Transcripts For CSPAN2 Executive 20240703

Next, executive Branch Officials and policy advocates examining the impact of Climate Change on u. S. Household finances, especially for those living in vulnerable communities. The Treasury Department released the report that theyve this event. This is hosted by the urban institute in washington, d. C. And runs about an hour and 20 minutes. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] welcome and good afternoon. I am signemary mckernan, the Vice President here at the urban institute of the center on labor and services and population. And also a Financial Wellbeing expert. So the. Top todays topic near and dear to my heart. Thank you to all of us who joined both in the room today and online. And before i jump in here are a few notes on f housekeeping. One, the event is being recorded and the recording and relevant links will be posted online after the t event. If youre joining us virtually the life captions are turned on and you can adjust those at the bottom off your screen. And if youre in the room you can use the qr code thats on all of your tables to submit your questions, and the virtual audience can submit your questions directly into the questionandanswer box at any time. We are going to be sharing a link with a postsurvey, postevent survey and would ask that you share your feedback with us. Its helpfulba for us and for panelists to hear what you are thinking about and to shape how we do events and what we look at in the future. If you would like to join the conversation online, on twitter please use the hashtag live at urban. So with logistics behind us, i want to thank all of our speakers for joining us for discussion of how Climate Change impacts household Financial Wellbeing. And were going to be exploring both what drives the risks and also the pathways to building resilience. So far in 2023 United States has suffered 23 billion disasters, many of them fueled by Climate Change. The increasing frequency, severity and the cost of the disasters and the warmer temperatures is having an impact on peoples Financial Health. We know that many families in the United States live paycheck to paycheck, and that disasters can push households into financial instability and distress. So its imperative we both consider climate and are policies and programs and that we consider them when were looking at those policies and programs aimed at both Financial Health and wealth. So this conversation today rings together both leading Research Insights and also the perspectives of federal agencies working at the intersection of climate and Financial Health. In a few moments im going to be joineded on stage by graham steele, assistant secretary for Financial Institutions at the Us Department of treasury, and we are going to discuss trenches work on Climate Change in American Household finances. Prior to his role as an assistant secretary he served as director of the corporations and Society Initiative at stanford graduate schoolti of business. And thats a Research Initiative that examines issues at the heart of markets, business and government. To promote more accountable capitalism and governance. So we are pleased to have here with us today, and please join me in welcoming assistant sector grahamam steele. [applause] great to have you. Thanks for coming. Thanks to urban for letting us joined them. We often talk about climate in a variety of different contexts, and today you released a report, treasury released a report, the impact of Climate Change on American Householdha finances. Such an important intersection here of these two. Can you give us some background on the framework that you used in the report and why you chose a framework . A sure. I think we all know we are seeing today at the new york in particular the events of wildfires, flooding, heat waves are as you sit in the opening getting more and more o frequent and more and more intense. We know theres going to be a fivefold increase in the number of billion dollar disaster in the u. S. Going back to 1980 and thats even adjusted for inflation. We that0 things like Hurricane Ian last year where we had 170 people die and the cost of thatt is estimated to be over 100 billion. So we are seeing the intensity and impact here. As you know we released this report ond the impact of Climate Change and impacts on American Household today. Try a to get a close look more because we see these numbers, we see n headline numbers around events like the wildfires in maui where we think it will cost around 4 6 billion. We want to get a little more on human face one these kinds of highlevel events and decemberve stride unpacked what the impacts are to household. Lets take a step back for a moment because some folks, in the position ive been in, sometimes i get why is a Treasury Department talking about Climate Change, like what is your agency have to do with all this . Number one, the white house has told all the cabinet agencies we need to takenc hold of governmet and the whole of executive branch approach to climate comes all the agencies need to think about what our role is here both in addressing the problems and then creating solutions to address the challenges of Climate Change. The secretary herself has spoken repeatedly about the urgency of addressing Climate Change both the cost t and the toll that it imposes on the nation and the globe. But also thinking about what wee can bring to bear as an agency to don that. Shes encouraged all of our office to think what word we can be doing to analyze obama think about solutions. We have done work through the Financial Stability Oversight Council but look at the financial system. There are things happening in the property and Casualty Insurance market that were looking out we threw our partners in a Financial Literacy and Education Commission want to take a closer look at the Household Level and individual level impact of these events to think a particular about how they backed Household Level finances. To go back to the example of the wildfires, we think when that country that happens, what are the impacts on the ground . Theres a catastrophic losss of life for folks exposed to the wildfires but all the people that do work t on maui who may w comes the business may close down, they may be agriculture workers and they cant go to the place of business anymore. Its either not accessible or theyve had their hours cut so theyre not didnt income. Same time may be costs related to relocation, rebuilding their home after the fact. There can be less access to resources on the island which can be to Higher Energy or food prices. That was what our goal with this report was to try to really put the grandeur Household Level focused onn some of the father events where we see that macrolevel and pack and the costs but understand how it reflects in peoples daytoday lives. So important to go see the total cost but also the daytoday lives on people. I know the report primarily focus on flooding is, and that includes extreme weather events, sea levels rising, flooding related to wildfires, extreme heat. Research from my urbanar instite colleagues and others demonstrate that disasters from like this can have a long and an even process in terms of both recovery and rebuilding after, and that it can be really an equal in how different people are affected. I know the trade report also looked at the different impacts. What did you find there . We tried to do a couple of things. One was just look at the broad impact of Climate Change having across all households, so for workers in a place like maui, that kind of dynamic i describe, you could have events and other places that create unsafe working conditions for all workers regardless of what their Household Financial condition looks like. You can imagine events increasing the costu of healthcare, for example, on people would increase property destruction happens with things like hurricanes. You can look at the broad impact of chronic Climate Change that is happening this past summer was hottest summer on record. With disney for workers to do work outside in the agricultural industry, in construction and manufacturing of things like that but also what does it do to energy prices,ai teresa cost f things like airconditioning . One piece of this is looking about the ways, what are the ways this impacts all households within we wanted to drill down on some of the most financially vulnerable households to better understand what the implications would be for b thosend folks. People like the folks in this room who do research on Financial Capability and wellbeing will be aware of things like the 20s when one survey that found onethird household good that cover more than one months worth of expenses if they lost their income, or the annual Federal Reserve survey that say over 60 of households could they even afford a shock 400 expense out of their cash and other available resources. That was one of the things we wanted to look at in addition to the broad impact Climate Change or how does that get exacerbated when household