After the Flood

For the first four months after Hurricane Helene flooded her Brevard home, Nicole Ramirez lived in a drafty, 100-year-old camp cabin. If Ramirez was in bed and her fiancé got up, she could feel the whole building shake. The cabin was not built for winter weather, but the rent was free thanks to a partnership between a local nonprofit and the camp. The Federal Emergency Management Agency had offered her a hotel voucher, but in the immediate aftermath of the storm, there weren’t any local rooms available.

When Helene hit, the French Broad River swelled, sending water over Old Hendersonville Highway and into Lamb Creek, which snakes behind her neighborhood. More than 4 feet of water surged into Ramirez’s home. She lives in a special flood hazard area, also known as a “100-year flood zone,” and everyone interviewed in the neighborhood had flood insurance. Ramirez used a $122,000 insurance payment to make her three bedrooms and two bathrooms livable again, and she has moved back in. But the new drywall wasn’t installed properly, and her contractor’s invoices exceeded their initial estimate.

Her biggest hurdle now is getting her house on Cherry Street elevated above the floodplain. She applied for help through the Hazard Mitigation Assistance Program, which is funded by FEMA and administered by the state, last October. She was told she would have an answer by the end of the year. “I can’t get any kind of update,” said Ramirez, who works in the Medicaid office for Transylvania County. “There’s no communication.”  

Ramirez is not alone in her frustration. Many of the residents in Brevard’s Cherry Street neighborhood are navigating the confusing matrix of private insurance companies, federal grants, state resources, and nonprofit assistance as they try to fix their homes and guard against future storms. Some are temporarily living in RVs. Others are carrying two mortgages, having fled their flooded homes and bought new ones. Some, like Ramirez, are battling contractors and insurance agents for more help, saving receipts and hoping for reimbursement. 

Their anxiety is heightened by uncertainty in Washington, D.C. In May, President Donald Trump fired the acting head of FEMA, and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem told a federal task force the agency should be “eliminated” and replaced. Rather than cover most costs after major disasters, she said the new agency would give block grants to the states and let them manage the response. 

This idea strikes some experts as absurd. “States cannot do it alone. It is not feasible,” said Gavin Smith, professor of landscape architecture and environmental planning at NC State University. “It is going to slow down the process dramatically.”

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development recently approved the state’s plan for a $1.4 billion rebuilding grant. And in mid-May, the state awarded a contract to Horne LLP to administer the grant program—which includes repairing, elevating, and acquiring homes. Applications for the grants will open later this summer, said Matt Calabria, director of the Governor’s Recovery Office for Western NC (GROW NC). 

“One of the universal truths for this recovery is that we will never be able to move fast enough,” Calabria said in a recent interview. He said recovery from a disaster of Helene’s scale takes a long time, and federal money often takes a year to arrive. “They’re right to be frustrated,” he said. “We are, as a state, doing everything we can to move as quickly as possible.”

It’s unclear whether the people who already applied for hazard mitigation grants, such as Ramirez, will qualify for HUD aid. Both the HUD program and hazard mitigation grants pay for raising homes, repairing them, or buying homes located in a floodway. But the HUD funding is supposed to be a last resort for people who haven’t received other money. It targets low- and middle-income families, and “is intended to supplement—not replace—other public, private, and nonprofit sector resources that have already been provided for the same need or loss,” according to the state’s action plan for the grant. Ramirez thinks her income could disqualify her.

“We’ve heard from the [state] government: Wait to see what FEMA does,” said Angie Hunter, executive director of Transylvania Habitat for Humanity, which has been helping families repair their homes or relocate. “You can’t wait, and it’s never going to be enough from the government.”

Cherry Street Blues

One rainy May afternoon, Hunter walks down the hallway of Habitat’s Brevard office, pointing at whiteboards displaying names of Helene survivors. A column labeled “needs” is followed by a catalogue of destruction: “total loss,” “new septic,” “lost two cars.”  

Habitat is doing disaster case management for 52 families in Transylvania County. In January, the governor’s office gave the state chapter of Habitat for Humanity a $3 million grant to help with temporary housing, home replacement, and repairs. Hunter said that’s the only government funding she’s received, and it was shared among the 20 Habitat affiliates in Western North Carolina. The organization relies heavily on money from private foundations and individual donors, which has tapered off in recent months. “People have forgotten. They’ve moved on,” Hunter said. “Now we really are relying on grants.”

