Data Types
The Disaster Dollar Database tracks federal funding from four federal programs: FEMA’s Individuals and Households Program (IHP), FEMA’s Public Assistance (PA) program, the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) Community Development Block Grant–Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) program, and the Small Business Administration’s (SBA) Disaster Loan Program. FEMA IHP makes grants to individual households; FEMA PA and CDBG-DR provide funding to government entities; the SBA provides loans to businesses, private nonprofit organizations, as well as individual homeowners and renters. The database tracks funding at the incident level for incidents with major disaster declarations.
Updates
The database is updated approximately twice a year. Additional updates are made whenever Congress appropriates money to HUD for the CDBG-DR program via the supplemental appropriations process and HUD publishes its allocations to jurisdictions in the Federal Register.
Data Sources
FEMA data is sourced from OpenFEMA Data Sets. In some instances, the numbers in the database may differ from those posted in the “Funding Obligations” section of the individual disaster declaration webpages hosted by FEMA, which are updated on an ongoing basis. Disaster declaration webpages are linked for each incident.
FEMA IA numbers reflect expended funding. FEMA PA, HUD CDBG-DR, and SBA disaster data reflect obligated funding, which may differ from actual outlayed amounts.
HUD allocations are gathered from the Federal Register. The relevant Federal Register notices are linked throughout the database. Since 2010, HUD has required all grantees to host a dedicated website for CDBG-DR grants, which include documents such as action plans, budgets, and other reports that indicate how CDBG-DR funds are being used. Links to these websites are included when available.
SBA data is gathered from SBA’s Office of Disaster Assistance historical loan data, which extends up to FY2022. The database will be updated with recent SBA data when it is made publicly available. The database has aggregated SBA physical disaster loan data to reflect the total dollar amount of approved disaster loans per FEMA incident. Only funding for incidents that have received a major disaster declaration and associated FEMA incident number are included. SBA funding for incidents that do not receive a major disaster declaration is not included in this database. Information on the breakdown between SBA disaster business loans and disaster home loans are provided where available.
Data Notes
When a HUD allocation covers multiple incidents in one state, the value is split evenly in the database among the covered incidents. When an allocation is divided, the value appears in italics in the database. Refer to the linked Federal Register notice to view the original allocation amount.
Federal Register Vol. 69 No. 237 allocates $2,410,256 to the State of West Virginia for incidents 1496, 1500, 1522, 1536, and 1538. DR-1538 is a Pennsylvania incident funded in the same notice in the allocation to the State of Pennsylvania. The State of West Virginia funding is divided among the other four incidents.
Federal Register Vol. 78 No. 103 allocates $17,932,000 to the State of Vermont for incidents 1995, 4001, 1022, 4043, and 4066. Incident 1022 is an error and is not included in the database; the funding is divided among the four other incidents.
Federal Register Vol. 81, No. 224 and Vol. 84, No. 169 each contain an error related to DR-4272 (Texas Severe Storms and Flooding). This incident is incorrectly grouped with Louisiana incidents in both notices. DR-4272 is listed as a Texas incident in the database.
Federal Register Vol. 88, No. 96 allocates $7,473,000 for DR-4657 (Oklahoma Severe Storms, Tornadoes, and Flooding) together with DR-4670 (Muscogee Creek Nation Severe Storms, Tornadoes, and Flooding), which does not appear in the database because there are no FEMA funding obligations for DR-4670. The total allocation amount in the database is assigned to DR-4657.
Version History
November 2025: The database was updated and expanded to a total of 1,320 incidents dating from September 2003 through October 2025. The database was expanded to include SBA disaster loan data from FY2003 to FY2022.
June 2025: The database was updated and expanded to a total of 1,291 incidents dating from September 2003 to June 2025. The website was revamped with a user-friendly interface that allowed users to directly download subsets of the data.
February 2025: The database was updated and expanded to a total of 727 incidents dating from September 2003 through January 2025. The database was expanded to include all incidents for which FEMA activated either the Individuals and Households Program or the Public Assistance program. FEMA data is now exclusively drawn from OpenFEMA. The database was updated to include HUD allocations from the January 16, 2025 Federal Register Vol. 90, No. 10, as well as twelve Federal Register notices dating from 2004 to 2013. The database has a dedicated website with visualizations to assist users in interpreting the data.
August 2024: The database was originally published with 170 incidents dating from January 2015 through May 2024. It included incidents for which FEMA activated its Individuals and Households Program. Data from FEMA was drawn from multiple FOIA requests.
Questions?
Please reach out to pressoffice@ceip.org for media inquiries about the database.
Thanks
The database was originally published with research support from 2023-24 Junior Fellows Emily Hardy and Dan Helmeci. 2024-25 Junior Fellow Debbra Goh supported the major expansion of the database published in February 2025. Evan O’Neil designed the visualizations.
Amanda Devecka-Rinear of the New Jersey Organizing Project, Chrishelle Palay of the Houston Organizing Movement for Equity, and Maddie Sloan of Texas Appleseed provided early input on the database and how to make it useful for disaster survivors.