is financiallyn vulnerable . We are in washington. Folks were here this past summer this is the thing i was used to come from california but the wildfire smoke from the canadian fires here in washington, d. C. Even this past summer, so again agricultural workers, construction workers who dont want to or are unable to inhale wildfire smoke who then cant work. What does it mean if it creates unsafe conditions . What does that mean for lowwage workers . Households with Health Conditions within our ingesting the smoke within the increased medical costs what does it mean in terms of increasing the financial precarity . Andre then again this will be a thing i return to repeatedly because my dual roles with consumer policy and insurance is the Property Damage that comes out of this to household second barely afford to really absorb that kind of expense. Thats what were trying to do is think about the broad impact of Climate Change and what does it mean forea the most vulnerab. One section of the report i really recommend people to look at is we try to do a bit of geospatial mapping to try to see where this committees are located, where this overlaps arw happening. The risk you mentioned about heat, wildfire in flooding. What we saw is a little more than 50 of counties in the u. S. Are climate, are exposed to the impacts of climate in one of these three different ways. And thenif you overlay the Financial Vulnerability on top of that, you see theres about 20 of counties that have this overlay of exposure to Climate Change andci Financial Vulnerability as well. I think thats really important for some who works in the federal government to understand the climatest change is a global phenomenon and we are were experiencing it at a National Level but also the different communities are expensing this in very different ways and try to understand what this pockets in this c committees are, what they are experiencing and try to think how we respond to that as well. That mapping is so important to help went to target resources. Where do we go first . I guess where i want to turn to next because we a talked a lot about the problems. What about some of the solutions . What can we do here . Hack and we support . Thinking about supporting states as they are looking at the policies and programs . I wish this report have all ofms the solutions to all of the issues we raise, unfortunately its not thatat ambitious of a project. But yes, you are absolutely right. Treasure does have a role to play to some degree in offering assistance to different kinds of businesses or state and local governments. Treasury was given historic appropriations to administer through the Inflation Reduction Act to help communities with various different kinds of clean energy investment, think multiple governments, individual households to invest in things like evs and other types of, heat pumps, other types of efficiency to invest in some of the technology, new products and services that might help to reduce the impact some of these technologies are having on the climate as well. Thats an important part of it. Some folks were at the white house yesterday for the introduction of the resilient, National Resiliency framework another way we can try to get out ahead of this stuff. I think one piece of the report we can talk more about the recommendations is about a households can be aware and try to protect themselves and think about the ways its impacting thin. Its important thing for policymakers in particular to realize when you look at the impacts of Climate Change, some of these canam be handled on the back it in terms of protection but also a lot of front investment that has to happen. At times policymakers might not connect those things and see the way up front resiliency and investments might actually be to some of the Better Outcomes on the backend when it consumers experience these things. An area where the department we try to think about that it a third office of mine is the office of community and Economic Development. Weve been trying to work in particular with community Financial Institutions to think of to hear from them what kind of investment work they are doing to cut help address both the Clean Energy Transition but also make communities more resilient to the physical impacts of Climate Change and then how could part with them to make that job easier as well. Again, consistent with what the white house w has told the department and what the secretary and sold us would try to think about all the different tools and how we can bring to bear to address a lot of these really thorny problems. I was thinking about you last mention of the Financial Institutions. I know that when the government went out with covert relief checks, often the people who need them the most got them last and this because they didnt have those connections to some of the mainstream Financial Institutions. You touched on so many different aspects under so many different places to come in. Another report touches on credit reports, too. And what happens to credit in the price of credit. So thats great. In terms of thats like statelevel programs. L in terms of people, what can people who are impacted by this can what resources might you point into . Sure. Part of this reportt is identified some of theep issues and problems for academics and policy makers to pick up and think about how the work overlaps with some of the issues were racing in the report. We can talk more about those pieces as well in in a minutf you would like, but also part of a of the report is trying to raise awareness for household about the challenges they may interact they can equip themselves well. But also to tell them they are not necessarily about when we get into these situations. They think probably when people experience catastrophic events, it can feel very isolating and in particular when we experienced Financial Vulnerability and precarity that can feel even more isolating. Like it is our problem to solve ourselves, help is not available to us. But none of the messages that are one of the messages the report is to get across our resources available, agencies like the ones that are joining us today like hhs and fema and Even Small Business Administration that product services, other tools to p offer them when you get into these, when youre in the precarious situations, the our resources they can draw on things like use Climate Resilience toolkit and theres also programs like Energy Assistance when the costo of their energy bills go up. Were trying to do a few Different Things in the report and thats one of them to make sure households are aware of some of the risks but also let them know theyre not on their own. There are some resources available. Good. I know during the covid crisis we really expected Financial Health to take issue to dip, and certainly not everybody fared equally well but the programs and policies in place meant we didnt see that overall. It can really work. You mentioned you dont have all the solutions yet. We are laying out some of the research. What additional knowledge or research do we need in order to get to and provide more of the solution . I think theres potentially i mean we view this report as a first step as i said for additional policymakers, academics and other kinds of researchers to really hopefully pick up the baseline that we are laying out and take it in Different Directions depending on what their interests are. Some pieces of the report that stick out to me is being of interest that i would love to see other stakeholders really drill down on, one is the kind of psychological impact of these kinds of events, the confluence of the trauma of experiencing some sort of climate related disasters, but then also the way financial precarity of Financial Stress impacts peoples Psychological Health and wellbeing and can of what that does to peoples decisionmaking, how to respond and react to one of these situations. I think we know about a Financial Behavior is emotion driven in a lotno of ways. But the stress of the climate event on top of that and the threat of losing your home or your Community Just sort of what that does to households, and how we can policymakers respond to those issues. My the individual personal issue but surely theres a role for others to trybu to step in and help them navigate those kinds of situations. I think a second piece of this that hopefully the geographic aspect of the report might kind of key up for others is how certain populations are impacted by these kind of events, again at the household and Community Level. We are looking at it from the perspective of financial precarity that we know financial precarity, certain communities are take a impacted by financial precarity as well and then might also be frontline in Community Center so really drilling down on the specific populations that are most impacted by Climate Change and then the overlapping a Financial Vulnerability. And then i would be negligent grossly negligent if at any kind of climatete discussion i didnt again mention the federal