After the devastation caused by Hurricane Sandy in 2012, Congress apportioned over $50 billion for disaster relief. Among that total was $16 billion for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)'s Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery program (CDBG-DR). The state of Connecticut received $159 million.
CDBG-DR is intended primarily to help people with lower incomes respond to disasters. But a new Politico investigation reveals that as low-income areas in Connecticut remained in disrepair after the storm, generous reimbursements and low-interest loans went to wealthy homeowners who, on paper, should not have even qualified.