Hurricane Matthew Disaster Recovery and Resilience Initiative ______
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HURRICANE MATTHEW DISASTER RECOVERY AND RESILIENCE INITIATIVE ______________ A project of the North Carolina Policy Collaboratory Gavin Smith, PhD, AICP Project Director _________________ September 11, 2017 Progress Report Hurricane Matthew Disaster Recovery and Resilience Initiative Table of Contents Introduction .................................................................................................................................................. 2 A. Background ......................................................................................................................................... 2 B. Objectives ........................................................................................................................................... 2 C. Activities ............................................................................................................................................. 2 D. Organizational Structure .................................................................................................................... 4 Leveraging State and Federal Resources ..................................................................................................... 7 Executive Summaries of Project Reports .................................................................................................... 8 A. Home Place ......................................................................................................................................... 8 B. Affordable Housing ........................................................................................................................... 13 C. Economic Development ................................................................................................................... 23 Reports/Appendices available upon request............................................................................................... 25 A. Home Place ....................................................................................................................................... 26 B. Recovering Affordable Housing in Eastern North Carolina Post-Hurricane Matthew ................... 497 C. Development Finance Initiative Market and Financial Analysis Reports ........................................ 538 1 Progress Report Hurricane Matthew Disaster Recovery and Resilience Initiative I. INTRODUCTION This report describes the work that was funded through the North Carolina Policy Collaboratory. The budget for the project totaled $341,000 for the purposes of establishing the Hurricane Matthew Disaster Recovery and Resilience Initiative. The period of performance for the research began on February 10, 2017 and concluded on June 30, 2017. The North Carolina Policy Collaboratory budget has served as a significant catalyst for other funding and resources that are summarized below. However, the focus of this report is to capture the substantial work done in the Spring and early summer of 2017 as supported by the UNC Policy Collaboratory. A. Background The Hurricane Matthew Disaster Recovery and Resilience Initiative (HMDRRI) involves the university engagement of faculty and students as well as professional planning experts in addressing community and state-level needs associated with recovery from Hurricane Matthew. This North Carolina Policy Collaboratory also provided a way to build upon a number of existing and emerging programs, relationships, and growing interest among faculty and students surrounding the study and practice of creating disaster resilient communities. This idea for the Initiative was proposed by the Director of North Carolina Division of Emergency Management during a meeting held with the Division on October 19th. In addition, it was suggested that this effort should be codified as part of a formal ongoing partnership between the North Carolina Division of Emergency Management and the UNC system. Since that time three primary objectives were developed and implemented. B. Objectives The HMDRRI focused efforts around the following objectives: 1) Serve as point of contact for UNC faculty, students and staff to help the state address a range of policy and technical issues as identified. 2) Engage with select communities to assist them identify local needs and help them develop post-disaster recovery plans. 3) Coordinate activities with FEMA’s Community Planning and Capacity Building team which strives to assist communities collect data, assess needs and facilitate recovery planning. C. Activities Serve as point of contact for UNC faculty, students and staff to help the state address a range of policy and technical issues as identified. One way the HMDRRI has assisted in the recovery effort is to serve as a conduit for the linkage of faculty expertise with specific needs identified by the North Carolina Division of Emergency Management. In addition to university faculty, a number of students have participated in the HMDRRI, many of whom are currently enrolled in the University of North Carolina’s Graduate Certificate in Natural Hazards Resilience (http://planning.unc.edu/nhrcp). Most of these student’s master’s projects and dissertations focus on the study of natural hazards and disasters, including some whose focus is on North Carolina communities. As such these efforts will be linked to the HMDRRI and findings provided to the State. This provides another unique 2 Progress Report Hurricane Matthew Disaster Recovery and Resilience Initiative linkage as students have had the opportunity to present their findings to state and federal officials as their research evolves and garner meaningful practitioner feedback. Informed by the HMDRRI concept, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and North Carolina State University have taught several graduate and undergraduate classes focused on Hurricane Matthew recovery. A primary intent of the classes was to help educate the students participating in HMDRRI, thereby providing a base level of knowledge and experience that would help the larger team meet identified objectives. The three courses and associated faculty that taught the classes include: 1) The Department of City and Regional Planning (DCRP) taught a Planning Workshop (PLAN 823) in which faculty and graduate students work with “clients” as part of a semester-long targeted project. DCRP focused on four communities to include assisting them collect pertinent information that is being used to help them develop disaster recovery plans as part of the larger HMDRRI effort. UNC-CH Department of City and Regional Planning Professor Mai Nguyen and Andrew Whittemore led this class with support provided by Professor Gavin Smith. 2) Andy Fox and David Hill, faculty in the North Carolina State University’s College of Design led a week-long DesignWeek in January focused on working with Kinston, Windsor and Greenville. This effort included Master of Landscape Architecture and Architecture students (to include those enrolled in the NCSU Coastal Dynamics Studio) and UNC-CH Master of City and Regional Planning students (to include those enrolled in the Natural Hazards Resilience Certificate). 3) Natural Hazards Resilience Speaker Series (PLAN 754) was taught in the Spring of 2017 by Dr. Gavin Smith as part of the 10-credit hour Graduate Certificate in Natural Hazards Resilience. The course was designed to expose students to a range of scholars, practitioners, and translational experts in the field and help foster an esprit de corps among those pursuing the Certificate. Invited guest speakers focused on disaster recovery and lectures that were intended to help inform the work of faculty and students involved in the HMDRRI. Engage with select communities to assist them identify local needs and help them develop disaster recovery plans. A key task undertaken by the HMDRRI includes working with communities identified by the North Carolina Division of Emergency Management and members of the HMDRRI. The Initiative has focused on assisting the following communities: Windsor, Princeville, Fair Bluff, Kinston, Seven Springs, and Lumberton. Following preliminary data collection efforts and briefings from state officials, initial visits were set up to scope out specific tasks. This information has been used to develop a targeted engagement strategy and develop disaster recovery plans in close coordination with public officials and those living in targeted communities. Specific needs identified by communities included the development of housing relocation strategies. These locally-specific strategies included the development of interview instruments to collect data from those residents pursuing the “buyout” of their homes following Hurricane Matthew. Once acquired, the land is converted to open space. The HMDRRI relocation strategy 3 Progress Report Hurricane Matthew Disaster Recovery and Resilience Initiative uses this information to assess the characteristics of families to determine the types of replacement housing (e.g., size, cost, local housing styles) that may be needed. The housing plans found in the Home Place document are designed to be used by builders (funded through federal funding) to construct replacement housing. The HMDRRI team is also conducting land suitability analyses, identifying areas for development located outside of the floodplain, but within a community’s extraterritorial jurisdiction in order to reduce future flood losses while helping to maintain the tax base of the six jurisdictions. Coordinate activities with FEMA’s Community