Why It Matters

Hundreds of communities are waiting on more than $2 billion in disaster-resilience funding that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has yet to award, according to a new report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) examining FEMA's Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) grant program.

As of March 2025, FEMA had not made award decisions on 700 subapplications associated with roughly $2.2 billion of the $4.8 billion available under the program because the agency had not completed the second of its two review stages. The median time for FEMA to finalize its review and award BRIC subgrants was 7 to 9 months, and communities told GAO that those delays could extend project timelines and increase costs.

The stakes are compounded by a year of administrative whiplash: FEMA announced it was ending BRIC in April 2025, then reversed course the following March and announced it was restarting the program, after failing to clarify which subgrants would be terminated. State officials told GAO that some subrecipients stopped work entirely because of funding uncertainty, a pause that may itself drive up project costs. Officials and stakeholders told GAO that FEMA headquarters' lack of actionable information created operational challenges and delayed mitigation efforts on the ground.

The Big Picture

FEMA launched BRIC in 2020 to fund activities that enhance community resilience and lower future disaster costs, with independent research finding that investing in disaster resilience can reduce those costs. Across its first four grant cycles in fiscal years 2020 through 2023, FEMA awarded 1,245 BRIC subgrants and allocated approximately $2.5 billion, roughly half of the $4.8 billion available under the program. Of that allocated amount, FEMA reimbursed $62 million, and only 37 subgrants had completed work and initiated the closeout process as of March 2025.

From April 2025 through the following March, FEMA did not award subgrants or obligate any funds, an 11-month gap during which communities with pending applications received little actionable guidance from FEMA headquarters. GAO conducted the review in response to a congressional request and explanatory statement language providing for GAO oversight of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (Public Law 117-58), which provided appropriations for BRIC.

FEMA established performance goals but did not consistently set methods or measurable targets to track results. For example, a fiscal year 2023 goal to spread grants across the United States lacked a target for determining whether the goal had been achieved. FEMA officials also told GAO that performance information did not inform the April 2025 decision to end BRIC.

State officials told GAO that some subrecipients stopped work due to funding uncertainty, which may increase project costs. FEMA did not clarify which subgrants would be terminated after announcing it was ending the program in April 2025, leaving subrecipients and state officials uncertain about the status of their funding.

The Bottom Line

GAO issued seven recommendations to the FEMA administrator, covering subapplication review efficiency, internal and external communication, results-oriented performance goal-setting, annual performance reporting, use of performance information in agency decision-making, and regular disclosure to external stakeholders on whether BRIC's goals are being met. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) concurred with all seven recommendations and identified actions it plans to take, though all seven remain open, with no actions yet confirmed by GAO as satisfying the recommendations.

With BRIC restarted after an 11-month interruption and GAO identifying a substantial backlog of unresolved subapplications during its review, how FEMA implements those recommendations will shape whether communities can begin hazard mitigation activities sooner and minimize additional costs. The program's restart also raises a practical question the recommendations do not fully answer: how FEMA will handle subapplications left pending from prior grant cycles as it moves forward with a new round of funding.

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