About the National Disaster Resilience Competition Grant
The U.S Dept. of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) made $1 billion available in CDBG-DR funding to state and local governments impacted by disasters in 2011 – 2013 for the purpose of promoting innovative resilience projects to better prepare communities for future storms and other events. Due to a series of severe storms and floods in April and May 2011, Shelby County was one of 67 eligible jurisdictions for the NDRC. In January 2016, Shelby County was awarded $60M in federal funds for its Greenprint for Resilience project.
The project includes four activities: projects along Big Creek, Wolf River, and South Cypress Creek and a regional resilience plan to model and plan for flood impact and other climate risk across the county and tri-state region. The three place-based activities include scalable solutions to create flood resilience, community redevelopment and connectivity to benefit low- to-moderate-income communities in Memphis and Millington, TN.
Shelby County Application Overview & Key Points
Using a concept of “making room for the river,” Shelby County’s approach to resilience builds off of the Mid-South and Regional Greenprint and Sustainability Plan to address four core resilience values:
- Protect lives and improve quality of life through creation of wetlands and other flood storage to protect communities and create green assets.
- Reduce community burden of vacancy and vulnerable housing by removing residents from homes at risk of continued flooding and developing a vacant lot program to reduce 47% vacancy rates in Memphis.
- Establish connectivity to opportunities and community assets, building on the regional Greenprint with nearly 30 miles of new trails or bike paths connecting to green space, housing and jobs.
- Implement the regional sustainability plan integrating scalable, resilient solutions by creating innovative solutions to flood prone communities along Greenprint corridors.