay, so if anyone was skeptical that Climate Change was a pressing issue, 42023, hope you saw this image it comes to some situs at the climate break. This is dailyly 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 weve been saying for a long time now. We just a lot of numbers about the number of billion dollar disasters pictures another number from you that gets talked about a little less, from the senses, in 2022, 1. 3 of all households in the u. S. Were displaced from their homes by a disaster. 15 of households in louisiana in the year were displaced by a disaster. Just remarkable numbers when you start to think about the cumulative impact on people. And so we get lost in those numbers as researchers sometimes. What does i meet o on the ground in thehe daily lives of people . It seems like this. Folks who are escaping from 31 Straight Days of 110 degrees temperatures in phoenix and going to a local cooling center. These are peoples lives disrupted, peoples work disrupted, these are peoples business is disrupted. These are many unknown Health Impacts all in one photo and we could adjust the number of thousands of photos just from this last summer. And so we know Climate Change is an urgent problem. Elected officials, practitioners, committed advocates, citizens all high quality Reliable Research tool to make decisions to do with this archer probably think that urban along with our peer organizations, along with a University Partners have multiply in this larger climate challenge. What this prevents research say about Climate Change impact of Financial Health and wellbeing . Im glad you asked. Let me start by saying this. And the climate and Communities Program this is the Diverse Group of researchers with a lot of different backgrounds from economists to Community Planners where folks are qualitative research, quantitative researchers. We talk about what are our d beliefs are as researchers as a look at climate for all these different angles. One of our shared belief with come up with its Climate Change isnt everything problem. Its not assigned over here. Its not fema, not one organization with the government. Its something we need to think about Climate Change as as a problem that touches on all of our lives, all of our work and, therefore, we need the whole of government whole of civil society, whole of Community Approach to dealing with it. In that spirit and as ive trying to choose a a study to feature today fromrb urban, i couldnt do it because theres too many and theres too many diverse everything kind of studies as im going to give you seven studies in seven minutes i have left. Each with a headline finding and then i will cite all of these come from different researches that urban, Different Centers come different approaches. We love all of these links in the event page and also emailed to you afterwards. I hope this isth a bit of an appetite, wet your appetite and you look at these studies in greater detail. Number one, disasters leak abroad and often substantial negative impacts on Financial Health. We know this is a large love but when we dig into the data we start to see this and these researchers are looking at all these different measures of Financial Health and wellbeing including Credit Scores, debt collection, credit card debt, mortgage still he could see. One of those interest aspects of the support which is called insult injury is defined mediumsize disasters and this is close to my heart as a researcher often call this wellintentioned disasters, the kind of events that happenn much more frequently but often dont get a declaration or dont get major disaster assistance, those can have the largest outsized impact of Financial Health and wellbeing. One point from that Research Committee of cold impacted by mediumsize disasters expense of 31 decline in credit grantor three as compared to 4. Decline in majority white committees. Again because of what the assistant secretary talked about in terms of chronically distressed communities and terms of the Financial Health. Number two, under insurance executed from the house of rebuilding progress after the marshall fire in colorado. This is a Longitudinal Survey effort led by the university of colorado in the p colorado schol of public healthh along with researchers at urban and Duke University survey household as they recovered over the longterm. Not surprisingly but incredibly important, under insurance has become the major issue in recovery so what you see as most households were underinsured. The thought that enough insurance to cover rebuilding but they dont because of inflation, because of the possibility matures, because of the rapidly escalating cost of labor. As so as a result, highincome households who canl fill the gap are recovering much quicker and that shows up in the data which you can read about in that report and much more data about thatuc disaster. Number three, Mobile Home Park residents suffer chronic climate impacts. Annette should believe that we talk in ourim practice very isnt indivisibility matters a lot. The population to a least visible in the data are often those who suffer the worst impacts of these events because its hard to design policies for them. So Mobile Home Parks to us fits this perfectly. They dont show up in the senses. Everyone who talks to underground know their highly global population. They has 7 million people, three times as likely be in poverty as homeowners conventional homeowners, and yet we cant measure than in the sense of you have a hard time accounted for the inner Emergency Management plans. The seven service that yoa urban website talk about Financial Health be linked to in many cases this mobile home which in reality is not mobile at all. Mobile homes barely ever move. They are stuck in place. So these households are often a very modest