Senate Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee
Oversight of SBA's Office of Disaster Assistance
Witness:
- Francisco Sanchez, Associate Administrator, Office of Disaster Assistance, U.S. Small Business Administration
We are seeing that some communities and small businesses are experiencing disaster activity with a growing frequency. Natural disasters have also become more costly: 2020 was the sixth consecutive year in which there were more than ten-billion-dollar weather and climate disaster events that impacted the United States. The SBA has been a critical federal partner during the Biden-Harris Administration, providing lifelines totaling more than $2.5 billion to help small businesses, renters, homeowners, and private non-profits recover and rebuild. Our FY2022 SBA disaster aid includes: * More than $70 million in loans to help homeowners, renters and businesses following violent and deadly tornadoes that moved across Kentucky in December; * More than $100 million for wildfires and straight-line winds that spread across Boulder County, Colorado; and * Nearly $2 billion in loans to help more than 37,000 individuals and businesses from Louisiana to New York recover and rebuild after Hurricane Ida. Increased risk from extreme weather events means that we must continue to dedicate resources to disaster preparedness. The President’s budget requests $179 million in disaster funding to ensure the SBA can deliver its critical disaster relief. Small investments in resiliency can have a big impact when disaster strikes. In order to help small businesses better understand the importance of resilience and mitigation efforts and the options available to them, including outside of SBA, the budget includes $10 million to help small businesses build greater resiliency ahead of a storm.