Outdated Building Codes are Costly and Dangerous

Homes, commercial buildings, and critical infrastructure systems that are designed and constructed today will be relied upon for decades to come. As the impacts of climate change intensify, however, many of these new structures will be damaged or destroyed because they were built to the standards of weak building codes. In the last year alone, extreme weather events drove more 3 million Americans out of their homes.  

Weak building codes not only make our communities less safe, they leave us facing growing financial burdens. As climate-fueled disasters continue to grow, people across large parts of the United States will struggle to find insurance at a price they can afford. Wildfires in California, hurricanes and flooding in Florida and Louisiana, and severe thunderstorms and hail in the Midwest have all contributed to homeowners insurance getting much more expensive. The growing loss of accessible and affordable insurance is turning the American Dream of home ownership into a nightmare. 

Climate-resilient building codes and standards, which anticipate and protect against the effects of climate hazards, could be a game changer. Incentivizing the development, adoption and enforcement of modern, climate-resilient building codes will help prepare communities for the impacts of climate change. Such actions can increase protection and reduce damage costs, which makes properties more insurable today and for decades to come. Moreover, energy and water efficiency codes can help reduce greenhouse gas emissions. 

Many states and localities have failed to adopt safer and stronger building codes. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has offered millions of dollars to states, tribes, and territories to rectify this problem. Yet, many are just leaving the money on the table, putting their residents at risk.

States Underutilize FEMA’s Building Code Plus-Up Program 

In July, FEMA announced its latest selections for the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Community (BRIC) program, an annual funding opportunity for disaster risk reduction. This round of grants included the first-ever Building Code Plus-Up, where FEMA made funding available specifically for building code adoption, implementation, enforcement, and training. With FEMA prioritizing BRIC applications in states and localities with up-to-date codes, this represented an important opportunity not just to strengthen codes for their own sake but also to stay competitive for future funding. 

Each state and territory were eligible for $2 million under the Building Code Plus-Up, for a possible total of $112 million. However, only 19 states and Puerto Rico applied for at least $1.5 million. Ultimately, FEMA selected projects totaling about $55 million in federal funding—less than half of the available amount. The jurisdictions in red and orange in the map below are leaving money on the table and missing a key opportunity to make their communities more resilient. 

The states and territories that didn’t take advantage of this year’s Building Code Plus-Up may also be harming their chances for future funding. Building code adoption has been a key component of the BRIC program’s technical evaluation criteria since the program began in 2019. For the most recent funding cycle, projects received 10 points out of a possible 100 if subject to a mandatory state- or territory-wide adoption of up-to-date building codes. FEMA has indicated that building code adoption will continue to be an important part of the BRIC scoring criteria in future years. This means that states like Kansas, Mississippi, and Tennessee (none of which had successful projects under this year’s BRIC national competition) will continue to find it challenging to secure BRIC funding. 

Beyond simple code adoption requirements, both FEMA and the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety (IBHS) assess states on the strength of their building codes. FEMA’s Building Code Adoption Tracking program classifies states’ and territories’ codes as higher, moderate, or lower resistance to natural hazards, based on the percent of component jurisdictions that have strong, up-to-date codes with respect to flood, damaging wind, hurricane wind, tornado, and seismic risk. 

IBHS goes into further detail for Atlantic and Gulf Coast states, evaluating the strength of the codes themselves as well as enforcement, licensing, and education. The organization’s Rating the States report classifies states as top, good, average, or poor based on the quality of their building code system.

As shown in the maps above, many states whose building codes are poorly rated by FEMA or IBHS failed to take advantage of the Building Code Plus-Up—leaving money on the table for sorely needed investments. Mississippi’s codes, for example, are rated as “poor” by IBHS and “lower resistance” by FEMA, and the state does not receive the points for mandatory code adoption under BRIC’s technical criteria. Despite this, Mississippi applied for no Building Code Plus-Up funding. Contrast that with Alabama, whose codes have similarly poor IBHS and FEMA ratings but who successfully applied the full $2 million in available funding. 

It’s not too late for Mississippi and other states to follow in Alabama’s lead. FEMA has announced that the Building Code Plus-Up will continue in the next BRIC funding cycle. That means jurisdictions that didn’t take full advantage of this first opportunity will, luckily, have a second chance.

States that fail to fully use the Building Code Plus-Up program will not only hurt themselves in the by limiting their chances for resilience funding. They will also hurt their residents in the long term as increasing climate-driven disasters push insurance premiums and rebuilding costs higher.