means often have all of their savings a tied up in te so and when disaster strikes oftentimes theyre not insured, they cant get programs of work for them, they lose all their financial assets. And lastly, they tend to be in hazardous areas when suffer these events again and again. Number four, i lost count already. Migration after Hurricane Maria had no measurable effect on an edge wellbeing of receiving communities. This is a fascinating study just published relatively recently encouraging them to go look it. Funded by the national academies. Researchers at urban found and it will lookingng specifically t migration from Hurricane Maria to Central Florida which is one of the main receiving areas and a look at the question of how with this rapid influx of puerto rican migrants have double impact thean Financial Services but also the larger Financial Health of the community . They found over limited Financial Services and these organizations struggle to wrap up and will continue to struggle over time. But due to a lot of really interesting work at some point in report from government and other organizations, overall across multiple measures this graph just showsws Credit Scores across multiple measures based on the impact on the receiving community, which means it is possible to absorb these migrants, but and again this is another belief we have in the climate Communities Program, Place Matters a lot. Central florida is not everywhere, right . So what is it about Central Florida that allow them to be healthy, absorb this population are not suffer negative financial consequences . As a result a lot of lessons of the potential receiving communities. Number five, North Carolinas Rapid Rehousing Program help households with financial instability to find stable housing. This is a Program Evaluation that was published online from researchersli at urban and whato look at is this really interesting and Innovative Program in North Carolina h that help 1000 people who were living in postdisaster shelters who had been housing unstable before the disaster either homeless or had an suffering from housing instability, what programs and services to give him come out of the shelters . They gave him constituted suite of services and Financial Assistance and they found that upon exit the households of them did on 85 exited to stable housing. Tools and Solutions Rather than just problems although the last one was a success story. I want to talk about a couple of neat data tools that are published. First, i come from a Disaster Management background. Speaking to my brethren out there and sisters out there, we use metrics like income and poverty rates and not thinking in complex ways that the experts in the room are today. This is a fantastic tool from urban you can look at my puma in the u. S. , which is a Geographic Area from the census and look across 10 different indicators of Financial Health and wellbeing. From an Emergency Management perspective, why dont we go beyond thinking about poverty and income and thinking of our financial perspectives, how well could they manage a shock, how could we use this data to design better programs . Finally, we need tools to connect our social safety net programs to climate challenges. We have amazing safety net programs across the country that are often doing work way beyond our resources and one is head start so this is a recent tool that was published by researchers and data scientists and Communication Specialists at urban that allows you to go online and look where the head starts in the program, the density of head starts for the populations and map that across a whole lot of different hazards including not just climate hazards, but legacy pollution. Its a fantastic mapping tool and covers the entire United States and it allows you to generate all kinds of interesting this is an example of kind of tools that programs across the federal government and State Governments need in order to incorporate Climate Change in their everyday work. Like i said, i hope you will visit our website, i hope you will take a look at the individual reports and many others that are on urbans website and thank you again very much for being here and looking forward to being here from our next panel. [applause]. [inaudible conversations] thanks for musical chairs, exactly. Im here together with the climate and communities practice here at urban. Thank you for joining us today and thank you to the panelists, looking forward to this discussion. As weve been seeing so far, many complex forces resilience to climate demanding a coordinated response to government, as well as nonprofit, communitybased actors, really excite today welcome the group on stage representing three agencies with an Important Role in supporting families and communities as well as local very practice engaged researchers from texas to speak to whats happening in one. Most climate impacted states. All of their bios are on the website and i encourage you to check them out and as well as the qr code in the room and the panelists briefly introduce yourselves and your agencys role in stabilizing households in the short and longterm after disasters. Start with you, natalie. Good afternoon, im natalie grant, office Human Services, preparedness and response at administration for children and families at the u. S. Department of health and Human Services, i know. Long title, very big role in capacity that we serve. Were basically the safety net for the nation. The largest funder and provider of human and social services in the u. S. Government. Our budget annually 62 billion, we have a presence in every Community Across the country and factor prominently in some of the programs youve heard earlier from the direct services and assistance that come from temporary assistance from needy families. Low