She points to an online map she created of the homes with damage, largely concentrated in the area near Oskar Blues Brewery. One mobile home community, where residents are primarily Latino, had 24 homes flooded. A private company, along with volunteers from the area, helped renovate some of those trailers. 

In Ramirez’s Cherry Street neighborhood, 31 homes were damaged. The neighborhood is next door to Oskar Blues, and live music fills the air several nights a week. Kids can pedal down the street and through a small patch of woods to the city’s bike path—a rare amenity in this rural town. The houses are modest, single-story homes. Eight months after Helene, some look untouched, while others look gutted. Habitat has helped one elderly couple do major renovations on their home and was beginning work on another house in early May.

FEMA requires homeowners to get a floodplain elevation certificate before raising their homes. Habitat partnered with the city of Brevard and a local surveying company to cover the price of the certificates for 50 homes, including Ramirez’s, but has been unable to get quotes from an engineer on what the elevations will cost, Hunter said. She has been applying for every grant she can, aiming to give families the money now so they can begin repairs before federal aid arrives. In April, the Truist Foundation gave Habitat a $585,000 grant to help families repair their homes, elevate them, or relocate out of a flood zone. 

The city has a complicated formula for allowing people to repair their homes without elevating them if they suffered less damage. Some homeowners have already received funding from FEMA for those repairs—although it’s never enough. “In all cases, it costs us more to do the repairs than FEMA gave them,” Hunter said. But Habitat can help homeowners file appeals and use money from other donations to fill in the gaps.

Barely Making Ends Meet

Deidra Bracken bought her two-bedroom, two-bathroom home in the Cherry Street neighborhood for $90,000 in 2013. Now it has a red dumpster sitting next to the driveway. The living room windows are propped open, overlooking a wooden deck. There’s a toilet sitting next to the front stoop and a tangle of wires in the front yard. 

Bracken, 60, works as a mail carrier. She’s been living with her mother in the Pisgah Forest community northeast of Brevard since Helene dumped 19 inches of water inside her house. She lost everything. The $49,000 she received from private flood insurance was not enough to pay for repairs; instead, she used it to pay off her mortgage. Now Habitat is helping to renovate her house, which needs new flooring and drywall, bathrooms, and a kitchen. “It’s basically just a shell,” she said. 

She’s waiting for government funds to raise it above the floodplain. “I’m hoping that the state is going to take care of the elevation. I don’t have the money for that,” Bracken said. “I barely was making ends meet before.”

Living with her mother has its own challenges. There’s only one bathroom shared among Bracken, her mother, and her sister. To do laundry, Bracken has to walk down two flights of stairs, punishing her arthritic knees. Habitat has promised to install a camper next to her mom’s house so Bracken has a more comfortable place to sleep and shower.

Before Habitat began working on her home, she had to sign city paperwork promising to raise the house within two years. This requirement allows the city to comply with the National Flood Insurance Program, which offers insurance through private companies, at a discount, to communities that participate. No one in the area could get flood insurance if Brevard didn’t participate in the federal program. 

If Bracken can’t meet that deadline, she’s worried the city will revoke her occupancy license. “It makes me nervous that they’re going to condemn [my house],” she said.

Her concern is due to conflicting messages from government officials. City and county officials said they initially thought National Flood Insurance Program rules required residents to elevate their homes before they could repair them, but this proved impossible. “There were no surveyors or engineers in the area available to even provide this kind of service,” Transylvania County Manager Jaime Laughter wrote in her recent testimony to a U.S. House subcommittee discussing FEMA reform. “I toured a flooded mobile home with a woman who was nine months pregnant. Their outlets had been inundated, and there were volunteers eager to assist in repair; but our staff was told we might endanger our NFIP status if we did not require [elevation] before issuing permits to make those repairs.” 

But city staffers found a loophole on FEMA’s website called “temporary repair authorization,” which would allow people to live in their homes while they’re being renovated, as long as they provide evidence of a “good faith effort” to elevate them within one to three years, according to city planner Katherine Buzby. Brevard City Council voted on that change last October, and so far they have not taken steps to kick anyone out of their homes. But residents continue to be fearful. “There was a lot of trauma and overwhelm afterwards,” said Tyler Mayo, who has been checking on a friend’s house in the neighborhood.