Insurance Office and the work it is doing. It is in early stages of piloting a nationwide zip code level data call for data on the pricing and availability of property and Casualty Insurance policies. I think a day doesnt go but i dont read an article in like the wall street journal for bloomberg about how Insurance Companies are either raising the cost of the premiums, reducing the coverage of the policies, or just saying theyre not going to issue the policies entire state or in community as a result of Climate Change. What we at the department are interested in is getting more of the underlying data about that come what we empirically know about how the costs of insurance are going up as result of Climate Change or how a beta build is being a result of Climate Change. We monitor on on a nationwide basis. As a global phenomenon that does not respect things Like National borders but we needed on a national scale. There are some states collecting some of information but not all doing it. We also need at a granular zip code level i can understand the way committees in particular are impacted by. I think those are a few different areas where would love to seeo additional support, research, conversations but we really hope this is a conversation starter, not that we think weve all the answers on these issues. Excellent. So lots of different avenues to go forward. Without i will say thank you very much, assistant secretary, for joining us today. And next i wanted to introduce andrews rumbach whos going to tell us, hes a senior fellow and coley department institutes climate and communities practice area, and we will hear about some research. Thank you. [applause] hello. Thank you and welcome to anyone to urban, everyone here in the room but also everyone whos joining us online as well. So as signemary said i am andrew rumbach, a senior fellow at the urban institute and also the coleader along with Sara Mctarnaghan legal meet during the next panel of our climate and Communities Program here. So climate and communities is a focus program of an active in research, technicalmu assistanc, policy analysis and communication all with the goal of helping to helping change makers to build safer more prosperous and more resilient communities for all. Okay, so if anyone was skeptical that Climate Change was a pressing issue before 2023 i hope you see this image from the climate bring. This is daily temperature anomalies over the last 50 years or so. 2023 is been the hottest year on record bybe far, and a continues the trend weve been saying for a long time now. We just heard a lot of numbers about the numbers of billiondollar disasters. Heres another number that gets talked about less. This is from the senses. In 2022, 1. 3 of all households in the u. S. Were displaced from their homes by a disaster. 15 of of household in louisiana in that year were displaced by a disaster, just remarkable numbers when you start to think about the cumulative impact on people. And so we get lost in those numbers as researchers sometimes. What does a mean on the ground in the daily lives of people . It seems like this. Folks who are escaping from 31 Straight Days of 110 degrees temperatures in phoenix and going to local cooling center. User peoples lives disrupted, peoples work disrupted, these are peoples business is, disrupted. These are many unknown Health Impacts all in one photo and achieve any number of thousands of photos just from this last summer. We know Climate Change is an urgent problem and elected officials. Practitioners, community advocates, citizens all need highquality Reliable Research to help them make decisions to do with his urgent, and we think that urban along with our peer organizations along with University Partners have rolled in this larger climate challenge. What does our bins researchers say on Financial Health and wellbeing . Im glad you asked. Let me start by saying this. In the climate and committees program this is a Diverse Group of researchers with lot different backgrounds from economist to committee planners. With folks Qualitative Research is completed research is adequate talk about what a shared beliefs are as researchers as a look at climate from all these different angles to one of her shared beliefs with come up with his Climate Change isnt everything problem. Its not a silo over here. Its not fema, if someone organization with the government picket something we need to think about Climate Change as a problem that touches on all of our lives come all of our work and, therefore, we need this whole of government halts of society, whole of Community Approach to dealing with it. In that spirit and as i trying to choose a study to feature today from urban, i couldnt it because theres too many and this too many diverse everything kind to study at them going to give you seven studies in seven minutes i have left. Each with a headline finding it and i will say all these come from different researchers at urban, different centers, different approaches. We will have all of these links and event page and also emailed to you afterwards. I hope this is a bit of appetite, which are appetite integral look att these studies in greater detail. Whet your appetite. Number one disaster leaked abroad and often substantial negative impact on Financial Health. We know this at a large level but when wea dig into the data e start to see this and these researchers are looking at all of these different measures of Financial Health and wellbeing including Credit Scores, data card, mortgage to liquidator what are the more interesting aspects of the support called insulting to is defined mediumsize disasters and this is close to my heart as a researcher canti we call the slw attention disasters, the account of events that happen much more frequently but often dontre gea declaration or dont get major disaster assistance. Those could have the largest outsized impact of Financial Health and wellbeing. One point from the Research Community to call it an active disasters experienced a 31point decline in Credit Scores after three years compared to 4. Declines in majority white communities. Again because of what the assistant sector to just talk about the entrance of chronically stressed community in terms of their Financial Health. Number two, under insured is after the marshall fire in colorado. This is a Longitudinal Survey effort led by the university of colorado in the colorado schoolu of Public Health along with researchers at urban and Duke University survey household as of the cover over the longterm and not surprisingly but incredibly important under insurance has become the major issue in recovery so what you see is most households were underinsured. The thought that enough insurance to cover rebuilding but they dont because of inflation, because of the price of building materials, because of the rapidly escalate cost of labor. So as a result highincome households who can fill the gap are recovering much quicker and that shows up in the data which you can read about in the report and much more data about that disaster. Number three, Mobile Home Park residents suffer chronic climate impacts. S. Another shared belief we talk about in in a practice area n visibility matters a lot. Populations for least visible in the data are often those who suffer the worst impact of these bins because its hard to design policies for them. Mobileem home parks to us fits this perfectly. They dont show up in the senses to everyone youhe talk to underground know they are highly vulnerable population. A house 7 million people, three times as likely to be in poverty as homeowners conventional homeowners, and yet we cant measure them in the senses as a parttime accounting for the in our Emergency Management plans. The studies you can find on our bins website talk about Financial Health being linked to in many cases this mobile home which in reality is not mobile at all. Mobile homes rarely ever move. They are stuck in place so these households are often a very modest means often have all of their savings tied up in the so and when a disaster strikes, oftentimes they are not insured, they can get programs that work for them, they lose all the Financial Assets and then lastly they tend to be in hazardous areas with yourself of these events again and again. I lost count already. Migration after hurricane marie had no measurable effect on Financial Wellbeing of receiving committees. This is a fascinating study just published relatively recently encouraging you to look at if it is funded by the national academies. Researchers at urban found and looking specifically at migration from hurricane marie at the Central Florida m which s one of the main receiving areas and a look at the question of how with this rapid influx of puerto p rican migrants, how wih the both impact the Financial Services but also the larger Financial Health of the community . They found the limited Financial Services and these organizations struggled to wrap up and will continue to struggle over time. But due to a lot of really interesting