Disaster Survivors Fairness Act of 2025

Section 4 changes the test for FEMA housing help from a home “rendered uninhabitable” to a home “damaged by a major disaster.” More households would clear the bar.

Section 4 adds a new kind of FEMA money for steps that protect a home, its utilities, or its access road from the next disaster. The most you could get equals the housing aid cap for that disaster.

Rents often jump after a disaster. Section 12 requires FEMA to include local post-disaster rent increases when it sets a renter's aid amount.

Section 3 directs FEMA to build a single universal application for federal disaster aid for individuals. FEMA would work on it with the housing, small business, and farm agencies.

Section 5 lets FEMA arrange repairs itself for people who cannot make use of cash aid and have no other resources. It covers the home, its utilities, and a private access road.

Anyone who accepts direct repair work under Section 5 would not qualify for FEMA's housing assistance, such as rental aid or a temporary unit. FEMA can lift that bar case by case.

Section 11 lets FEMA repay state, tribal, and local governments for housing police, fire, rescue, and medical crews — plus the family they lived with — after a disaster. Elected officials who direct the response are covered too, but not members of Congress, and payment stops 6 months after the incident period ends.

Section 2 blocks FEMA from putting applicant data into the new system until it shows the system meets federal security standards, publishes a privacy impact review, and posts rules for who may see what.

Other federal agencies can join the system only by signing an agreement. They must tell FEMA within 24 hours of a leak and carry the cost of the harm, including credit monitoring for the people whose records got out.

Section 2 builds one system holding personal, money, and household details from disaster aid applications. FEMA and the housing, small business, and farm agencies can all read and add to it, and so can state and tribal grant offices.

The Privacy Act sets extra rules when agencies compare records about the same person across databases. Section 2 says this sharing does not count as that kind of record matching, so those rules would not apply.

Section 9 requires FEMA to publish a web tool after every major disaster declaration. It would show how many people applied, how many were approved or denied, the top reasons for denial, and dollars paid to owners and renters above and below the national median income.

Section 8 lets FEMA fund state agencies to run websites listing federal, state, and local recovery help for people and towns. A state that takes the money must refresh the site at least twice a year.

States can run FEMA's housing aid themselves under a pilot that was set to end after 2 years. Section 6 stretches that to 10 years and drops the deadline for the review of how the pilot worked.