On August 9, the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) announced the Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) for $1.16 billion in FY 2021 Hazard Mitigation Assistance (HMA) grants. States and localities will be eligible to apply for Flood Mitigation Assistance (FMA) and the new Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) pre-disaster mitigation grants. The application period opens on September 30, 2021 and will close on January 28, 2022. To view the funding notices please visit Grants.gov.

$1 billion is made available for BRIC, which provides funding to states and localities to implement pre-disaster mitigation activities that reduce risk and disaster costs and increase the resilience of critical infrastructure lifelines. For FY21, the scoring criteria has been adjusted to incentivize mitigation actions that consider climate change and future conditions, populations impacted and economically disadvantaged communities.

FEMA is also making $160 million available through FMA grants to help localities implement changes to reduce or eliminate risk of flood damage to structures insured by the National Flood Insurance Program. The program will use the Centers for Disease Controls’ Social Vulnerability Index as a selection factor in its competitive scoring process, which will prioritize applications from underserved communities.

FEMA will be offering a series of informational webinars for applications to provide an overview of the grant programs and details about the agency’s funding priorities and review process. For those interested in attending, you can check out the full webinar schedule at FEMA.gov and register for webinars of interest here.