work at that point in the report from government institutions, over all across multiple measures this graph just shows Credit Scores across multiple measures. Face on the impact on the receiving community which means itco is possible to absorb this migrants, but and again this is another belief we have in the climate committees program, Place Matters a lot. Central florida is not everywhere, right . What is it about Central Florida that allowed them to be healthy, absorb this population and not n suffer negative financial consequences as a result a lot of lessons for other potential receiving communities. Number five, North Carolinas rapidno rehousing program helped households with financial instability to find stable housing. This is a program of evaluation those published online from researchers at urban and by the look at is this really interestingel and intimate progm in North Carolina that helped 1000 people who were living in postdisaster shelters who had been housing unstable before the disaster either homeless or had been suffering housing instability and what programs and services do you give them come out of the shelters . They given concentrate suite of services and financial assistance, and they found that upon exit the households they have data on, 85 exited to stable housing. If you compare that to the number of unstable and that housed before, it seems to be a really interesting success, but in reporters also a lot of interesting inch marks of other committees committees of the above this kind of programs to think about especially how long list of template development and why it took so long is an interesting question we should learn l from. Number six and these last two in the spirit of positive thinking about tools and Solutions Rather than just problems, the lesson was a success story, i would to talk about a couple of really neat data tools at urban has published i think will be helpful. First i come from disaster measure emerging manchin background pic speaking to my brother out there and cisterns out there, oftentimes will take about Financial Health and wellbeing were using very simple metrics like income and poverty rates. We are nothing but nets are in a complex ways as expert industry are today. You can look at the Geographic Area from the senses and you can look across ten different indicators of Financial Health and wellbeing. From an Emergency Management perspective why dont we go beyond just think about poverty and income to think about how healthy our committees from a financial perspective welcome to manage a shock come how can we use data to design better programs. Finally, we need tools to connect our social safety net programs to climate challenges. We have amazing social safety net programs all around the country that are often doing work way beyond the resources and one of those is this is a ring tone that was published by researchers and Data Sciences and communicationon specialist t urban that allows you to go online and look at where all the head start programs of c the country the tentative head start to the population and a map that across a whole lot of different hazards including not just climate has but also things like legacy pollution. Its a fantastic mapping tool. It covers the entire United States. It allows you to generate all kinds of interesting patristics. This is an example of the kind of tools that programs across the federal government in order to incorporate Climate Change into their everyday work. Like i said, i hope youll visit our website. I hope youll take a look at all these individual reports and many others that a on our bins website, and thank you again very much for being here and im looking for to hearing from our next panel. [applause] thanks. My name is Sara Mctarnaghan, and then leave the climate committees practice. Think of which are listedoi and thanked all the panelists. Looking forward to this discussion. As we seems a far there are many complex forces shaping the financial risk and resilience to climate event recorded response across all levels of government as well as nonprofit, private, committee based actors. So excited to welcome the scoop on stage. Represent three agencies with an Important Role in supporting families and communities as well as local their practice engage researcher from texas to speak to whats happening in one of the most climate impacted states. All other files are available on the website. Encourage you to check them outa i will spare us the time and on the killer code if youre here in the room. I want to start by inviting each of the panels to recent doityourself and agencies. I will start with you, natalie. So good afternoon. My name is Natalie Grant from the Director Office of Human Services Emergency Preparedness and response at the ministry for childrens and families for the Department Human and health service. Long title another very big role in capacity we serve. We areth basically considered as the safety net for the nation. Were the largest funder and provider of Human Social Services in the u. S. Government. Ourbi budget annual is 62 billion. We have a presence in every Community Across the country. We factor commonly in some of the programs you heard earlier from the direct service and assistance they come t forward from temporary assistance to needy families, the low income home Energy Assistance program, water assistant programs and so one to child and family services, child welfare, head start, child care benefit, foster care, runaway and homeless youth, to other social Service Programs in support of entities such as Domestic Violence, trafficking in person and then Committee Block grantsd we are the smorgasbord when it comes to human and social services. What it tiesof back into some of these climate risk and so on we serve and support those persons and individuals households areld commuters at there margins and e in crisis everyday. Thats why they rely upon our services and support holistically. So i roll is to partner with our colleagues especially in times of emergency so we are looking across the communities especially at the margins because we know there are underserved persons that are morebl vulnerable to some of the shocks and threats holistically as they continue to expand and as we continue to understand Climate Risks across the countr country. Good afternoon, everyone. Pleasure to be with you today. I am and leedy, the director of the individual and Community Preparedness division at fema which meet i have the best job in the agency. Im very proud to say that. Themis Mission Helping people before, during, after disasters is one of the noblest i think in government. For us with the healthy after helping counseled in at about a couple things comers to mind. First off is our individual Assistance Program run by a fence in Office Response and recovery. Which in the case that should the president declared a major disaster declaration in concert with the governor or tribal leader, fema has the ability and of what i e want listen carefuly both in theoo room and at home o help folks with their f immediae needs and their uninsured needs. Thats key. Well talk about this a lot as a panel. The whole concept of the stafford act which is accounting piece of legislation that governs disaster assistance, theres an assumption out there that the private sector, specifically private insurers, is taking on the majority of the risk. And what we realize is and what the assistant secretary talked about and what andrew talked about is that a lot of americans who were are not getting te assistance that they need. That is not a knock on my colleagues or our previous colleagues who can before i can tell you that every fema employee when they go to the field will run through a wall to help an individual or family after a disaster. Whats a realization is that our programs need to improve to meet the climate challenges ofll tod. Second thing we really focus on is a National Flood insurance program, which im sure many of you have heard of. Im going to give you a thought. One inch of floodwater can cost 25,000 worth of damage. Heres the other thought. Only 36 of americans believe that their Home Insurance policy will cover flooding. Cases. Nt in most and of all of the properties that is looked at, or in a floodplain, only about 4 are brought into the National Flood insurance program. So no matter what else you take away from you today, the encouragement i i give folks d get hawk like this in with him a think tank in washington to a bodega in new york city, i have done it, i always tell folks, if you can come talk to your insurance, buy flood insurance. Some of the things well talk about today is cuddy to people might not have that the building. The last thing i will say is the bulk of what fema does come a lot of our programming, focuses on response and recovery and in sporting a state, local, tribal and territorial partners. My team and can be prepared as were all about Building Financial resilience, talk about that in a little bit but most of all to really think about, give