income home Energy Assistance programs, water assistance programs and so on to child and family services. Child welfare, head start, child care benefits, foster care, run away and homeless youth. Two other supportive entities, such as Domestic Violence, trafficking in persons and Community Block grants. We are the smorgasbord when it comes to social and Human Services. When it ties back to Climate Risks and so on, we support those individuals and household and communities at the margins and are in crisis every day. Right, thats why they rely on our services and support holistically. Our role 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 these shocks and threats, holistically as they continue to expand and as we continue to understand climate risk across the country. Thank you. Well, good afternoon, everyone. A pleasure to be with you today. Im aaron levy, the director of the individual and Community Preparedness at fema which means i have the best job in the agency and im very proud to say that. Femas mission, helping people before, during, after disasters, one of the noblest, i think, in government. For us, when we think about helping households in the aftermath of the disasters, a couple of things come to mind. Firstoff is our individual program run by our friends at the office of response and recovery. In the case should the president declare a major disaster, in conference with a governor or a tribal leader, fema, i want everyone to listen carefully in the room and at home to help folks with their immediate needs and their uninsured needs and thats key. Well talk about that with the panel, the concept of the stafford act, the legislation that governs disaster assistance, theres an assumption out there that the private sector, specifically private insurers is taking on a majority of the risk and what weve realized is, what the secretary talked about and andrew talked about, there are a lot of americans who are not getting the assistance that they need. Thats not a knock on my colleagues or 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 a family after a disaster. Its a realization is that our programs need to improve to meet the climate challenges of today. Second thing were focused on is the National Flood Insurance Program which im sure many of you have heard of and im going 0 to give you a thought. One inch of flood water can cost 25,000 worth of damage. The other thought. Only 36 of americans believe that their Home Insurance policy will cover flooding. It doesnt in most cases. And of all of the properties in that has been looked at in a flood plane, only about 4 are bought into the National Flood Insurance Program. No matter what else you take away from me today one of the encouragements i give folks whenever i give a talk like this from a think tank in washington, to a bodega, ive done it, if you can talk to your insurer and buy flood insurance. We try to get people who might not have that ability and the last thing ill say, a bulk of what fema does, a lot of our programming, focuses on a response and recovery in supporting our state, local, tribal, territorial partners. From my team and Community Preparedness were all about Building Financial resilience, ill talk about that a little bit, but most of all to think about, leave you with a question to think about before its my turn again, if i told you you had a minute to get ought of your house, do you know where your Home Insurance information is, your drivers license, your bank account information, your mortgage information, would you know where there is, especially if you left your phone in the house . We will talk about that more in a little bit. Think on it for a minute. Well be back. Good afternoon, its a pleasure to be here. Im shannon vanzant, a professor of urban planning at texas a m university and Hazard Reduction recovery center. Ive been studying vulnerabilities to disasters and home owners for 15 years since hurricane ike struck the texas coast in 2008. A lot of people dont remember that because it happened the same week that the market crashed, but hurricane ike still stands as one of the top five or six most expensive storms in u. S. History and it was my introduction to hazards. Before that i was a howser, studied low income Home Ownership and got into disasters when i came to texas a m. Over that period of time my focus has been on that intersection of where people live and what their exposure to hazards is. So in particular im interested in Land Development patterns and our history of segregation and discrimination in the housing and lending markets that have perpetuated segregation over a period of time and how that places people in harms way. I have a saying and part of its because i do study mostly hurricanes and flooding, but low income people live in low Quality Homes in low lying areas and that really captures that intersection between physical vulnerability, which is low Quality Homes, social vulnerability, low income people and risk or exposure, which is low lying 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 low income residents to have adequate housing, with a particular interest in disasters. So it is kind of a constant state of being in the part of texas that i live in in most of texas so ive done work in the lower Rio Grande Valley of texas along the texasmexico borders, one of the highest poverty areas in the country and a lot of work in the houstongalveston area, communities of color in the city of houston and unincorporated harris county. One of the interesting factoids i like to tell about unincorporated harris county, and 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. Of course, when we have events 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 housing types that are most likely to be occupied by socially vulnerable populations