The State of New York has published its action plan in connection with the first $1.7 billion in Federal CDBG-DR aid appropriated by the United States Congress, and allocated to New York State, for Sandy disaster relief. Using this first allocation, the State will focus principally on meeting the immediate needs for housing and business assistance in the communities affected by recent storms; assisting county and local governments to cover both their emergency expenses and the matching fund requirements that must be met to repair and mitigate key infrastructure projects; and, by leveraging private financing, assisting critical facilities that suffered damage to install energy-related mitigation (e.g., combined heat and power systems) to withstand future natural disasters. A minimum of 80%, or $1,371,168,000 of the State's allocation, must be expended in the most impacted Counties, identified by HUD as Nassau, Suffolk and Rockland. Under the action plan New York will use the funds for housing, economic development, resiliency and retrofit, community planning and redevelopment, public infrastructure and facilities, and an infrastructure bank. As an example, New York State will establish the Resilience and Retrofit program. The State anticipates allocating approximately $30 million from this first allocation of CDBG-DR funding to provide credit enhancement or leverage for private-sector financing of energy-related mitigation projects. Similarly, The State anticipates allocating approximately $25 million from this first allocation to provide planning grants to targeted communities selected by a CRZ planning committee. In addition, New York State anticipates allocating up to $250 million to provide the non-Federal FEMA match required for CDBG-eligible Public Assistance Program activities for county and local governments, or as the non-Federal match requirement needed to carry out CDBG-DR eligible activities funded by any other Federal agencies. New York State will allocate its CDBG-DR funds in two ways. As with its annual non-disaster CDBG allocation, the State will allocate a portion of these CDBG-DR funds directly to local governments to assist in administering and delivering housing assistance to eligible residents with a documented unmet need. The balance of the funds will be allocated to municipalities, sub grantees, professionals and contractors in a variety of ways.
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