Building Strong, Resilient Communities

Resiliency is 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 most 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 more than 100 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. Since then, SBP has built 377 homes in eight states and certified 52 staff members in FORTIFIED building practices with Travelers funding. Overall, the organization has built 506 homes to FORTIFIED standards.¹

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 allowed the organization to provide training about climate-resistant construction best practices; support 10 nonprofits and builders in Kentucky, Louisiana and Mississippi in building to FORTIFIED standards; and recruit additional FORTIFIED evaluators.

Team Rubicon

In 2018, Travelers provided funding for Team Rubicon to begin piloting a rebuilding response model that would focus on both large-scale natural disasters and 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. In 2022, Travelers entered into a new three-year commitment to provide $1.8 million to the Rebuild program, while supporting Team Rubicon's Ready Reserve general operating fund, which allows the organization to deploy resources when disasters strike. To date, Team Rubicon has rebuilt more than 220 homes in 13 communities across the United States.

In 2023, Travelers funding helped Team Rubicon serve the LAD communities of Selma, Alabama, where Team Rubicon has been rebuilding since 2021, and Port Lavaca, Texas. Team Rubicon was able to rebuild 12 homes in these areas, and every home in these areas that needed a new roof received a FORTIFIED roof.

The benefits of Travelers’ funding continue 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 600 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 52 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. Learn more about Travelers Fortifies Communities.
• 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

¹Data from SBPUSA.org.