you a question think about before it is my turn again. I told you he went one minute to get out of your house, you know way Home Insurance information is . Your drivers license, your bank account information, or mortgage information, we can do with it is a special if you left your phone in your house . We will talk about that more in a bit. Looking forward to it. Good afternoon. Its a pleasure to beft here. I am shannon van zandt, a professor of urban planning at texas a m university and a senior fellow in the Hazard Reduction and recovery center. I had been studying social vulnerability to disasters and particularly the intersection oo Affordable Housing and disasters for about 15 years, really since hurricane ike struck the texas coast in 2008. A lot of peopleat dont remember that because it happened the same weight that the market crashed, but hurricane ike still stands as one t of the top fiver six most expensive storms in u. S. History. And it was my introduction to hazards picked before that i was a houser. I studied the impact of homeownership on the income families for my dissertation work and then got into disasters when it came to texas a m. Over that time my focus has been on the intersection of where people live and what their exposure to hazards is. In particular i am interested in Land Development patterns and our history of segregation and discrimination and the housing and lending markets that are perpetuated segregation over a period of time and other places people in harms way. I have a saying in part of it is because i do study most hurricanes and flooding, but low income people live in low Quality Homes in lowlying areas. That captures that intersection between physical vulnerability, which is low Quality Homes, social vulnerability, though income people, and risk for exposure, which is lowlying areas. O as i have had opportunity in texas to study a number of disasters, as you might imagine. Ive done a lot of work with Community Partners. I serve on the board of texas howitzers which is a very important advocacy group, not just in texas but across the nation in terms of advocating for low income residents to adequate housing with a particular interest in disasters since it is kind of a constant state of being in the part of texas that i live in, and most of texas soo ive done work in the lower Rio Grande Valley in texas along the texasmexico border which is one of the highest poverty areas in the country and is also done a lot of work in the Houston Galveston Area particularly in communities of color both within the city of houston and also in unincorporated Harris County. One of the interesting factoids i like to mention about unincorporated Harris County is about half of the population of the houston metropolitan area is in unincorporated Harris County. And in texas there are no building codes outside of municipal jurisdictions, which means we have half a million People Living in areas that have no building codes. And, of course, when we have events like Hurricane Harvey and the flooding that was accompanied with it, the impact on our most vulnerable populations is tremendous, and a lot of my research has focused on what the longterm impacts through the Recovery Process for those households is, understanding that the housing types that are most likely to be occupied by socially vulnerable populations take much longer to recover, probably two to four times as long as regular singlefamily detached Owner Occupied housing. And that its much more volatile. So we see sometimes those homes never regain their prestorm value which of course is for many of those homeowners is the single most important asset that is not only not gain the equity during that period of time but in most cases is actually losing equity during that period of time. My name is suzanna fritzberg, on the Deputy Assistant treasury secretary access for treasure with a a focus on Financial Inclusion and addressing historic disparities here i will pause for just a minute because we launching this report today to note the report was produced with significant contributions from hhs, from fema and such unique group to have a chance to talk about these issues with and im really grateful to urban for for something this conversation. We see this as a significant initial contribution to treasurys work with the household lens on Climate Change, and we expect that will move forward in a number of ways including ways the focus on the Household Level and also the overall financial system. The as assistant secretary steele mentioned, treasury has a role in helping mitigate climate related risks more broadly in the financial system. This activity led by the Financial Stability Oversight Council, the federalit Insurance Office, treasury just released a set of net zero principles intended to help guide private net zero commitments. At the Household Level though i want to highlight a couple things. Hi first, obviously we know people in the tremendous resources to recover from disasters and to build resilience. My colleagues here are a key part of ensuring those resources reach the people who need them. Theres an effort treasury around implementation of the ira, also representing transformative investment in preparing for Climate Change. We also need to recognize that alongside these resources and alongside the consumer facing a list of the ira its crucial to have access to the information in the Financial Education that can help them plan for the future and react to disasters. This report is part of that, apart of the Overall Mission of Financial Literacy and Education Commission which is a mention of the treasury throughout the production of the report. I want to take one step further and just note, as assistant secretary steele highlighted come in this report theres a laser focus on how the intersection of economic and social vulnerability and exposure to climate hazards means communities have been historically underserved or subject too disparities are a disproportionate risk of physical and financial harm, even though they are not the communities that have benefited largely from the activities that try Climate Change. So we know managing financial risk is not a new challenge, especially for low income and underserved communities who are often extremely sophisticated budgeteers. But it is an emerging risk. Its complex. It is both nearterm and longterm challenges, and we think a really crucial part of treasurys work that on to combat Climate Change but also to address equitable Economic Growth and opportunity that we see that risk very clearly and that wee take action to build Financial Resilience with a focus on underserved households. That leads us back to a number of the activities that treasury leads in investing in communities, in working to expand access to credit and capital, and ensuring that people across america have access to the financial products, tools and information that they need in order to meet their needs and their goals. My colleagues here know and probably many of you in the room no what its like to spring into immediate action in the aftermath of the disaster and i think the challenge for treasury is to support and undergird that work with ongoing efforts to strengthen the longterm Financial Security of communities across the United States. Great, thank you all so much for those introductions. We only got many facts. As for going into the next set of questions i want to invite everyone onlineo and in the room to summit questions using the qr code or through the event platform. Were trying to save time to get to those. Aaron, want to turn to you to talk more about some of the impacts on the grid. What arehe some of the main drivers of financial burden for families in the wake of disaster . If you could they get to some of the kind of main individual Household Level and commuted level actions that can be taken to support preparedness for sure, absolutely. One of the drivers were seeing obviously is a insurance gap in the number of americans who are both lacking Home Insurance and flood insurance. I think thats number one. As i i mentioned before in my remarks, the Current System and use that word carefully, is very much dependent upon and designed upon the premise that the private sector will take on most of the risk. And that is something i know were going to be working with her in her Agency Partners and we have been in this administration to mitigate that risk, reduce those talents. I think thats number one. Another challenge is and i will be frank with you, its that easy at the moment to navigate the federal assistance process. One of the things i know our administrator criswell under the leadership of secretary mayorkas and President Biden and working towards is where finally started work on a consolidated system for which americans can apply for disaster assistance. You might be familiar with the disasterassistance. Gov, but to your average family when youre told initially youre going to be going to sba to get a no interest loan as your first entry point for your uninsured