take much longer to recover, probably two to four times as long as regular Single Family detached Owner Occupied housing and that its much more volatile. So we see that sometimes those homes never regain their prestorm value which is, of course, for many of those home owners 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, im the Deputy Assistant secretary Capital Access at the department of treasury where i work on Consumer Finance with a particular focus on Financial Inclusion and addressing historic disparities and ill pause for just a moment because were launching a report today to note that the report was produced with significant contributions from hhs, from fema, and i several times in it, so, a unique group to have a chance to talk about these issues with. And im really grateful to urban for facilitating this conversation. We see this as a significant contribution to treasury work with helpful blends on Climate Change and we expect that that will move forward in a number of ways, including that focus on the health level and overall Financial System. So as, you know, secretary steele mentioned, treasury of course has a role in mitigating climate risk more broadly in the Financial System and activity led by the Oversight Council and the federal Insurance Office and released net 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 a key part of ensuring that those resources reach the people who need them. Theres a treasury around the implementation of the ira and transformative investments preparing for Climate Change. We also need to recognize that alongside these resources and alongside the consumer facing elements of the ira, its really crucial and helpful to get access to the information and the Financial Education that can help them plan for the future and react to disasters. This report is part of that and part of the Overall Mission of the Financial Literacy and the Education Commission which, as i mentioned, consulted with treasury throughout the production of the report and i want to take one step further and just note that, assistant secretary steele highlighted, in this report, theres a laser focus on how the intersection of economic and social vulnerability and exposure to climate hazards means that communities that have been historically underserved or subject to disparity are at risk of financial harm even though theyre not the communities that have benefitted largely from the activities that drive Climate Change. So we know managing financial risk is not a new challenge, especially for low income and underserved communities who are often extremely sophisticated budgeters, but its an emerging risk. Its complex. It has both near term and longterm challenges and we think that the really crucial parts of treasury work not only to combat Climate Change, but equitable growth and opportunity 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 the activities that treasury leads in investing in communities, in working to expand access to credit and capital in ensuring that people across america have access to the financial products, tools, and information that they need in order to meet their needs and their goals. And you know, my colleagues here know and probably many of you in the room 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 ongoing efforts to strengthen the longterm Financial Security of communities across the United States. Thank you all for those introductions and i think that weve got many facts and to take away today. As were going into the next set of questions, i want to invite everyone online and in the room to submit questions through the event platforms, were trying to save times to get to the votes arriving here. I want to turn to you to talk more about the some of the impacts on the ground and what are some of the main drivers for the families in the wake of disaster and if you can think ahead to some of the main individual Household Level and Community Level actions that can be taken to preparedness . Absolutely. I think one of the drivers that were seeing obviously is the insurance gap and the number of americans who are both lacking, Home Insurance and flood insurance, i think thats number one. As i mentioned before in my remarks, the Current System and i use that word carefully is very much dependent upon and designed upon the premise that the private sector will take on most of the risk and thats something i know we are going to be working with our interagency partners and have been in this administration to mitigate that risk and help reduce those challenges, i think thats number one. Another challenge, and ill be very frank with you, its not easy at the moment to navigate the federal assistance process and one of the things that i know that our administrator criswell under the leadership of secretary mayorkas and President Biden have been working, finally started work on consolidated system through which americans can acomply for disaster assistance. You might be familiar with disaster assistance. Gov. To the average family told initially youre going to sba to get a nointerest loan as your first entry point for your uninsured needs. If youre someone who doesnt deal with the government or only dealing with the government as your postman or receiving a Social Security check. I dont know about you, but that sounds pretty odd to me and what were trying to do now is work with our partners to be able to explain that process better and to streamline those operations to make it easier on folks. Pivoting to the question about what households can do, one. Things i always tell my staff when were developing programming, because thats what my team does, in the individual and Community Preparedness space, 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 whos working an hourly job as a nursing assistant, they