FEMA IHP × ALICE® — 2024 Gulf/Southeast Disasters

2.07M real FEMA Individual & Households Program applications across two adjacent 2024 storms. Use the buttons below to switch between Hurricane Helene (5 states, Sep 2024) and Hurricane Milton (Florida, Oct 2024).

—IHP applications
—Approved
—Total IHP paid
—Counties

Read this first
Scope & honest caveats

Every number on this page is computed directly from 2,072,474 real FEMA IHP application records joined to ALICE® thresholds by county and household type. Toggle the two buttons at the top to switch datasets. ALICE® methodology by United for ALICE®.

Helene: 5 state-level declarations (DR-4827 NC, DR-4828 FL, DR-4830 GA, DR-4831 VA, DR-4832 TN). 1.02M applications.
Milton: DR-4834, Florida only. 1.05M applications — nearly the same volume as all of Helene combined, on one state.
Data gap: South Carolina Helene. FEMA declared SC for Helene (DR-4829) but the upstream pull in response-gap-helene doesn't include that disaster. SC applications are effectively missing.
No flood. FEMA IHP excludes flood damage (NFIP program). Significant for western NC / Asheville, where flooding drove much of the destruction.
Imputed ALICE status. Each applicant's below/above ALICE status is imputed from ZIP + household size vs. county Survival Budget, compared to the midpoint of FEMA's reported income band. Solid method, not ground truth.
~14% unclassified — missing county-ALICE join or missing income band. Excluded from ALICE-split charts but counted in totals.

Chart 1 · Totals
IHP dollars by state, stacked below vs. above ALICE

Where did IHP dollars flow, and how did they split between households below and above the ALICE threshold?

Chart 2 · Approval rates
Approval rate by ALICE status

Were below-ALICE applicants denied at a higher rate than above-ALICE applicants?

Chart 3 · Per-household payment
Average IHP payment per approved household

When a household gets approved, how much do they receive — does it differ by income group?

Chart 4 · Denial reasons
Top denial reasons, below vs. above ALICE

Do below- and above-ALICE applicants get denied for different reasons?

Chart 5 · Aid mix
Share of IHP dollars by assistance type

Do below-ALICE households receive a different mix of IHP aid types than above-ALICE households?

Chart 6 · Geography
Counties where IHP applicants are most concentrated below ALICE

Which counties' IHP applicant populations are most concentrated below the ALICE threshold?

Behind the charts
Methodology & next steps

Methodology

Source. OpenFEMA IHP, pulled into ~/dev/response-gap-helene/data/raw/fema_ihp_helene.duckdb. 2.07M records. Not copied or modified.
ALICE classification. Per-applicant imputation using ALICE Survival Budgets by county + household size vs. FEMA income-band midpoint. ~86% classified.
Denial labels. From the project's denial_reasons_lookup.csv.
Approval. ihpEligible = TRUE across any IHP program component.

Data gaps & follow-ups