Economic Development Recovery and Resiliency Playbook - Flipbook - Page 101
Federal Resilience Resources
U.S. Economic Development Administration (EDA)
As already noted in the appendix, EDA has helpful recovery programs for communities. It also has many programs that support
resiliency and the concept of “building back better” afer an economic disruption. The following are EDA programs that
communities can use to create a better, more resilient future.
Public Works Program. This program empowers distressed communities to revitalize, expand, and upgrade their physical
infrastructure to attract new industry, encourage business expansion, diversify local economies, and generate or retain longterm private sector jobs and investment.
Economic Adjustment. As mentioned earlier, this program assists state and local jurisdictions in designing and implementing
strategies to adjust or bring about change to an economy. The program focuses on areas that have experienced or are under
threat of serious structural damage to the underlying economic base. Under Economic Adjustment, EDA administers its
Revolving Loan Fund (RLF) Program, which supplies small businesses and entrepreneurs with the gap financing needed to start
or expand their business.
Planning. This program supports local organizations with short and long-term planning eforts. The Comprehensive Economic
Development Strategy (CEDS) Content Guidelines provide suggestions, tools, and resources for developing comprehensive
economic development strategies.
Build to Scale (formerly known as Regional Innovation Strategies). The Build to Scale (B2S) Program builds regional
economies through scalable startups and includes three competitions supporting entrepreneurship, acceleration of company
growth, and increased access to risk capital across regional economies.
Trade Adjustment Assistance for Firms. This program provides assistance through a national network of 11 Trade
Adjustment Assistance Centers to help strengthen the competitiveness of American companies that have lost domestic sales
and employment because of increased imports of similar goods and services.
Research and National Technical Assistance (RNTA). The RNTA program funds research, evaluation, and national technical
assistance projects that promote competitiveness and innovation in distressed rural and urban regions throughout the United
States and its territories.
Local Technical Assistance Program. This program helps fill the knowledge and information gaps that may prevent leaders in
the public and nonprofit sectors in distressed areas from making optimal decisions on local economic development issues.
Additional Federal Resources
Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) Mitigation Program. This Housing and Urban Development program
provides a unique and significant opportunity for eligible grantees in areas impacted by recent disasters to use this assistance to
carry out strategic and high-impact activities to mitigate disaster risks and reduce future losses. For the purpose of this program,
mitigation activities are defined as activities that: "Increase resilience to disasters and reduce or eliminate the long-term risk of
loss of life, injury, damage to and loss of property, and sufering and hardship by lessening the impact of future disasters."
The mitigation objectives and eforts align with other federal programs that address hazard mitigation to create a more cohesive
efort at the federal, state, and local levels. These mitigation projects aim to reduce the risk of being severely afected by
natural disasters for community services that benefit human health and safety or economic security. The level of engagement
among partners helps to shape the transformative nature that mitigation projects can have in communities and the lives of
constituents.
The program's goals are to:
• Support data-informed investments, focusing on repetitive loss of property and critical infrastructure;
• Build capacity to comprehensively analyze disaster risks and update hazard mitigation plans;
• Support the adoption of policies that reflect local and regional priorities that will have long-lasting efects on community
risk reduction, including risk reduction to community lifelines and decreasing future disaster costs; and
• Maximize the impact of funds by encouraging leverage, public-private partnerships, and coordination with other
federal dollars.
Tools for Implementation
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