Building Strong, Resilient Communities
Resiliency is more important in the face of changing climate conditions. Extreme wind events like hurricanes and tornadoes can cause severe damage and greatly disrupt families and communities. To help build stronger, more resilient communities, we joined forces with Habitat for Humanity®, a nonprofit organization that helps families build and improve their homes, and the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety (IBHS) in 2011 to build affordable, wind-resistant homes to FORTIFIED Home™ standards throughout the country. Developed by IBHS, FORTIFIED Home™ construction practices are designed to help homeowners and communities better weather future storms, including hurricanes, high winds, hail and severe thunderstorms. Building FORTIFIED means exceeding the minimum standards set by building codes for construction techniques and materials. Our partnership shows that by making a few important changes in home construction standards, homes are better able to withstand storms without significantly adding to the cost. To date, Travelers has supported the construction of nearly 90 FORTIFIED Habitat homes.
Building on the success of the program with Habitat for Humanity, Travelers has been adding and scaling resilient rebuilding partnerships since 2018.
SBP
In 2019, Travelers launched a FORTIFIED building pilot program with SBP, a nonprofit organization that works to shrink the time between disaster and recovery. As of December 2022, the Travelers partnership has resulted in 47 SBP staff receiving FORTIFIED construction training and 320 FORTIFIED homes being built in Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Puerto Rico, South Carolina and Texas. Of these homes, 182 were built with funding from Travelers.
Homes built in New Orleans were tested by Hurricane Ida, a Category 4 storm that hit in late August 2021, and the homes held up well, consistent with their design; the SBP roofs withstood the storm compared with others in the neighborhood. Smart Home America, IBHS and other resilience advocacy groups have used these homes as examples of the benefits of FORTIFIED building and to advocate for stronger building codes, which Louisiana adopted in January 2023.
Smart Home America
Smart Home America works to educate leaders, residents and the building industry about smarter, safer buildings and evaluates policies, products and techniques that are designed to provide for resilient and sustainable communities. Travelers’ partnership with the organization began in 2018 and was focused on helping Houston, Texas, recover from Hurricane Harvey. Most recently, Travelers funding is supporting the organization’s efforts in Louisiana following the devasting hurricane seasons of 2020 and 2021.
Team Rubicon
In 2018, Travelers provided funding for Team Rubicon to begin piloting a response model aimed at low-attention disasters (LADs) – that is, devastating weather events that affect communities but are not large enough in scale to draw the attention of government, media or philanthropic organizations. Team Rubicon is a nonprofit organization that unites the skills and experiences of military veterans with first responders to rapidly deploy emergency response teams after disasters. Team Rubicon is committed to building its capacity for incorporating FORTIFIED standards into its rebuilding program. Since 2018, Travelers has provided $1 million in grant funding for the low-attention disaster rebuild program. This funding helped Team Rubicon in its efforts to rebuild 120 homes in Houston, 33% of which were built to FORTIFIED standards; 40 homes in Florida; and 500 roofs in Puerto Rico. In 2022, Travelers' funding was directed to rebuilding 18 homes in Selma, Alabama. Also in 2022, Travelers entered into a new three-year commitment to provide $1.8 million to the LAD Rebuild program, while also supporting Team Rubicon’s Ready Reserve general operating fund, which allows the organization to deploy resources when disasters strike.
The benefits of Travelers’ funding continues long after the funds have been deployed. For example, four homes in Selma that were built by Team Rubicon to IBHS’s Silver FORTIFIED standard were in the path of a January 2023 tornado that further devastated this already hard-hit community. The four homes withstood the tornado’s effect with only minor damage, protecting families from loss of life and property.
Community Benefits
- More than 450 FORTIFIED homes for low-income families have been built by Habitat for Humanity, SBP and Team Rubicon across the United States, made possible in part with funding from Travelers.
- Numerous Habitat for Humanity affiliates throughout the country have learned about safer building standards, and many are adopting them as they build new homes for some of America’s most vulnerable families.
- SBP has trained 47 staff members on FORTIFIED standards, and SBP plans to continue educating its staff and contracting partners to increase familiarity with FORTIFIED building practices.
- Disasters often disproportionately impact low-income communities of color. The greatest asset of low-income homeowners tends to be their home. And according to the Urban Institute, home equity makes up a disproportionate amount of overall net worth for Black households. After a disaster, however, housing values drastically decrease. When a home is rebuilt, the value is restored, giving the resident more leverage and potential for upward economic mobility.
Travelers Benefits
- Data gathered from the FORTIFIED program is used at hearings to influence stronger building codes in hurricane-prone regions and to demonstrate the affordability of building to FORTIFIED standards. This played a part in the recent success in strengthening the building codes in Louisiana.
- Since we entered our partnership with Habitat for Humanity, dozens of Travelers volunteers have helped build FORTIFIED Habitat homes, increasing our employees’ knowledge of FORTIFIED Home standards. Videos of prior builds can be viewed here.
- Thousands of our employees have participated in Habitat builds – both FORTIFIED and traditional – driving engagement by working together to strengthen our communities.
- In addition to its positive impact on communities, these partnerships benefit both Travelers and the insurance industry by increasing the number of resilient homes in vulnerable communities.
Related Resources
- Travelers Institute® Webinar: Weathering the Storm: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety