Why hundreds of millions in federal relief for 2020 Oregon fire victims remains unspent

Oregon got a huge federal grant after the devastating 2020 Labor Day fires left thousands of people without homes, as Nigel Jaquiss reported for the Oregon Journalism Project, but most of it still remains unspent. In Southern Oregon, Representative Pam Marsh, D-Ashland, has been talking with the Oregon Housing and Community Services, the state agency in charge of getting the money to people who need it. The director of OHCS, Andrea Bell, says all the money is now committed to various projects and is working with her agency to speed the process. Bell and Marsh join us to tell us more about who has gotten this federal aid, who is still waiting and how they’re each thinking about the potential disaster threats from future fire seasons.

Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.

Dave Miller: From the Gert Boyle Studio at OPB, this is Think Out Loud. I’m Dave Miller. The devastating 2020 Labor Day fires destroyed the homes of thousands of people across Oregon. A year later, in response, the federal government promised more than $400 million in grants, but today the vast majority of that money remains unspent.

Andrea Bell is the director of Oregon Housing and Community Services. That’s the state agency charged with dispersing these federal funds. She joins us now, along with Democratic state Representative Pam Marsh from Ashland, who’s been trying to speed up this process for years. Welcome to you both.

Andrea Bell: Thank you.

Pam Marsh: Thank you, Dave.

Miller: Pam Marsh, first – can you remind us just how much damage to housing, in particular, the Almeda Fire caused in your district alone?

Marsh: Well, the Almeda Fire was the disaster that occurred here in Southern Oregon on that Labor Day weekend of 2020. And in my district, which sits in southern Jackson County, we lost about 2,300 of the 4,000 homes that were lost statewide. So the preponderance of the damage really happened right here in Talent, Phoenix and a little bit of unincorporated Jackson County.

Miller: What were your hopes when you heard about this massive federal grant of something like $420 million?

Marsh: I still remember when we found out about it. The crew from OHCS had come down to Talent. We were celebrating the opening of a transitional housing development. This was in the fall of 2021, a little more than a year after the fire. And we were ecstatic because we were looking at probably 6,000 people who were displaced just in my district. We thought that federal money could be exactly what we needed to get back on the ground.

Miller: What has happened from your perspective since then?

Marsh: It’s been a challenge, but I will tell you all of recovery has been a challenge. Way back in the beginning, we talked to communities that had seen similar disasters, and they all said, “Oh, this is a five or 10-year process.” And frankly, we didn’t believe them because we could not imagine that we would be suffering for five to 10 years. And yet, here we are four-and-a-half years later.

The federal money has been slow to roll out. It has started to go to families. We had the very first loan to a family in December of 2024. More are rolling out now. But when it takes so long to get that money to people, you lose people. They are dispirited. They are sometimes impossible to find. And they are reluctant to apply for yet another promised source of funding when they’ve seen so many “nos” over the past four years. So it’s very difficult.

Miller: Andrea, can you explain what version of a federal grant this is? One of the things that’s become clear in the last six months is that there are a lot of different ways that the federal government promises to give money to individuals, nonprofits or states. So, what version of federal money is this?

Bell: This is a Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery [CDBG-DR] resources and this is a special appropriation that requires a presidential declaration. So the president of the United States needs to declare that the emergency is so destructive that it requires this special appropriation that Oregon has received.

Now, to look at where we’re at now, in many ways it’s very much connected to where we started, which is, in 2020, everything about Oregon and across the world, our way of life changed because of the global pandemic. But here in Oregon, we had the dual crisis because of the wildfire, one of the most destructive wildfires, everything about people’s way of life across Oregon, our community members were [and] are impacted. And the recovery takes place in phases.

There’s the immediate recovery that is certainly locally led and driven, and our state partners really help with some of those immediate efforts. The state’s role, as the state housing agency, is on the long-term recovery. To what you heard from Representative Marsh, we were sort of talking to partners along the West to understand how long is long. We are learning about how long is long and the state’s role in that.

But when that disaster hits, the state then has to plead their case to the federal government on why they need these resources. We use data collected by local partners to help plead that case. So in 2023, I believe it was February of 2023, the state then had access to these resources, the Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery resources.

Miller: OK, but even that is about two years ago. And my understanding is something like 10% of this money has been spent so far. So how do you explain this delay?

Bell: About $45 million of the total $422 million is expended. Expended, meaning those resources have been reimbursed because this is a primarily a reimbursement-based program. The remaining portion that is still available is either committed to specific programs, because under this particular grant, there are several different programs that represent funding pathways for recovery. It’s primarily a construction program, which means the rest of the dollars are going toward specific projects or programs.

That is part of it, meaning that it’s a construction program. But as I have really looked back, particularly the last couple of years, to really think about delays and the state’s role in that, I think about it, as I’ve consolidated my thinking, on the technical components. So when the state has a risk aversion, meaning if you’re doing something for the first time, you add additional rules to reemphasize the federal rules that are already in place, that oftentimes make it tougher for local leaders to just simply use the resources.

That’s our role and responsibility in that. I also think that part of this has been adaptive. What I mean by that is the state getting comfortable with knowing when it’s best that the state is leading and driving something. And frankly, when the state sometimes needs to get out of the way and have local leaders lead. As I think about our role in this as sort of the arbiter of the resources, there’s been significant learnings and challenges that I think have mounted up to make it tougher for these federal resources to often be used.

Miller: Can you make this a little bit clearer for us? So, what is a specific change you’ve made that will make it easier for this money to actually make a difference for Oregonians’ lives?

Bell: I’ll give you an example. Under the Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery grant, there are several different programs. One of those, for example, is a reconstruction program often known as HARP [Homeowner Assistance and Reconstruction Program]. And there’s a whole set of federal rules that go along with that. And over the last couple of years, as we’ve been talking to partners to understand what’s working and frankly, what isn’t, one of the things that became apparently clear are there were, and sometimes are, additional checks and balances that the state puts in place. So meaning, if you find a home that you want to pursue or purchase, in addition to the federal rules, we would have a litany of checklists of additional activities that need to be completed. Those aren’t necessary, we needed to get rid of those and we did.

Another one, for example, the planning infrastructure and economic recovery program. So think about housing loss, but also infrastructure loss, boat ramps, roads that were also damaged as well. Early on in the program, while the resources in the program were able to help rebuild those homes, that’s important, but if the road to get to the home is damaged and the state tells you, “Well, we actually can’t repair that because it’s not housing loss,” that’s a problem. That’s a problem. That is insufficient.

So part of what we have had to do is get out of our own way and say that if that road needs to be repaired in order for you to access your home, that’s the very point of disaster recovery programs. That’s the very point of it. So today, what we’re looking at is not only the existence of the programs that are still available, but ones in which we’ve had to significantly pare down rules that have manifested into barriers.

Miller: Pam Marsh, as I mentioned, you’ve been pushing the agency for answers to these questions about urgency, about roadblocks for years now. How satisfied are you with the answers that you’re getting?

Marsh: I think Director Bell has really isolated some of the issues that we’ve seen. I think the state was risk averse. That’s sort of the nature of the government. And in a disaster, we need to figure out how to move much more flexibly and quickly than we might otherwise when we’re making decisions. So I think being cautious has really been a barrier to getting money to people. And I think it’s also pretty perceptive to talk about where decisions need to be made, whether or not we try to do this work from top down – that is the state really guiding and controlling the execution on the ground – or whether we need to engage with and trust local partners.

I passed legislation a couple of years ago to build resilience hubs and resilience networks. Because one of the takeaways we’ve realized out of this disaster is that it is our local communities, our local organizations that have trust with people and are going to be the relied on entity to help communities through recovery, this is something we’re all coming to understand much better as we go through a disaster, unlike any disaster that we’ve had in Oregon’s history.

So I think Director Bell is accurate in her assessment. We need to take note of that and do it differently, should we have to do this again.

Miller: Andrea Bell, in the time we have left, at a time when so much congressionally authorized funding or agency approved grants have been yanked by the administration, how much confidence do you have that these still undispersed federal funds will actually remain available to Oregon?

Bell: So the resources are available through 2029. We’ve been in touch with the administration quite regularly, specifically related to Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery resources. In the sum total of all those conversations, we have received zero indication that the resources that are committed to community members impacted by the 2020 wildfires would not be available to them. And we verify that in more frequent ways that I maybe wanna say right now.

But also, I would say that the resources that we have received are tied to specific work. So that gives us the certainty and also the requirement of the federal government to say that every ounce of the dollar is connected to a project, it’s connected to a family member. It’s connected to an individual to carry out a specific task. And we need to make sure that the resources remain available to carry through on those promises.

Miller: Andrea Bell and Pam Marsh, thanks very much.

Marsh: Thank you.

Bell: Thanks, Dave.

Miller: Andrea Bell is the executive director of Oregon Housing and Community Services. Pam Marsh is a Democratic state representative from Ashland – that’s District 5.

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