FEMA Extends Temporary Hotel Stays, But Not Without Widespread Confusion

Standing at Asheville Regional Airport last month, President Trump suggested eliminating the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which has so far contributed $316 million to recovery from last fall’s devastating Hurricane Helene. 

The following week, the Trump administration said it would freeze all federal grants, loans, and other funds, though a judge hit pause on that plan. 

It had already been an exasperating month for the thousands of mountain residents still displaced by the storm and relying on FEMA’s assistance for housing and other needs. Now, residents and local officials say they are confused and frustrated, wondering who will pay for Western North Carolina’s likely long recovery from Helene.

FEMA offers several programs for people seeking housing aid after a disaster. But in recent weeks there has been particular confusion regarding its Transitional Sheltering Assistance program, or TSA, which pays for hotel lodging for renters and homeowners whose residences became uninhabitable due to a natural disaster. 

As of January 29, officials said, about 6,000 people were in TSA-funded housing in North Carolina. They are primarily concentrated in Buncombe County, with accommodations that range from budget to mid-tier hotels. 

The TSA program has been extended multiple times for many of its participants since October—which recipients appreciated, but which has also generated much confusion about who was receiving extensions and for how long. Some locals feel they’ve unjustly been deemed ineligible to continue in the program, leading to frustration and fear about being kicked out in the cold winter months.

“I’m thankful for the support we’ve received from our federal partners, but the concern I hear most from neighbors is the uncertainty,” said Buncombe County Commissioner Martin Moore. “The lack of clarity about what help is coming, and when, is the most frustrating.” 

All About Eligibility

The TSA program—commonly referred to as “hotel vouchers,” although no actual vouchers are issued—is meant to provide temporary shelter until recipients can transition into more permanent housing. 

People who qualify normally get 60 days in TSA-funded lodgings, after which FEMA determines eligibility through biweekly reviews that assess criteria like the status of damage to their home, whether it is habitable, or if recipients can transition to other housing (such as a trailer donated by a charity or FEMA’s rental assistance program).

To stay in TSA, recipients also must maintain contact with FEMA; a household can be deemed ineligible if caseworkers or inspectors have been unable to reach them after multiple attempts, or if they’ve missed multiple scheduled inspections of their residence. 

FEMA first approved the program for 24 North Carolina counties and the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians on October 3. To avoid displacing people during the holidays, FEMA held off on its first eligibility reviews until January, saying those deemed ineligible would move out on January 11. The agency began to communicate with counties and cities about off-boarding those households, which FEMA said would include anyone who was “unhoused prior to the disaster.” 

But those who were deemed ineligible were notified of their new status on January 3, according to recipients, giving them only seven days’ notice to vacate their hotels. (FEMA has since extended notice to 21 days.) 

Then, a snowstorm hit the region on January 10, leading FEMA to bump back the moveout date a day at the request of community groups and local officials. The agency then extended it two additional days, to January 14. 

Amid these piecemeal extensions for some households, FEMA also announced on January 13 that the hotel stays of 3,000 other households were extended through January 25. That news garnered media coverage and a positive response from Gov. Josh Stein. But the timing of the announcement—24 hours before a moveout date for many people—led to confusion for people who incorrectly thought it meant they wouldn’t have to leave the next day.

Haywood County residents James Ketchersid, 37, and Ammaretta Revis, 27, were among those who misunderstood. They spoke to The Assembly from their room at the no-frills Red Roof Inn in Asheville on January 14, as they packed up their car to leave. Ketchersid said he didn’t realize they needed to vacate until a housekeeper knocked on their door that morning. 

He said his last phone call with a FEMA representative was “a month or so ago,” and he was asked about the status of the house where they’d been living. “I told them that we couldn’t move back into it at the moment until more work was done,” he explained. He said he thought FEMA “were supposed to contact us back.” 

By mid-January, more changes were afoot: The hotel program had been set to end in March, but Stein sent a letter to FEMA Administrator Dianne Criswell asking to keep it going until September 30. FEMA soon announced an extension of the program through May 25, though biweekly reviews would continue to determine which households were eligible. It also extended the deadline for all disaster assistance applications from February 7 until March 8.

State Sen. Julie Mayfield, a Buncombe County Democrat, said she appreciates FEMA’s extension of the TSA program but believes Western North Carolina may need an even longer commitment from the agency. “My view is FEMA ought to be paying for people to stay in hotels as long as it’s needed,” Mayfield told The Assembly. 

“There’s these waves of ‘what are we going to do?’ We’re not able to settle into any longer term recovery questions because the effort to meet acute needs are so inconsistent and difficult to coordinate,” said Rev. Marcia Mount Shoop of Grace Covenant Church in Asheville, which has distributed $4 million in aid. “We’re constantly putting out fires and dealing with another crisis of the day.” 

FEMA says it works with local officials on disaster recovery, and it shares information with county authorities as requested. A FEMA official who declined to be named because they were not authorized to comment said the agency shares the names and eligibility status of people receiving disaster assistance, so that municipalities can step in once those people stop getting aid from FEMA. For example, North Carolina Disaster Case Management Program, part of the state’s Emergency Management department, made contact with all 49 “pre-disaster homeless” households in Asheville who became ineligible for TSA on January 14.

Still, the constant stream of changes can lead survivors to feel the agency is unreliable. 

“These are traumatized individuals, some of whom have literally watched their neighbors die,” said Vicki Meath, executive director of Just Economics, a nonprofit dedicated to increasing wages in Buncombe County. “Their birth certificates washed down the river. And on top of all that, we’re just giving them new dates, and dates, and dates.” 