live in unincorporated harris county, i added that one, they live in a flood plain, they live in a mobile home, and andrew says, thats not actually mobile. What program can we design thats inclusive of that person . And what we think about is this idea Financial Resilience is simple steps that individuals can take. I know the assistant secretary touched upon this a little bit. If you are able to organize your key Financial Information before an event happens, i guarantee you, its going to make your recovery a whole lot better. That is, i think, so important. So fema in conjunction with operation hope and Treasury Department, we have something called the emergency financial first aid kit, you can download is on ready. Gov. And thanks to a digital wallet, you can take photos of the key documents and uploaded to cloud computing. And even if you lose it, you can have it uploaded. All of us in fema, day job in washington and management assistance teams. When youre getting a Disaster Recovery center set up and interagency and nonprofit and private sector partners there, people are walking in with nothing. And its often their first interaction with government when they walk in with nothing, the folks that have that data organized, theyre going to have a whole jump start the recovery. Last thing ill say im sure you want to hear from my colleagues, under this administration we have taken monumentous steps in communities. First off recently we announced Community Disaster resilience zone and excited about this, intended to build resilience across the nation by driving federal interagency partnerships, public and private resources specifically to underserved communities that are especially vulnerable to natural hazards. Weve already announced, announced last month, 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. I could spend hours up here nerding out about census track data, i think im amongst friends, to look at places with the highest risk across the nation and the idea is is to put a laser focus on these communities so they could be the primary and really get the primary benefit of the designation, to get access to additional funding and Technical Assistance. Were really excited about this. A lot of Government Agencies talking points about publicprivate partnerships, taking this to a whole new level and this is a joint effort with the philanthropic world and public and private sector, as well as the Nonprofit Sector to identify the communities so we can have the laser focus of billions of dollars of Grant Funding and Technical Assistance needed and outcomes. Thanks, aaron. Natalie, i want to pull up things with hhs and low income populations as you mentioned. If you could tease out some of the specific needs that you all observed in responding to post disaster in the communities and how should we be thinking about Program Design and implementation to be mitigating the disparities . I think ill start with the second question first. My colleagues have alluded to this and our federal programs just are not designed to support historically underserved, marginalized communities and in the margins, and therein lies a lot of our challenge. Our human and social Services Partners are working away with run away and homeless youth. Individuals who are not emancipated from their parents. They dont have documents, they dont know how to navigate many of the systems and services or if youre a survivor of Domestic Violence or otherwise, there are these unique challenges of individual circumstances that are not fully appreciated by the sort of means. They are necessarily outside the average for whom many of our programs are designed to serve and support. So honestly, our human and social Service Provider community, that community has really challenged us to say, lets take an equity lens to our disaster approach and to our disaster programs. Lets critically analyze and understand these human and social services and how theyre being delivered on a daytoday basis such that we can bring them and really utilize them in a targeted fashion to complement these programs and services. Its not that or that. Its oftentimes this and that. I am if if i am a renter or a couch surfer, the programs may present a barrier to me. Specifically we are looking at how our programs and services can be utilized through waivers and flexibility that really equip the Service Providers to take immediate action. They want to make sure to reach out and touch that community that theyre serving and supporting and also to let them know that they can take more action within the confines of the resources and tools that they have available to them. I would note that Even Congress recognizes the note that acf plays since 2005, we received many disaster supplemental appropriations to the tunes of hundreds of millions of dollars through our routine programs and services, so that indicates to me 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 and assigning our funds such that we dont super charge inequity. Who are we seeing, who are we hearing from, who are we not hearing from more importantly, so we can understand and address and tackle that need as opposed to what we think may be the needs. Really appreciate that and the focus on Research Coordination and thinking about how our Disaster Response programs come together with our safety net programs and not always easily, right . Maybe ill switch with that in mind to shannon to speak to what youre observing on the ground and so much is on Affordable Housing and people with disposable disasters. I wonder if youll invite us in. What are you hearing about the issues and connection to Financial Health . I appreciate what ive heard from other speakers. One of the things that natalie struck me is renters, as a less attended to population and you know, renters make