needs, if youre someone who doesnt do with the government were only given with the coming as your post meant receiving Social Security check i dont know about you but that sounds pretty odd to me. I i think overtime to do now is work with our partners to explain that process better and streamline those operations to make it easier on folks. Pivoting to the question about what households can deal, one of the things i always tell us that is of this. When we are developing programming, thats what my team does an individual unity preparedness space, i tell them the person i want you to bear to keepac in mind is the person coming back from overnight shift at a Public Hospital who is working and hourly job as a nursing assistant, they live in unincorporated Harris County. I added that one. They live in a floodplain. They live in a mobile home, as andrew said that is not actually mobile. What program can we design that is inclusive of that person . And what we think about is this idea of Financial Resilience is simple steps that individuals can take. I knew the assistant secretary touched on this oval of it. If you are able to organize your key Financial Information before an event happens, i guarantee you its going to make your recovery a whole lot better. That is important. Even in conjunction with operation hope and Treasury Department come with something called the emergency financial first aid kit. You can download it on ready. Gov. And also thanks to the leadership of secretary mayorkas on the fema we have digital wallet that you can literally go into, you can take photos of those key documents and uploaded to Cloud Computing or even if you lose everything it is saved on your cloudin city can access that information. I have two jobs. I have d my day job in washingtn and part of one of our National Incident management assistant teams. When youre getting a Disaster Recovery center setup, all the interagency and nonprofit and Public Private sector partners in there, people are walking in with nothing. Itsit often the first interactn with government. When you walk in with nothing, the folks that have that data organized, they are going whole, they have jumpstart to recovery. The last thing i will say is under this administration weve taken monument this steps to invest in communities. First offer some of of you just heard recently we announced the limitation of the Community Disaster resilience sewn app. Very excited. Driving federal federaly partnerships, public and private resources specifically to underserved communities that are especially vulnerable to natural hazards. We announced, Just Announced last month 483 of initial tranche of Community Disaster resilience zones and theres more to, and what you think about this is we went right down to census track data, and i get spent hours appear nerdy out about census track data amongst friends to look at the place of the highest risk across the nation, and the idea is, is to put a laser focus on these communities so they can be the primary, really get the primary benefit designation to get access too additional funding ad Technical Assistance, were really excited about this. A lot of Government Agencies talk, a lot of talking points that publicprivate partnerships. This is taking to a whole new level. Joint effort with her interAgency Partners, philanthropic world and private sector as well as the Nonprofit Sector to identify these communities so we can have that laser focus on the billions of dollars of Grant Funding of the Technical Assistance needed so we can change outcomes. Hope that answers your question. Natalie, want toou follow upn some of the same things of equity and hhs has a real focus on low and moderate income population if you could tease out and get some a specific needs you all serve in responding a postdisaster event how should we be thinking about kind of Program Design and supplementation, we mitigating the disparities . And i think s ill start with the second question first. My colleagues have alluded to this and our federal programs just are not designed to support historically underserved, marginalized communities and the margins full stop. I think there in lies a lot of our challenge because our human and social service partners, they are working with runaway and homeless youth, individuals who are not emancipated from the page that they dont have documents, right . They dont know how to navigate many of these systems and services. Or if if you are a survivor f Domestic Violence or otherwise, there are these unique challenges of individual circumstances that are not fully appreciated by this sort of means. Because they are necessary outside the average for whom many of our programs are designed to serve and support. So honestly, are human and socialom Service Provider community, that community has reallyet challenged us to say lets take an equity lens to our disaster p approach and to a disaster programs. Lets critically analyze and understand the human and social services and how theyre being delivered on a daytoday basis, such that we can bring them angrily utilize them in a targeted fashion to complement these programs and services. Its not a this or that it is oftentimes this and that. If i am a renter or if im someone who is a couch surfer, the programs and systems may misrepresent a barrier to me. At hhs and it acs specifically were looking at how our programs and services can be utilized to waivers and flexibilities that it really equip the Service Providers to take immediate action. We want to make sure they can reach out and touch that community that there arere reserving and supporting, and also to let them know they can take more action within the confines of the resources and tools they have available to them. I would note Even Congress recognizes the role that acs plays, after come since 2005 we received many disastrous supplemental appropriations such as hundreds of millions of billions of dollars to our routine programs and services. So that indicates to me theres an acknowledgment, awareness and understanding that these are critically important and that they need for these underserved and marginalized communities is increasing. Part of what we want to layer in is how are we allocating and assigning our funds such that we dont supercharge an equity, right . Who areee we seeing . Who are we hearing from . Who are we not hearing from . Most important, so we can look and understand, then tailor programs and services to address and tackle that need as opposed to what we think may be the need. Really appreciate that. And a focus onnd Research Coordination and thinking about how our Disaster Response programs come together with a safety net d programs. Not always easily, right . May battleship that m. I. T. Shannonit to speak a little bito what youre observing on the ground. So much of your work as you mention focuses on the formal housing and experience of people postdisaster with displacement and of issues. Im wondering if you can invite us in to the work. What are entering from committee about these issues and the connection to Financial Health. I really appreciate what he heard from her other speakers and what ofe the things natalie said that really struck me as renters as a less attended to population. Renters make up almost 40 of our population and in some come in urban areas it may be even more than 50 . Houston for example, has a 50 come is 50 owners owners, 50 renters. Sing out on one of our most vulnerable populations and its a large vulnerable population and its not its not marginalized, its actually quite mainstreamed and may seem very little attention to renters in particular and one of the things that we saw particularly after Hurricane Harvey was the renters and even, you know, renters renters even of Single Family homes, but certainly renters of multifamily, places like that, who are very precariously situated financially, like we mentioned earlier, i think assistant secretary steele mentioned earlier that these families living paycheck to paycheck. When a disaster comes and your transit is rendered useless, you cant get to work on time. You may lose your job immediately and even if you dont lose your job, you cant get to it so youre not getting paid and the loss of even a single paycheck or being missing work, a handful of times, can be the difference between surviving and not surviving for a lot of these families. And so, definitely some of the Community Partners that i work with in houston were really trying to address those kinds you know, to keep people from sliding further down the ladder. You know, these are folks who have been struggling to climb the ladder, doing the right things, maybe even saving money, but its not enough. Its not enough to deal with even the 400 expense that for so many of us, would be, oh, sure, i can write a check for 400. But even things like winter storm yuri where, which texas, i experienced. I was without power for many days, it was not a huge deal, but and this often gets overlooked because our State Government doesnt like to talk about it somewhere between 250 and 700 people died during that winter storm which is much greater loss of life than what wed see even in a hurricane in texas. People who literally froze to death and even when the power is on, the utility bills are ridiculously high. I know, weve mentioned phoenix with 30 days over110. My community, college station, we were 60 days of 105. 