The billion-dollar grant is back, with a catch

A note on scope: this is about a huge grant program, back on the table and accepting applications now. But the way it came back tells you where resilience money is heading, and who gets left at the door.

A hazard mitigation coordinator in a small town of 4,000 opens the new BRIC notice the week it is announced. After a year of lawsuits and limbo, the money is back. And that's a billion dollars, back on the table.

Then she reaches the eligibility section, and her stomach drops instead.

To apply, her town needs a FEMA-approved hazard mitigation plan. It doesn't have a current one. And, the grant does not support developing one.

So she's looking at a billion dollars she can't actually reach.

What came back, and what didn't

After a federal court ordered FEMA to restore the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program, the FY24–25 notice landed in late March. $1 billion available, $757 million of it through the national competition. That part is really good news. BRIC has been oversubscribed and backlogged for years.

But here's the thing. The program that came back is not the one that left. FEMA built the new cycle around three words: Speed, Simplicity, and Shovel-Ready Execution. And almost every change follows from that.

So what actually shifted?

• Planning is required, but no longer fundable. You still need an approved mitigation plan to apply, and again when the award lands. But developing or updating that plan is now an ineligible cost. The program just assumes you already have it.

• Direct Technical Assistance is gone this cycle. That's the hand-holding FEMA used to offer to help you build a project. Not in this notice. You lean on your state office, or on yourself.

• You have to show up with design already done. Projects now need at least 30% conceptual design to be eligible. That means enough engineering to show what you'd build and roughly what it would cost. So, early-stage ideas don't make the cut.

• The project cap dropped from $50 million to $20 million, with a new ceiling of 15%, or $150 million, per applicant.

Read those four together and the pattern shows up.

Need help preparing your proposal?

I've reviewed over 50 applications for the federal government (EPA and DOE) and various foundations, worth more than $550 million in grant funding. If that's useful, you can book a call with me here.

The application deadline is July 23, 2026.

Who does "shovel-ready" actually serve here?

A 30% design package isn't easy to meet. Neither is a current mitigation plan. Both are things a well-staffed county already has sitting in a drawer. Well, actually in their hard drives. A small CBO or a rural government usually doesn't have these.

So when you require both up front, and you take away the technical assistance that used to help under-resourced applicants get there, you haven't just sped things up. You've changed who's even eligible to win.

Resilience funding starts flowing to whoever could already afford to get ready for it.

That's the part worth sitting with. The communities most exposed to flood, fire, and heat are often the ones least able to pre-fund a design they might not win the money to build. "Shovel-ready" sounds like a logistics standard. In practice, it works like a capacity test. You do not have the capacity, you are under-resourced? You are out.

Is this just a cut?

For years, BRIC's real problem was that good projects stalled. Applications piled up, awards lagged, and money sat unspent while the disasters kept coming (and, even growing). A program built around getting shovel-ready projects out the door is a real answer to a real problem. If you've ever watched a solid mitigation project die in the gap between a good idea and a fundable one, you get the appeal. Rewarding readiness and pushing for execution is a defensible call. And, I see why FEMA has made these changes.

The lower cap and the per-applicant ceiling can also spread dollars across more places, including smaller and rural ones that never won under the old high-cap competition.

But, there's also a shift underneath the rules. The work that fell out, planning, outreach, capacity building, was the connective tissue that helps the concrete projects actually succeed once they're built. What stayed in is the concrete. So we've narrowed what counts as resilience down to infrastructure, and set aside the softer work that often decides whether that infrastructure lands well and whether it works for the community.

The Triangle on this one

• Clarity & Focus: The mandate is clear and the money is real. The more hidden assumption isn't. "Bring an approved plan and a design that's already 30% done" only reads as simple if you happen to have both already.

• Trust & Power: The federal government kept the money for building things and handed the support work, the technical assistance and planning help, down to the states. The trouble is, plenty of states don't have that support to give. So the responsibility shifted down, but the help to carry it didn't follow.

  This approach does not build trust, especially with under-resourced counties and jurisdictions who are already behind on responding to the next disaster hitting their community.

• Tradeoffs & Courage: Speed and broader geographic spread are worth mentioning. So is access for the communities that need it most. This cycle chose the first set. The more transparent move is to name that choice, not pretend it didn't exist.

One Big Idea

When you require readiness and stop funding the path to it, you don't make a program faster. You make it selective.

One Thing to Reflect On:

In your last funding cycle, who was ready to apply on day one, and who couldn't even get to the starting line? The gap between those two groups is something to reflect on.

One Thing to Try:

This week, pick one project already on your desk and hold it up against the two gates that actually decide eligibility. Do you have a current FEMA-approved mitigation plan? Is your design at 30%? If the answer to either is no, that gap is your real assignment right now. Not the application. Fixing what makes you eligible comes before chasing the deadline.

Missed last week’s article? It discusses how the new data centers are acting as the highways in the 60s, and how we should make sure communities benefit from these massive developments this time around.

Nader Afzalan, Ph.D.

Founder and CEO, The Triangle

Program Director, Sustainable Environmental Design, UC Berkeley