AUSTIN — The Texas General Land Office (GLO) has officially launched a call for eligible infrastructure and housing projects through the launch of the Disaster Recovery Reallocation Program (DRRP). The program is designed to utilize remaining program funds from current disaster recovery grants from 2008 to 2019 (with the exception of the 2011 Wildfires grant) and expedite the expenditure of funds to comply with HUD’s timely expenditure requirements through a call for projects across multiple grants.

Yesterday the GLO hosted a webinar for eligible entities to discuss the program process including federal eligibility requirements, scoring criteria, and key deadlines. The deadline for eligible entities to submit projects is Nov. 21, 2024, at 5:00 p.m. (Central Time).

"The GLO is setting a record pace in administering disaster recovery funds across several disasters," said Commissioner Dawn Buckingham, M.D. "As we complete our disaster recovery programs, we are collecting any remaining funds to be put towards helping Texas communities before time runs out. The GLO is seeking nearly shovel ready style projects from eligible entities of local government that can be completed before federal deadlines so that we don’t waste a cent of available infrastructure and housing funds.

Yesterday’s webinar is available for public viewing on the DRRP webpage.

Entities eligible to submit projects are units of local government (cities and counties), Indian Tribes and public housing authorities. Each available entity is eligible to submit three (3) projects. Each project will undergo eligibility analysis based on the grant that will be used to fund it.

As funds continue to be identified through the deobligation process, they will be added to this program. All remaining funds will be reallocated to this program for each grant. The grants that are eligible for this program are:

• Hurricanes Ike and Dolly
• 2015 Floods and Storms
• 2016 Floods and Storms
• 2017 Hurricane Harvey
• 2018 South Texas Floods
• 2019 Disasters

The GLO is administering the funds allocated by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) through the Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) program. HUD has set deadlines for the expenditure and close out of the CDBG-DR grants. Failure to complete the projects and finalize HUD’s closeout process will result in HUD initiating the recapture process, which means any funds used towards incomplete projects must be repaid to HUD. Due to the gravity of the deadlines, the GLO will only consider projects that can be completed in enough time to allow for the close out process. 

For more information or to submit projects, please visit recovery.texas.gov/DRRP. The draft action plans outlining the plans and scoring criteria for the program are available at https://recovery.texas.gov/action-plans.