What Is Public Assistance?

FEMA Public Assistance (PA) is the federal grant program that helps communities recover from a presidentially declared emergency or major disaster. It reimburses state, local, tribal and territorial governments — and certain private nonprofit organizations — for a share of the cost of responding to the disaster and repairing what it damaged. FEMA describes the program in its Public Assistance Program and Policy Guide (PAPPG), which is the main source for this page.

PA is not disaster aid for individuals and households; those needs are usually served through FEMA's separate Individual Assistance programs. It is also a cost-share program rather than a full reimbursement: FEMA pays a percentage of eligible costs and the applicant or the state covers the rest.

Who the program is for

The PAPPG describes two broad groups of applicants. The first is government: states, territories, Tribal Nations and local governments such as counties, cities, school districts and special districts. The second is certain private nonprofit organizations, including houses of worship and other faith-based organizations, whose facilities provide services the PAPPG treats as eligible — services FEMA groups as critical (education, utilities, emergency and emergency medical care, for example) or as essential social services open to the public. For-profit companies are not eligible applicants as a rule, although governments can hire them to carry out eligible work.

Within those groups, eligibility is not automatic. FEMA looks at the applicant, the damaged facility, the work and the costs, more or less in that order; our page on the four building blocks of eligibility introduces that framework.

The kinds of work PA funds

The PAPPG divides eligible work into two broad types. Emergency work is what has to happen right away to protect lives, public health and safety, or property — debris removal and emergency protective measures. Permanent work is the repair or replacement of damaged facilities such as roads, bridges, utilities, public buildings and parks, to their pre-disaster design and function, and often with measures that make the facility more resilient to the next event. FEMA organizes this work into lettered categories, described in our page on categories A through G.

Who pays what

In most disasters, the federal share of eligible costs is at least 75 percent, with the balance covered by the state, territory, Tribal Nation or applicant. The share can be higher — FEMA's regulations describe circumstances in which it may recommend a larger federal share — and the percentage for a given disaster is set in its declaration, so it can differ from one disaster to another.

How a grant typically moves

1. Declaration. The President declares an emergency or major disaster, and the declaration sets out which areas and which kinds of assistance are covered.
2. Request. Each potential applicant asks to take part by submitting a Request for Public Assistance through FEMA's online Grants Portal. The PAPPG describes a filing window that opens when an area is designated, so timing matters.
3. Damage identification. The applicant reports what was damaged, and FEMA and the state help group the damage into projects.
4. Projects and funding. Each project is scoped and costed. Smaller projects are usually funded on estimates under simplified procedures and larger ones are reconciled to actual costs unless their funding is capped, with the dividing line set by a dollar threshold FEMA adjusts each fiscal year.
5. Work and closeout. The work is completed within deadlines that depend on the type of work and can sometimes be extended; the project is then documented and closed out.

If FEMA denies something along the way, the PAPPG and FEMA's regulations describe an appeal process, typically with more than one level of review.

Where the rules live

Three layers of documents set the rules for PA: the Stafford Act, FEMA's regulations in Title 44 of the Code of Federal Regulations, and the PAPPG, which consolidates FEMA's policy and is updated from edition to edition. Which edition applies to a disaster depends on the date of its declaration — see which PAPPG version applies. Because these documents change, and because each disaster has its own declaration terms, the details for a specific grant are best confirmed against the documents themselves and with FEMA or the state.