FEMA Applications Stalled for Kerr County Families
In the weeks since the Guadalupe river and Big Sandy Creek overflowed their banks, support has poured into Central Texas. Volunteers came from across the country, helping with search and rescue, mucking out houses, and supplying resources. Now, as those volunteers have largely returned home, residents are left to figure out how to rebuild after catastrophic loss.
As many turn to the FEMA Individuals and Households Program (IHP) — which helps disaster survivors with housing and other needs like replacing personal property or funeral expenses — we have published our 2025 Central Texas Flood Dashboard to monitor the distribution of assistance. The Dashboard presents an interactive map where users can explore FEMA Individual Assistance applications by county or zip code, eligibility rates and assistance amounts for key programs, and applicant characteristics. This dashboard will be updated weekly as FEMA updates its data.
Here, we break down some key findings about how FEMA is distributing assistance to Texas families and troubling trends that we’re monitoring. In particular, we are tracking FEMA’s low referral rates in Kerr County and low eligibility rates across programs.
The Trouble with Referrals
One difference between the Central Texas Floods and previous storms is the low number of applicants, particularly in Kerr County, being referred for the FEMA Individuals and Households Program. Referral is the first step towards receiving assistance. When a disaster survivor applies for Individual Assistance, FEMA will either refer the application for assistance or not. If an applicant is referred for assistance, FEMA assesses the applicant’s eligibility for different types of assistance. Unlike when a family’s application is rejected, there is no clear guidance for how to challenge the decision when their application is not referred in the first place. Instead, families are left in limbo.
Roughly one month after Hurricane Beryl, 88% of applicants across the affected counties had been referred for IHP. In comparison, for the Central Texas Floods, just 70% of applicants across all affected counties had been referred for IHP approximately one month later.
The overall referral rate also masks dramatic differences between counties. Across the 10 Texas Counties eligible for FEMA IHP, we have observed high referral and eligibility rates in Burnet, Guadalupe, Kimble, McCulloch, Menard, San Saba and Tom Green counties, middling rates in Travis and Williamson counties, and very low referral and eligibility rates in Kerr County.
The chart below shows referral rates for counties with at least 200 FEMA IHP applications. The four counties with fewer than 200 applications (Guadalupe, Kimble, McCulloch, and Menard) have similar referral rates to Burnet, San Saba, and Tom Green counties.
Applicants from Burnet, San Saba, and Tom Green counties have been referred for the Individuals and Households Program, IHP Housing Assistance, and IHP Other Needs Assistance at high rates. In Travis and Williamson Counties, FEMA has referred families at a slightly lower rate, between 60% and 80% across programs. By contrast, FEMA has only referred between 38% and 44% of applicants in Kerr County for the Individual and Households Program, IHP Housing Assistance, or IHP Other Needs Assistance.
A common misconception that we’ve heard is that these low rates stem from people applying for assistance on second homes. However, 94% of applicants from Kerr County are applying because of damage to their primary residence. From outside of the agency, it’s difficult to say exactly what accounts for the decline in referrals to Individual Assistance (IA). FEMA’s IA program guidance does not explicitly state which applicant criteria are considered at the referral stage, before an applicant’s full program eligibility is assessed.1 Without an eligibility determination, disaster survivors don’t have a chance to submit more information or appeal, meaning eligible Texans may not be getting the help they need.
What Assistance is Going Out to Texas Flood Survivors?
Exactly 8,269 families in Texas have turned to FEMA for recovery assistance since early July, mostly from Kerr and Tom Green counties. As of September 8th, FEMA has approved 3,475 (42%) of applicants for some type of assistance. By comparison, roughly one month after Hurricane Beryl, 63% of applicants had been approved for some type of assistance.
Other Needs Assistance
Almost everyone deemed eligible for FEMA Individual Assistance (99%) after the Central Texas floods has been found eligible for Other Needs Assistance. The average amount of Other Needs Assistance awarded to families was $3,089.13.
Other Needs Assistance can cover costs related to funerals, medical and dental care, childcare, moving, storage, cleaning and removal, as well as other miscellaneous needs. Other Needs Assistance also encompasses Serious Needs Assistance, a one-time payment of $770 meant to pay for expenses in the immediate aftermath of the disaster. Other Needs Assistance is administered jointly by FEMA and Texas, with FEMA handling registration and inspections and Texas responsible for processing awards and appeals. The costs of administering this program are split between FEMA (75%) and Texas (25%).
Housing Assistance
As you can see on the Central Texas Floods Dashboard, out of the 8,269 families that have applied for assistance after the storms, 5,123 applicants have been referred for Housing Assistance, and just 2,291 of those applicants (45%) have been found eligible. This number falls far short of the 7,531 applicants who reported damage to their homes or the 2,874 applicants who reported that their home was uninhabitable or destroyed.
Repair Assistance is the most common type of Housing Assistance by far, with 1,981 Texas families receiving Repair Assistance to date. The average repair award was $8,406.68. Just 823 applicants have received Rental Assistance and only 74 applicants have received Home Replacement Assistance.
Who is Applying for Assistance?