up almost 40 of our population and urban areas, it may be even more than 50 . Houston, for example, has had a is 50 owners, 50 renters and we know that the majority of our Disaster Recovery programs are aimed at Owner Occupied housing and that is missing out on our one of our most vulnerable populations and its a large vulnerable population. Its not a its not marginalized, its actually quite mainstreamed. We see 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 even of Single Family homes, but renters of multifamily and places like that who are very precariously situated financialliment like, we mentioned earlier, i think assistant secretary steele mentioned earlier, the families living paycheck to paycheck, when the disaster comes and you cant get to work on time and you may lose your job immediately. Even if you dont lose your job, you cant get to it so youre not getting paid and the loss of even a single paycheck or being missing work, handful of times, can be the difference between surviving and not surviving for a lot of the families. So, definitely some of the Community Partners that i work with in houston, were really trying to address those kinds to keep people from sliding further down the ladder. You know, these are folks youve been struggling to climb the ladder, doing the right things, maybe even saving money. But its not enough. Its not enough to deal with even the 400 expense that so for many of us would be, oh, sure, i can write a check for 400. But even in things like winter storm yuri which texas, i experienced, i was without power for many days, it was not a huge deal, but this often gets overlooked because our State Government doesnt like to talk about it, somewhere between 250 and 700 people died during that winter storm which is much greater loss of life than what we would normally see even 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 weve mentioned phoenix with 30 days over 110. My community, college station, we were 60 days of 105. 60 consecutive days of 105 or greater with people not air conditioned, or people not having heat during hurricane yuri. So, the financial the Financial Realities for many of these families really become a life or death situation and i think the resilience and this goes back to kind of what natalie was saying, when i think of resilience as a community planner, i think of it as a Community Level characteristic and in my mind, what we should be doing is aiming all of our programs at those most vulnerable people. Because i think the resilience is like if you have a chain and one link is broken and then the chain doesnt work and we have a lot of the broken links in our communities and the 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 program should be targeting our most vulnerable and then everyone else will be addressed by them, but they really need to be getting to those who are most at risk of loss of life and loss of stable living. Thanks so much. I want to ask a followup question. Theres been a theme around insurance that weve all been speaking to and many of the questions that we received in advance covered that as well and im just curious what youre observing on the insurance front. In particular around some of the coverage and uptick issues, not necessarily the cost which is a whole different issue. Right, and i think one of the other things i wanted to mention, too, is about rural communities. I think we mentioned a lot, even 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 that there is so much variation in communities within a county, within a tract theres a lot of variation nrural areas, the tracts can be enormous and dont do a lot to target particular communities, but so many of those home owners are, you know, theyve 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 then she rented the house next to her that she owned. She owned both homes, but a mortgage on one that she rented. She had paid off her own home so she did not have home owners insurance, but she did on her rental unit. And that was 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 that she ends up moving into or whatever, but then shes lost one of her major streams of income that she cant reproduce. And 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 of course, where a lot of the homes have filtered down so theyre more affordable and were talking about older home owners, but theyre not insured. I have one friend, actually i lived with a woman right after i graduated from college, my roommates mother who lives along rays bayou in houston and her home has been flooded at least four times in the last 10 years and she refuses to move, to the point that her daughter, who was my roommate, and she are not speaking anymore because theyre tired of digging her out. Her son literally had to break a hole open in the roof for them to be saved after Hurricane Harvey, not just shes not welleducated. Shes perfectly welleducated and not because shes poor, shes not. Shes stubborn and shes old and shes connected to her community and so i think sometimes especially when we talk about relocation, we take for fronted 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 so appreciate that attention. Im challenging and pushing some of our assumptions and bringing in some of the personal experiences. I want to turn to you on the theme of assumptions and what might surprise to bring us deeper into the report the treasury just released today. What was the finding that stood out to you or surprised you . I want to start by commenting a little bit on whats been said so far and we were talking we talk about vulnerable communities. We talked about underserved communities, and experience, disparities and i think theres a temptation, sometimes to see the real edge cases. This isnt a lot of america, this is a tremendous number