The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson announced today the department will provide an additional $178.5 million to states hit by disasters in the past two years.

The funds will support states in their recovery from severe flooding which occurred in 2015 and 2016. The grants will be provided by HUD’s Community Development Block Grant – Disaster Recovery Program.

These new provisions pushed HUD’s investment in the affected areas to a total of nearly $947 million in grants.

“Clearly, there are hard-hit communities in these states that need more help to recover from the devastating floods they experienced over the past two years,” Carson said. “Today, we make another investment in the future of these communities and to help our neighbors in need.”

The disaster recovery grants support a variety of activities including housing redevelopment, business assistance and infrastructure repair. The state governments in the affected states, West Virginia, Texas, North Carolina, South Carolina and Florida, will target the grants toward the most impacted areas.

The allocations are based upon a statutory formula that measures the unmet costs to repair seriously damaged properties and infrastructure in the counties determined to be most impacted.

The chart below shows how much funds were granted to each state for the 2016 and 2015 disasters, and the total combined allocations to date:

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(Source: HUD)