The U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development (HUD) has joined more than 20 federal agencies to release its updated Climate Adaptation Plan and expand the Biden Administration’s efforts to ensure federal operations are increasingly resilient to climate change impacts.
The updated adaptation plans advance the Biden Administration’s National Climate Resilience Framework, which helps to align climate resilience investments across the public and private sector through common principles and opportunities for action to build a climate resilient nation.
Communities from coast to coast are experiencing the impacts of climate change firsthand, as households face the effects of extreme heat and communities are damaged by increasingly dangerous disasters. In light of these impacts, the Biden Administration is taking action to assess, manage, and reduce the risks that climate change poses to the nation. To build a climate-resilient, energy-efficient, affordable housing stock, HUD is establishing protocols to ensure climate resilience is integrated in funding opportunities. For example, HUD is including climate change preference points in Notices of Funding Opportunities to encourage applications that invest in climate resilience, energy efficiency, and renewable energy.
“If we want to build stronger, more sustainable communities, we need to address the real impacts of the climate crisis,” said HUD Acting Secretary Adrianne Todman. “This Administration and this Department are making investments to ensure that America’s housing stock is climate-resilient, energy-efficient, and affordable into the future.”
Climate change and its toll on housing
At the beginning of his Administration, President Joe Biden tasked federal agencies with leading whole-of-government efforts to address climate change through Executive Order 14008: Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad. Following the magnitude of challenges posed by the climate crisis underscored last year when the nation endured a record 28 individual billion-dollar extreme weather and climate disasters that caused more than $90 billion in aggregate damage, HUD continues to push forth plans to meet the crisis head-on.
“As communities face extreme heat, natural disasters and severe weather from the impacts of climate change, President Biden is delivering record resources to build climate resilience across the country,” said Brenda Mallory, Chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. “Through his Investing in America agenda and an all-of-government approach to tackling the climate crisis, the Biden-Harris Administration is delivering more than $50 billion to help communities increase their resilience and bolster protections for those who need it most. By updating our own adaptation strategies, the federal government is leading by example to build a more resilient future for all.”
HUD released its initial Climate Adaptation Plan in 2021 and progress reports outlining advancements toward achieving their adaptation goals in 2022. In coordination with the White House Council on Environmental Quality and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), agencies updated their Climate Adaptation Plans for 2024 to 2027 to better integrate climate risk across their mission, operations, and asset management, including:
- Combining historical data and projections to assess exposure of assets to climate-related hazards including extreme heat and precipitation, sea level rise, flooding, and wildfire;
- Expanding the operational focus on managing climate risk to facilities and supply chains to include federal employees and federal lands and waters;
- Broadening the mission focus to describe mainstreaming adaptation into agency policies, programs, planning, budget formulation, and external funding;
- Linking climate adaptation actions with other Biden Administration priorities, including advancing environmental justice and the President’s Justice40 Initiative, strengthening engagement with Tribal Nations, supporting the America the Beautiful initiative, scaling up nature-based solutions, and addressing the causes of climate change through climate mitigation; and
- Adopting common progress indicators across agencies to assess the progress of agency climate adaptation efforts.
Outside of this Adaptation Plan, HUD is working to protect the families HUD serves from the effects of extreme heat, invest in climate resilience, and build sustainable communities. These include helping Public Housing Authorities (PHAs) provide cooling and air conditioning during periods of severe or extreme heat, publishing a final rule to help communities prepare for and reduce flood damage, and awarding over $611 million to improve climate resilience and energy efficiency for more than 14,000 HUD-assisted households.
Click here for more information on HUD’s climate plans.
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