of people. If you look, kind of taking the Financial Security, Financial Wellbeing lens. The metric who is able to meet a 400 expense. Theres a shockingly large number of people who cant. If you look at selfreported indicators whether people feel financially stable that shrinks even more dramatically. So i think the principle mentioned around designing with vulnerable folks in the center is an extremely important one, but one that i think also encompasses really a tremendous number of people and not to small isolated examples. Returning to my point of personal privilege. Two answers to that question. The first one ties in with a theme thats come up several times around connections between Disaster Relief and the social safety net. And we found in the report one of the areas of Financial Impact that we highlight is the impact of climate events on the availabilities child care and education and you know, we find relatively unsurprisingly 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 interrupt the ability of students to learn, but also providers in schools and often are forced to close. 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 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 i am possibly squeezed in trying to afford child care in the first place. But there are significant consequences in the near and in the longterm, you know, interruptions, parents have to scramble to find a place that they can take their kid and many parents, in particular, many women are likely to miss work to care for children and that has obviously has direct income loss potential, but also, has the capacity to interrupt equitable Work Force Participation and Career Advancement opportunities. I want to switch gears to almost entirely different issue having said that to highlight something that unfortunately is all too common in the aftermath of disasters. You know, as my colleagues have mentioned, disaster aid plays such a crucial role in recovery, but one extremely disheartening issue is the escalation of fraud and scams in the aftermath of disasters. Fake charities, fake job opportunities, impersonation of fema, impersonation of a financial institution. To give you an example, you could have someone who has experienced property damage. They get an email, it seems to be from fema, they are theres aid available, you have to pay this application fee, theyre 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 an application fee for aid and now the decision of not only sustaining direct impact from the disaster, but also having taken potentially a significant financial hit and a loss of private information that could impact you down the line. Things like this are not normally preying on the vulnerability of households in a particular moment of time, but a compounding effect one more thing associated with the disaster and bring someone down in a negative financial spiral. And you know, weve seen, i think, the stat is that in the last two or four years reported fraud and Identity Theft is up over 60 and reflect some changes to reporting. But thats hugely significant. We know older adults in particular are aggressively targeted here. And i know my colleagues are very vigilant on this issue, but i think its important that we continue to raise awareness about it. And that we think about the kind of partnerships that have been discussed here today with trusted Community Organizations, with folks on the ground who can do a good job of ensuring that people already in a vulnerable situation dont get taken advantage of again. All right. Thank you. We have been focusing on moments in this picture, post disaster context. But i want you to briefly, maybe a minute, just to talk a bit to what we should be doing on quote, unquote, blue sky days ahead of some of the climate impacts to proactively improve community and Household Financial resilience. Natalie, can i start with you . Sure. I think as we learn and understand the tapestry of the community and who has access to goods and services, in advance of those. What gives them agency, right . I think at the present moment there is very much this, you know, were going to set up these 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 and action that. Weve seen that from covid19 with the child care subsidies and so on that people on average, they make the right decisions, right . Just as we heard that folks are good budgeters, especially if theyre low income. 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 not only those tools and sort of techniques, but also the resources that they actually need to make those best determinations and see where those things shake out. Separately, i would say making sure theres some portability. If people have to relocate, make it less burdensome for them to do so, thats a barrier to movement and making the best sort of determinations. I love that term. And i think its so important when folks here in the beltway talk about how to build resilience and communities outside of the beltway and i want to applaud and bring that home. I cannot begin to stress the importance of communitybased organizations during both blue skies and gray skies. One. Things that weve seen through research is a lot of these institutions from food banks, nonprofit medical providers, credit unions. Senior care centers, these are the institutions and including our faithbased partners where many underserved americans depend upon those services, day in and day out, we developed a trade called organizations preparing for Emergency Needs or open. And the goal with this training is to help those specific cbos or Community Organizations understand their supply chains. Get a better understanding how to build a continuity plan and take these other basic steps and give them directions about where resources are available to do