Almost three quarters of FEMA IA applicants are from Kerr, Tom Green, and Travis County. Most applicants (68%) reported a gross income of $60,000 or less. The vast majority of applicants (97%) did not have flood insurance, and 70% did not have homeowner’s insurance.
Role of Infrastructure and Policy Change
FEMA’s data can tell us that referral and eligibility rates are low, but not why. We do know that there are both infrastructure challenges in central Texas and a number of federal-level changes that may be contributing to the trends we are seeing in the data.
The floods occurred in rural central Texas where access to cell phone service and internet are limited. Many survivors lost their means of transportation in the storm. These barriers prevent eligible residents from applying but also make it difficult to respond to FEMA’s communications about their applications. More than 880 families have been denied FEMA Housing Assistance after this storm because FEMA claims there was no contact available for them to perform an inspection.
Changes at the federal level also play a role in the FEMA application process. FEMA’s dramatic decline in full-time staff, inconsistency at the call centers, new requirements regarding email addresses, and decision not to implement Disaster Survivor Assistance Teams (DSAT) may have affected outcomes of FEMA Individual Assistance applicants.
Between January and June of 2025, about 2,000 FEMA employees, one-third of its full-time staff, had been terminated or voluntarily left.2 Former FEMA staff have raised the alarm that de-staffing decreases FEMA’s capacity to plan for and respond to disasters.3
FEMA did not answer nearly two-thirds of calls to their disaster assistance line two days after the Central Texas floods because the agency had not renewed their call center contracts.4 The nonrenewal came after Kristi Noem, the Secretary of Homeland Security, implemented a requirement that she personally approve any agency expenses over $100,000, a decision that brought many agency functions to a standstill. The funding for FEMA call centers lapsed on July 5th, just as flood survivors in Texas were starting to reach out to the agency. Between July 6th and July 10th, FEMA answered around 15,000 of the 55,000 calls that came in. It wasn’t until July 10th that David Richardson, the FEMA acting administrator, sent a memo to Secretary Noem requesting approval for call center vendors, which was granted. We’ll never know how many families missed out on assistance because of the call center lapse.
Unlike previous storms in Texas, FEMA did not send out Disaster Survivor Assistance Teams (DSAT) to knock on doors to connect with affected families because the agency discontinued that program in May. At the time, Geoff Harbaugh, FEMA’s associate administrator for the Office of External Affairs, described door-to-door canvassing as “wasteful and ineffective,” yet these programs can be an incredible asset in rural areas without dependable cell service, like those affected by these floods.5 Ending the DSAT program may have decreased the number of families applying for assistance, or increased the number of errors in applications as families were filling them out without the benefit of in-person assistance.
As we approach the end of the application period for FEMA Individual Assistance on September 28th, FEMA has imposed new hurdles to make successful applications more difficult. Since early August, FEMA has implemented a new requirement that requires applicants to provide an email address in order to apply.6 For elderly residents and those without reliable internet access, this new requirement adds another hoop for families to jump through. And even though there are still weeks left for affected families to apply for assistance, FEMA has begun closing Disaster Recovery Centers (DRCs) across the state.7 Without open DRCs, families will be left without critical in-person resources to help them navigate their applications.
What’s Next?
For Texans to truly recover from the horrors of the July floods, the state and federal government need to streamline the process of getting assistance to families. We need more clarity on why so few households in Kerr County are being referred for assistance and what those families can do next. We need more opportunities for families to get help on their Individual Assistance applications, like open DRCs and functioning call centers, not fewer. With swift action on the part of FEMA and the State of Texas, there’s still time to get Texas families the assistance they need when they need it.
1 Federal Emergency Management Agency. (2025). Individual Assistance Program and Policy Guide (IAPPG) Version 1.1 Amended. https://www.fema.gov/sites/default/files/documents/fema_iappg-1.1_amended_july2025.pdf
2 Douglas, L., Hesson, T., Layne, N., Douglas, L., & Hesson, T. (2025, June 3). FEMA staff baffled after head said he was unaware of US hurricane season, sources say. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/fema-staff-confused-after-head-said-he-was-unaware-us-hurricane-season-sources-2025-06-02/
3 Trump’s 6 Worst Attacks on FEMA in the First 100 Days. (2025, May 1). The Equation. https://blog.ucs.org/shana-udvardy/trumps-6-worst-attacks-on-fema-in-the-first-100-days/
4 Joselow, M. (2025, July 11). FEMA Didn’t Answer Thousands of Calls From Flood Survivors, Documents Show. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/11/climate/fema-missed-calls-texas-floods.html
5 Taft, M. (2025, May 5). FEMA Is Ending Door-to-Door Canvassing in Disaster Areas. Wired. https://www.wired.com/story/fema-ending-door-to-door-canvassing-disaster-areas/
6 Taft, M. (2025, August 20). FEMA Now Requires Disaster Victims to Have an Email Address. Wired. https://www.wired.com/story/fema-now-requires-disaster-victims-to-have-an-email-address/
7 Burnet, Kerr County Disaster Recovery Centers to Shut Down This Week | FEMA.gov. (2025, August 19). https://www.fema.gov/press-release/20250819/burnet-kerr-county-disaster-recovery-centers-shut-down-week