Assistance program
Community Disaster Loans
$891.4 Million committed in FY2018–FY2026
- Agency
- Federal Emergency Management Agency, Homeland Security, Department of
- Assistance
- Direct Loans
- CFDA number
- 97.030
- What it does
- To provide loans subject to congressional loan authority to any local government that has suffered substantial loss of revenues in an area designated in a Stafford Act major disaster declaration in order to assist communities affected by an incident to perform its governmental functions. The local government must demonstrate a need for financial assistance and the funds can only be used to maintain existing functions of a municipal operating character or expand functions to meet disaster-related needs.
- Who benefits
- Local governments in a designated disaster area.
- Who applies
- Local (includes state-designated Indian tribes and U.S. territories, excludes institutions of higher education and some hospitals) government applicants must be in a designated major disaster area and must demonstrate that they meet the specific conditions of 44 C.F.R. Part 206, Subpart K, Community Disaster Loans. To be eligible, the applicant must demonstrate: 1) a substantial loss of revenues as a result of a major disaster; 2) a need for financial assistance to perform its governmental functions. During the 2017 hurricane season, a supplemental provided funding and new guidance specific to Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria. Public Law 115-72 and Public Law 115-123 provide additional supplemental appropriations and eligibility criteria for disaster relief requirements for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2018. Further, P.L. 116-260 removed the loan cap, provided alternate eligibility criteria, and extended the deadline for FEMA to issue a loan only for those disasters that were declared in calendar year 2018. P.L. 117-43, signed on September 30, 2021, cancelled the repayment of balances outstanding on all loans as of September 30, 2021.
Committed by fiscal year
* FY2026 is year-to-date — the fiscal year is still in progress, so its total is still filling in. The striped band and dashed line mark that provisional stretch.
Top recipients
By dollars committed.
How to read these numbers
- Committed through this program
Money committed under this assistance listing (its CFDA program), counted in the year each action happened.
- How it's paid
Most programs pay out one way — a grant, or a direct payment to individuals; the flow bar only appears when a program genuinely mixes types.
- Some recipients aren't itemized
For entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare, the government reports one aggregate instead of naming tens of millions of people, so the recipient roster isn't part of the public record.
- Awards, counted once
An award count is the number of distinct awards with at least one action that year — each counted once, however many times it was amended.
- The colored bars
Every bar on this page splits by how the money moves:
Direct payments