Joint Housing Solutions Group Program Support

Situation:

FEMA’s Joint Housing Solutions Group (JHSG), a multi-agency housing task force, sought to improve FEMA’s disaster housing assistance capacity.

Need:

JHSG wanted to increase the number of housing options to assist victims and communities impacted by disasters.

Solution:

Hagerty Team performed a variety of services to support the JHSG, including:

  • Developed a comprehensive tool to identify and assess housing alternatives.
  • Performed site visits and assessed more than 50 different physical housing alternatives.
  • Identified seven potentially viable units and worked with FEMA to develop an approach to procure the units.
  • Developed the Mission Scoping Tool to define and forecast the scope of a housing mission and the resources required by FEMA.
  • Provided field based technical assistance after the 2007 CA Wildfires, the 2008 IA Severe Storms and Floods, and 2008 Hurricane Ike to help analyze the potential for alternative housing, consider administrative options to housing people, and implement data analysis and reporting methods.
  • Drafted and circulated an Administrative Options White Paper to FEMA HQ outlining alternative options to housing people instead of physical manufactured housing.
  • Issued a comprehensive annual JHSG Report to senior FEMA officials.
  • Represented and presented the JHSG at national and regional conferences, including the 2008 National Hurricane Conference and the Alternative Housing Pilot Program (AHPP) conferences.
  • Provided overall program management and coordination to FEMA leadership.

Outcome:

Under this multi-year contract with Hagerty, FEMA exercised all option periods and increased project funding from $400,000 to $2.6 million. FEMA began to test seven different housing options in Bridge City, Texas and Emmitsburg, Maryland in December 2008 and April 2009, respectively.