60 consecutive days of 105 or greater with people not air conditioned. Or people not having heat during hurricane yuri. So, the financial the Financial Realities for many of these families really become a life or death situation and i think of resilience, and this goes back to kind of what natalie was saying, when i think of resilience as a community planner, i think of it as a Community Level characteristic and in my mind, what we should be doing is aiming all of our programs at those most vulnerable people, because i think the resilience, if you have a chain one link is broken, then the chain doesnt work. So we have a lot of those broken links in our communities and we can become more resilient as a community by targeting our resources to that link that needs to be fixed. And that means that our program should be targeting our most vulnerable and then everyone else will be addressed by them, but they really need to be getting to those who are most at risk of loss of life and loss of stable living. Thanks so much. I want to ask one followup question. Theres been a theme around insurance that weve all been speaking to and many of the questions are received in advance covered that as well. Im curious what youre observing on the insurance front. In particular around some of the coverage and uptick issues, not necessarily the cost, which is a whole different issue. Right, i think one of the other things i wanted to mention, too, was about rural communities. I think weve mentioned a lot even and i know that youre excited about the census tract as a planner. I want to drill down to the block group and part of the reason for that is that there is so much variation in communities, and within a tract. The rural areas the tracts can be norm must and dont do a lot to target the particular communities, but so many of those home owners are theyve paid off their mortgage so they dont have to have insurance and they dont. I remember one family in galveston when we were studying galveston, and she was a small landlord. She owned her home and then she rented the house next to her that she owned. So she owned both homes, but she had a mortgage on one that she rented. She had paid off her own home so she did not have home owners insurance, but she did on her rental unit and that was i had never thought of Something Like that when we ran across it and it just reminded me that its great that she may be able to rebuild one of those homes and that may be the one that she ends up moving into or whatever, but then shes lost one of her major streams of income that she cant reproduce and so that coverage issue and recognizing i dont know what the coverage rates are in texas to be honest with you, but i imagine that particularly in these rural areas and older neighborhoods where a lot of the homes have filtered down so theyre more affordable and theyre talking about older home owners, but theyre not insured. I have one friend, actually, i lived with a woman right after i graduated from college, my rom mates mother who lives along the bayou in houston and her home has been flooded at least four times in the last 10 years and she refuses to move to the point that her daughter, who was my roommate, and she are not speaking to one another anymore because theyre tired of digging her out. Her son literally had to break a hole open in the roof for them to be saved after Hurricane Harvey and not because shes not welleducated. Shes perfectly well educated and not because shes poor, shes not. Shes stubborn and shes old and shes connected to her community. And so, i think sometimes, especially when we talk about relocation, we take for granted the importance of that connection to community and all of the other services that are provided to families beyond just their housing unit and their households. And thats something that a lot of our programs dont address effectively. I appreciate that attention on challenging and pushing some of our assumptions and bringing in the personal experiences. So, i want to turn to you and on that theme of assumptions, and my surprise, to bring us a little deeper into the report that treasury just released today. What was the finding that stood out to you and surprised you . I wanted to start by commenting on whats been said so far and you know, were talking we talk about vulnerable communities and underserved communities, communities that experience disparities and i think theres a temptation sometimes to see those real edge cases. And this represents a lot of america. This is a tremendous number of people if you look, kind of taking the Financial Security and the Financial Wellbeing ends, who is able to meet the 400 expense. Theres a shockingly large number of people who cant. And if you look at selfreported indicators for whether people feel financially stable that shrinks even more dramatically. So, i think the principal that they mentioned sort of around designing with vulnerable folks in the center is extremely important one, but one that i think also encompasses really tremendous number of people and not to small isolated examples. Returning to my point of personal privilege. I want to give you two answers to that question and the first one ties in with a theme thats come up several times around connections between Disaster Relief and the social safety net and we found in the report one of the areas of Financial Impact that we highlight is the impact of climate events on the availabilities of child care and education and we find relatively unsurprisingly that extreme heat in particular can have big consequences for the provision of child care and education which means not only that students and teachers and other professionals might be experiencing unsafe conditions while they are at work or while they are in school and conditions that interrupt the ability of students to learn, but also providers and schools, often which are to close. If we look at the past decade, heat related School Closings in the u. S. Have nearly doubled and we have every expectation that that will continue to rise. This is obviously an issue that is exacerbated by Outdated School infrastructure. Very much exacerbated by the need for comprehensive child care funding that can better support providers and also avoid Family Budgets being i am possibly squeezed in trying to afford child care in the first place. But there are significant consequences in the near and in the longterm, you know, children with interruptions and parents have to scramble to find a place that they can take their kid and many parents and in particular, many women are likely to miss work to care for children and that has able has direct income loss potential, but also has the capacity to interrupt equitable work participation and Career Advancement opportunities. I want to switch gears to an almost entirely different issue, having said that. To highlight something thats unfortunately is all too common in the aftermath of disasters. You know, its like as my colleagues have mentioned disaster aid plays such a crucial role in recovery, but one extremely disheartening issue is the escalation of fraud and scams in the aftermath of disasters. Fake charities, fake job opportunities, impersonation of fema representatives, hhs representatives, other Government Agencies and impersonation of a financial institution, you know, to give an example, right, you could have someone whos experienced Property Damage. They get an email. It seems to be from fema. Theres aid available. You just have to pay this application fee. They are trying to move quickly, its complex, they go ahead and do that and that was fraudulent. Fema is not going to ask you to pay an application fee for aid and now you find yourself in a position of not only sustaining direct impact from the disaster, but also having taken potentially a significant financial hit and a loss of private information that could impact you down the line. Scales like these are not normally preying on the vulnerability of households in a particular moment in time, but can have compounding effects, as one more thing associated with the disaster that can bring someone down in kind of a negative financial spiral. And you know, weve seen, i think the stat is in the last two or four years reported fraud and Identity Theft is up over 60 and i think that that probably also respects changes to reporting, but thats hugely significant and we know older adults in particular are aggressively targeted here and i know my colleagues are very vigilant on this issue, but i think its important that we continue to raise awareness about it and that we think about the kind of partnerships that have been discussed here today with trusted Community