that. I never forget, going to do this trading to a small nonprofit and they say im only one person with five volunteers, how am i supposed to build a continuity plan and marshall resources to them. Ive been somewhat surprised. Ive said in this world of just in time delivery, many local food banks are only keeping one to two days of excess supplies available. And when the need is jumping by 100, 200, 300 we want to be able to give them resources to make that more resilient. The next thing i would say, the assistant secretary touched on this. It will be super fast. The idea of emotional, social and physical resilience. Financial resilience is important, but im sure many have read the recent article by david brooks why americans are so mad or so sad. And one thing fema is working on personal resilience, steps to take in our federal interagency to try to make an impact. Perfect is the enemy of good in Disaster Management, my friends, to try and build and help americans rebuild the physical and emotional resilience. Only 8 of the americans participated in a Community Event to help them build resilience over the last over in 2023. Thats the number we need to get off and do that by working together. Thank you. I think that i would challenge us maybe not to think about it as a blue sky and gray sky. Especially in my experience in houston and not to say that houston is the center of the world. It may be 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 one for harvey, but three other ones that were still open from hurricane ike which took place nine years prior, as well as the 2015 floods and 2016 floods. So they had four open emergencies at that time. What at that tells me is that theyre always in a state of emergency and i think especially for our vulnerable families, they are constantly in a state of recovery. Particularly because it takes them so much longer to recover in the first place. So anything that we can do to make them more resilient for life is going to be useful during a disaster as well as. So, as a planner, i want to say to communities that they should be planning for disasters. They should include vulnerable assessments in their comprehensive plans. They should include preDisaster Recovery plans as part of their comprehensive planning and they should integrate all of the planning documents they have across the community, including Hazard Mitigation plan, consolidated housing plans, the comprehensive plan and whatever other plans they happen to be making. So often theyre in conflict with one another and 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 peeve to stand what is potentially happening to us. Sometimes i even get frustrated with seeing these pictures because these are the tickets of what captures the nations attention, but theyre really just a beginning for these families that are experiencing them. These families are going to be working for months and years to get back what they had. And so, we need to remember the that period of time and not just the immediate what do we do today kind of reaction. Ill try and go 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 our unsheltered Homeless People alive and we didnt have a plan to do that. We figured it out. We managed not to lose anyone, which reflects tremendous work from a number of Community Organizations, but for me, it really highlights the importance of communities thinking both about what could happen and also about what i would think of as one of the most vulnerable communities as they conduct their planning and i also want to underline the comments on agencies and treasuries on work on Financial Inclusion and we really are thinking about how we Center Agencies and center Consumer Agency as part of that work. Theres a number of Research Projects that will be additive and useful Going Forward and i know that andy outlined several of them and let me close by just underlining again, the point of investing in communities in a way thats communityled. 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 planet change goals and i think theres tremendous potential for especially the wave of investment that is coming through a number of the biden administrations initiatives to be directed in ways that takes advantage of Significant Community expertise and its certainly my hope that thats what we will see and i know that my colleagues are working hard to make sure that thats the case. Thank you so much. Join me in thanking our speakers and audience for joining. As a reminder, the event was recorded so its available on our website to share with any others who might benefit from the dialog and i hope this is kind of an invitation for all of us, for more dialog, insights and action to build resilience for households and communities to weather Financial Impacts of Climate Change. I certainly walked away with new ideas and renewed sense of urgency so thank you. Thank you. [applause]. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] cspan is yr unfiltered view of government. We are funded by these Television Companies and more, including comcast. Do you think this is just a Community Center . No, its way more than that. Comcast is partnering with a thousand Community Centers to create wifi enabled, so students from low income families can get the tools they need to be ready for anything. Comcastupports cspan as a Public Service along with these other Television Providers giving you a front row seat to democracy. Coming up live toda on the cspan networks, at 10 a. M. Eastern, on cspan, a Senate Confirmation hearingor michael whitaker, President Bidens nominee to administrator of the feder aviation administration. Then at 2 p. M. , commerce secretary gina remundo chips and science act. Focused on innovation, research, and u. S. 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