Mayo doesn’t live in the neighborhood but stops by frequently to let his dogs play in the yard and make sure no one has tried to break into the three-bedroom house. His friend bought it for $385,000 in 2023 and had just remodeled before Helene hit. The water rose to more than 3 feet inside and “destroyed everything he owned,” Mayo said. “He owes a lot of money on an unlivable house.” His friend is hoping to qualify for a buyout through the Hazard Mitigation Assistance Program and has already moved away, Mayo said. He bought another house in Idaho and is staying there indefinitely.

Across the street, a neighbor’s house has a pile of giant rocks in the yard, two campers in the driveway, and a third near the main entrance. A Trump/Vance campaign sign is propped up near the garage. 

Gabriel White, idling his motorcycle out front, said this is his grandparents’ house. They’re planning to tear it down and rebuild because it is less expensive than elevating the existing home. They’re living in the campers in the meantime. “I think they’re getting help from FEMA a little bit, and churches,” he said. (His grandparents did not respond to written requests for comment.)

‘No Exact Timeline’

Shaunna and J.R. Schultz used to live a few houses down, on the side of Cherry Street that state maps label a floodway. Lamb Creek runs behind the fence in their backyard. Each house in the neighborhood has a different annual risk of flooding, but they are all labeled “high.”

During the storm, the couple and their two young sons watched the water rise so high their back deck began to float. It flooded their cars and their garage and ruined their HVAC system. Their private flood insurance covered those repairs. They wanted to elevate their home but were told that because their house is in the floodway, they only qualified for a buyout. They applied in person when state emergency management officials visited Brevard last November.

The goal of the buyout is to demolish the home and preserve the land as green space to mitigate future flooding. Residents will receive money equal to the appraised value of their home the day before the storm, according to the state Department of Public Safety. 

This winter, the Schultzes moved into a new home perched on a mountain in a different part of the county. The family is now carrying two mortgages, and the stress and guilt weigh on them. They know they are more fortunate than many other families, but this is not a burden they can bear long-term. Shaunna is a nurse, and J.R. works in information technology. They’ve asked FEMA to give them a timeline for when the buyout might arrive. “Could they send some kind of update?” J.R. said. “Then we can at least make a plan.”

Eleven families in Transylvania County have applied for buyouts, according to Blake Swix, a spokesperson for N.C. Emergency Management. Their cases were combined into one application, which the county then gave to the federal government. “The county recently signed the application, and it is being submitted to FEMA,” Swix wrote in an email in early May. “Hazard Mitigation has asked each county to reach out to the homeowners to let them know that their applications have been forwarded to FEMA for their review and approval.” 

Swix referred questions about how long that review might take to FEMA, whose spokesperson responded via email: “It is under review and there is no exact timeline.” The agency’s website says the entire property acquisition process typically takes two to three years.

After Hurricane Florence hit in 2018, counties in Eastern North Carolina applied for expedited buyouts, allowing them to acquire some homes within 11 to 12 months. But other owners were still waiting for their money nearly four years later, according to the Wilmington Star-News. In a 2019 report, the environmental advocacy group National Resources Defense Council examined 30 years of FEMA data and found the buyout process can take a median of more than five years to complete.

Back on Cherry Street, Ramirez knows she’s one of the lucky ones. She can live in her home while she waits for FEMA approval to elevate it. In early May, Swix told The Assembly the state will hire engineers to assess the homes whose owners applied for elevation grants.

“If we don’t have the house raised in three years, [the city] can take our occupancy license, and we can’t live there,” Ramirez said. “It’s very stressful.” 

Living in a 100-year flood zone means her house has at least a 1 percent chance of flooding annually. If she and her fiancé were on their own, they might have moved. But she has a 9-year-old daughter who was devastated by the storm. Ramirez promised her they’d go home. 

It’s a task that she knows will drag on for years, even if she does everything right. “They said we were in the 100-year flood zone,” she said. “This was a thousand-year storm that no one expected.”

Lisa Rab, whose work has appeared in The Washington Post Magazine and Politico Magazine, lives in western N.C. You can find more of her work at lisarab.substack.com.