Organizations, with folks on the ground who can do a good job of ensuring that people who are already in a vulnerable situation dont get taken advantage of again. All right, thank you. Weve been focusing a lot of our conversation and moments like the ones depicted in the picture and i want to invite you briefly, maybe a minute, to just talk a bit to what we should be doing on quote, unquote blue sky days on impacts to proactively improve financial and household resilience. Natalie, can i start with you . Sure. I think as we learn and understand the tapestry of a community and also in advance of those noticed incidents, what gives them agency, right . And i think at the present moment, there is very much this, you know, we are going to set up the shelters and those sorts of things which are prudent and important, and if i can advance benefits. If i can give you more agency for you to opt into what is the best decision, how do i do that . And how do i pursue that and how do i implement and action that . Weve seen that from covid19 with the child care subsidies and so on, that people on average, they make the right decisions, right . Just as weve heard that folks are good budgeters, especially if theyre low income. So, i think that part of our focus is on how do we really starts to restore agency to many of these communities and really equip them with those schools, with those not only those tools and sort of techniques, but also, the resources that they actually need to make those best determinations and see where they shake out. Separately, i would say to make sure theres some portability. If people have to relocate, make it less burdensome for them to do so because thats a barrier to their movement and making the best sort of determination. I love that term agency and i think its so important when folks here in the beltway talk about how to build resilient and communities outside of the beltway and i want to hammer that home. A couple of comments, in addition to the Financial Resilience and insurance points i hit on earlier, i cannot begin to stress the importance of communitybased organizations during both blue skies and gray skies and one of the things that weve seen through research is a lot of these institutions from food banks, nonprofit medical providers, credit unions, senior care centers, these are the institutions and including our faithbased partners, many underserved americans depend upon those services day in and day out. We developed a trade called organizations preparing for Emergency Needs or open, and the goal with this trading is to help those specific ceos and Community Organizations understand their supply chains, get a better understanding how to build the continuity plan and take these other basic steps and give them directions about where resources are available to do that. I never forget going to do this trading to a small nonprofit and they say, im only one person with five volunteers, how am i supposed to build a continuity plan so were trying to make sure to marshall resources to them. Because ive always been somewhat surprised where i said in the world of just in time delivery, many local food banks are only keeping one to two days of access supplies available and when theyre when that need is going to jump by 100, 200, 300 we want to be able to give them resources to make that more resilient and the next thing i would say is the assistant secretary touched on this, ive only got a minute and ill be super fast. This idea of emotional, social and physical resilience, Financial Resilience is important, but im sure youve read the recent articles by david brook, why are americans so mad or so sad in the atlantic, and personal resilience, steps we can take about our federal Agency Partners as well as nonprofits to try and make a little bit of an impact. Perfect is the enemy of good in disaster management, my friends, to try and build, help americans rebuild that physical, social, emotional resilience and the last thing ill say according to our National Health and survey, only 8 of americans participated in a Community Event to help them build resilience over the last over in 2023. Thats the number we need to get out and we need to do that by working together. Thank you. I think i would challenge us maybe not to think about it as a blue sky and gray sky, especially in my experience in houston and not to say that houston is the center of the world, it may be the center of my world, but houston is in a constant state of disaster. I tell the story a lot when Hurricane Harvey hit, i pulled up the city of houstons website to see what emergency programs they were standing up and i found that they had they had just stood up the one for harvey, but they had three other ones that were still open from hurricane ike which took place nine years prior, as well as 2015 floods and the 2016 floods. They had four open emergencies at that time. What that tells me is that theyre always in a state of emergency and i think especially for our vulnerable families, they are constantly in a state of recovery, particularly because it takes them so much longer to recover in the first place. So, anything that we can do to make them more resilient for life is going to be useful during a disaster as well. So, as a planner, i want to say to communities that they should be planning for disasters. They should include vulnerability assessments in their comprehensive plan and preDisaster Recovery plans as part of their comprehensive planning and integrate all of the planning documents that they have across the community, including the Hazard Mitigation plan. The consolidated housing plan, the Economic Development plan and comprehensive plan and whatever plans they happen to be making. So often those are in conflict with one another and theyre being developed in isolation from one another. We can only be successful, and i am, you know, im a planner, so i really do believe that we have to think ahead and we have to we have to understand what is potentially happening to us. Sometimes i even get frustrated with seeing these pictures because these are the pictures of what captures the nations attention, but theyre really just a beginning for these families that are experiencing them. These families are going to be working for months and years to get back what they had. And so, we need to remember the that period of time and not just the immediate what do we do today action. Ill try it be quick. Awant to comment on so many good things that were said. Firstly, let me just underline planning. I started my career in local government. We had a major storm one year and the mayor turned to me and said, your job is to keep our unsheltered Homeless People alive. And we didnt have a plan to do that. We figured it out. We managed not to lose anyone, which reflects tremendous work from a number of Community Organizations, but for me highlights the importance of communities thinking about both what can happen and also what i would think of as one of the most vulnerable communities as they conduct their planning. I also want to underline the comments on agency. Treasury has a lot of work going on Financial Inclusion and we really are thinking about how we Center Agencies and center, excuse me, center agency, Consumer Agency as part of that work. Theres a number of Research Projects that will be additive and useful Going Forward and i know andy outlined several of them. Let me close my underlining again, the point of investing in communities in a way thats community led. The communities have been at the forefront of challenging Climate Change, of, you know, organizing to reduce local sources of pollution or environmental planet change goals and i think theres tremendous potential for especially the wave of investment that is coming through a number of the biden administrations initiatives to be directed in that takes advantage of Community Expertise and its certainly my hope that thats what well see and i know my colleagues are working hard to make sure that thats the case. Great. Thank you so much. Please join me in thanking our speakers and our audiences for joining. As a reminder, the event was recorded so it will be on the website to share with others who might enjoy the dialog. I think its an invite for helping the communities to weather the Financial Impacts of Climate Change and ive walked away with a new sense of urgency, so i appreciate that. Thank you, thank you. [applause]. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] cspan is your unfiltered view of government. Were funded by these Television Companies and more, including comcast. Do you think this is just a Community Center . No, its way more than that. Comcast is partnering with a thousand Community Centers to create wifi enable so students from low income families can have the tools they need tbe ready for anything. Comcast supports cspan along with these providers giving you a front row seat to democracy. Former Senate Majority leader tom daschle led a discussion on response and preparedness for the upcoming flu season joined by