Comments on FEMA’s RFI on the National Flood Insurance Program's Community Rating System

On October 22, Enterprise submitted comments to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) on its Request for Input (RFI) to transform the Community Rating System (CRS) under the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) to better align with the current understanding of flood risk and flood risk approaches and to incentivize communities to not only manage but also lower their flood risk through floodplain management initiatives. The NFIP's CRS program is a voluntary incentive program that recognizes and encourages community floodplain management practices that exceed the minimum requirements of the NFIP for floodplain management.

To that end, Enterprise provided a number of recommendations to strengthen FEMA’s CRS program. Recommendations include increasing funding for planning and compliance with CRS to give communities the chance they need to enter the program; providing more technical assistance for low-income communities that need support to plan for pre-development in mitigation and adaptation activities; enabling cities to certify certain communities or neighborhoods versus certifying the entire city as well as expanding efforts to recruit communities to join CRS and provide outreach and education to local decision-makers.