States are facing growing insurance premiums and reduced federal assistance if disaster hits. One of the key questions they face is how to help households invest in resilience without placing the financial burden entirely on individual homeowners.
Experts at Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment & Sustainability, in partnership with The Resiliency Company, have released examples showing how states are directly funding, financing or increasing incentives for property-level resilience improvements. These improvements reduce disaster losses and stabilize stressed property insurance markets, which can improve housing affordability.
Focusing on the FORTIFIED Roof™ program from the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety, a series of in-depth case studies documents innovative financing approaches in six states: Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, North Carolina, Oklahoma and a Midwest state preparing to launch a program. A policy brief provides an overview of lessons learned from these states.
The case studies highlight a variety of financing mechanisms:
- state appropriations
- insurance-sector funding
- tax incentives
- catastrophe bond innovations
- emerging blended-capital models for homeowners and affordable housing providers
“These examples demonstrate how public policy, insurance regulation, housing finance and private capital can work together to move investment to households—before disasters occur—rather than relying primarily on post-disaster recovery,” said Lydia Olander, a program director at the Nicholas Institute. “These financing mechanisms aren’t just applicable to FORTIFIED Roofs, but to a wide array of resilience solutions.”
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Join The Resiliency Company and the Nicholas Institute for “Before Disaster Strikes—How Six States Approach Financing Resilient Homes” on Friday, Oct. 2, 12-1:15 p.m. ET.
The policy brief identifies common design features across the state programs studied:
- Payment based on verification. All state programs tie disbursement to verified outcomes.
- Insurance discounts. State insurance regulators in Alabama, Louisiana and Oklahoma require private insurers to offer premium discounts on the wind portion of homeowners’ policies for homes with a FORTIFIED designation.
- Risk-based targeting of high-risk geographies, repetitive-loss areas or hail-prone ZIP codes. This helps to direct limited funds to properties where upgrades are expected to avoid the greatest losses.
- Need-based access. Different programs are designed to meet differing needs across states, targeting homeowners of different income levels, condominium associations and builders of affordable housing.
- Justification and reinvestment. Tracking and quantifying avoided losses and savings has helped justify further state investment or private investment.
Together, the case studies, policy brief, and forthcoming companion papers provide a practical roadmap for legislators, insurance regulators, housing finance agencies, philanthropies and other decision-makers.
The case studies and policy brief were authored by Sujay Dhanagare, a 2026 graduate of the Nicholas School of the Environment’s Master of Environmental Management Program; Olander; and Matt Posner, head of public finance at The Resiliency Company.
