MOBILE, Ala. (WKRG) — Two and a half months after the City of Mobile annexed 19,789 new residents in unincorporated Mobile County, the city received an $805,288 bump in federal funds to go toward rebuilding areas hit hardest by Hurricanes Sally and Zeta in 2020.

The city council accepted the grant increase in Tuesday’s council meeting. The money from the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development had been given to the Alabama Department of Economic and Community Affairs with instructions to be spent on rebuilding low to moderate-income neighborhoods hit by the hurricanes.

The city was already given over $52 million in ADECA funds for rebuilding efforts, but after adding to the city’s population, the city requested that ADECA review and recalculate the allotted Community Development Block Grant-Disaster Recovery funds. With that review came the increase.

After the grant increase was accepted, the city’s total ADECA CDBG funds grew to $53,149,038 for long-term recovery efforts. Senior Director of Neighborhood Development Jamey Roberts said a majority of the funds will be spent in districts one, two, three and seven.

“The federal government will see the population increase once the census survey gets to them,” Roberts said.

Once the federal government gets the numbers, they would have to verify the population increase.

“They’ll [federal government] attribute the higher increase in population, which will filter down later into future, larger grants also,” Roberts said. “State grants will factor that in once the census is to them, too.”

Roberts said an ADECA CDBG grant of this magnitude is not an annual grant, and he even described it as being a ‘once in a lifetime’ grant. However, he said it would likely take a few years before the city sees a significant increase in annual state and federal funds.