Historic Funding Uses

Since 2008, USVI has been allocated almost $19 billion dollars, or $187,000 per resident, in federal funding. Of that total, 70 percent of the funds, or $13 billion, $132,000 per resident, has been allocated since the 2017 hurricanes. To provide some reference, the entire USVI annual 2022 budget is around $1.1 billion, or $11,000 per resident. While the relative size of these funding amounts is staggering in and of itself, the bulk of the allocation

(70%) occurred following the storms which accounts for just 36%, or 5 of the 14 years, over the entire available data period. Given the size of USVI, this is tremendous amount of capital to handle in an extremely compressed time frame. The volume and timescale of these funds also underscores the profound potential effect they might have on the USVI’s economy and various on-island industries.

187K 132K 11K $$$ $$ $

Source: USA Spending

$18.7B amount of money allocated to USVI since 2008

$13.2B amount of money allocated to USVI since 2017

$1.1B average annual USVI budget

Source: Office of Disaster Recovery

Tracking ODR Funds Over Time

In an effort to increase the efficacy of managing these funds, the USVI established the Office of Disaster Recovery (ODR) in 2019 to support the tracking and monitoring of federal dollars entering USVI. Using ODR’s available allocated, obligated, and expended data, we calculated the current burn (use) rate of federal recovery dollars, finding that USVI is currently projected to expend the entire $10 billion by June of 2034 with only 30% of funds spent as of 2022 ($2.9 billion). As most of the federal recovery dollars have set expenditure deadlines typically ranging between five to seven years, at the current rate, USVI will not be able to meet these time horizons, leaving funds on the table and need unmet. While extensions are possible, the USVI faces a significant challenge in turning around its current low burn rates.

In 2019, ODR projected 80% of funds to be spent by the end of 2022, but only 30% ($2.9B) has been spent.

June 2034 projected to expend $10B

Source: Office of Disaster Recovery