‘Given Up’

As of January, FEMA estimated that 13,000 households had used TSA. A press release from December described about half of the households who’d used the program as “transitioning to longer-term housing.” But residents and community groups say the success has been somewhat overstated given the limited housing supply that existed prior to Helene. 

Maryjo Tucker, who has organized other TSA recipients at the Red Roof Inn into a Helene Survivors Committee, has had trouble finding another place to live. She had been living in her car when Helene hit, and came to Asheville hoping to move into a shelter. She became ineligible for TSA last month, though she’s not clear if its because she was unhoused prior to Helene or because a FEMA employee said she missed an inspection.

“We had a housing crisis on September 26, 2024,” Buncombe County Commissioner Amanda Edwards told The Assembly. “We have exacerbated the housing crisis post-Helene.” 

Beth Trigg, co-founder of the nonprofit Swannanoa Communities Together, said a number of people deserving of assistance are being lost to attrition. “Part of the narrative that FEMA has been putting out—and that a lot of state and local elected officials have been repeating, because I think they don’t know any different—is that people are just getting kicked out because they don’t need it anymore,” said Trigg. But there are people Trigg’s nonprofit works with who have simply “given up” on working with FEMA, she said.

Swannanoa Communities Together had assisted someone just that day who became ineligible for TSA and was now struggling to access rental assistance funds, which is another one of FEMA’s aid programs, Trigg said. “Basically, she came to the point where she realized that getting support from local nonprofits to help her get into housing was going to be a lot faster and more efficient and less blame- and shame-filled and less challenging emotionally,” she explained. 

Recipients can appeal denials from FEMA, but this, too, takes time. “The most consistent frustration I hear is the time it takes to consistently and successfully appeal denials,” Asheville City Councilwoman Kim Roney told The Assembly.

Even Helene survivors who’ve benefited from FEMA programs feel exhausted by the effort that’s gone into making phone calls and navigating red tape. Xavier Mondello, a resident of Clyde, spoke with The Assembly from the second floor of Asheville’s Red Roof Inn, where he arrived in early January to stay with his mother. Their shared home, a rental, suffered flood damage in the storm, and they lost all their belongings; Mondello and his dog have a GoFundMe. (According to FEMA, it generally provides assistance to one application to assist members of a household. However, it can “evaluate the unique needs of eligible survivors,” as well.) 

For reasons he does not understand, FEMA approved his mother for TSA “right away,” but he has never been approved for it, he said. Before moving into the Red Roof Inn with her, he’d stayed at a shelter in Haywood County and the home of a friend from church. He said he’s been trying to get FEMA to transfer them to a Comfort Inn, another TSA hotel, because the bedroom’s door didn’t lock for weeks and he doesn’t feel safe there.) 

Mondello said his application for other FEMA financial assistance had been pending for about three months, and he feels like he’s regularly experienced the “runaround” from agency representatives when he sought help. “The thing I found about FEMA is the workers act like they can’t do anything—until you find the right one,” he explained. “And if you find the right one, they could do everything that they say they can’t.” 

Finally, Mondello said, he reached “the right person.” 

“He looked at my account, and was, like, ‘Hey, your s—’s all f— up. You know what? I’m gonna fix it,’” he said, and he was quickly approved to receive $3,500 for replacing personal property, like clothes. He’s also using that money to pay for food and for Ubers, as he lost his vehicle in the flooding. 

Trigg said Swannanoa Communities Together has hired a full-time staffer to help people navigate FEMA’s disaster assistance offerings (and make appeals, after denials are issued). She believes the agency’s policies and red tape ask too much of natural disaster survivors. 

“People are still highly traumatized,” she explained. “In the past week, we have had people come in who had to swim holding children. I’ve had people come in here who had to use climbing equipment to escape. People who had to be cut out of attics.” 

Technology is also a stumbling block. “We have heard of people who have had their phone service disrupted because of inability to pay their phone bill because of loss of income, so they’re not sure if FEMA had called,” said Just Economics’ Meath. 

Others have had inconsistent internet access. Some said they’ve had trouble getting through on FEMA’s hotline, which the agency recommends everyone who needs help call. Trigg said she’s heard multiple stories of people “on hold for five hours and then getting cut off.” (The FEMA official who spoke to The Assembly said the agency is aware of long wait times.) 

Survivors are not navigating the processes alone. FEMA also operates Disaster Recovery Centers in 13 counties, which are staffed by employees who can offer one-on-one help to access disaster assistance. 

The N.C. Department of Public Safety’s Division of Emergency Management also has caseworkers fanning out across TSA hotels, and individual counties dedicated community navigators to the task, too. And Buncombe County has contracted with a disaster and emergency management consultancy to help assist with FEMA applications, county spokesperson Lillian Govus said.

Not So Simple

Given their experiences in recent months, residents’ reactions were mixed when Trump came to Asheville and floated doing away with FEMA altogether.

“I think we’re going to recommend FEMA go away and we pay directly,” Trump said during the visit. He also issued an executive order to create a review council that includes Republican National Committee chairman Michael Whatley, a North Carolina native, and U.S. Reps. Chuck Edwards, Virginia Foxx, and Tim Moore to recommend changes to the agency.

Trigg understands the desire to accentuate the positive and push back against “the anti-FEMA narrative of Trump world,” she said. “I will get all these Facebook messages and emails [saying], ‘Don’t worry, vouchers are extended!’” she said. 

But she is concerned that headlines about FEMA’s multiple extensions of TSA misportray, or even obfuscate, how well aid recipients are being assisted. “FEMA and disaster unemployment and all the other systems that people have to navigate after the storm are designed to weed people out and prove that they need the services—instead of being designed to find people who are falling through the cracks and make sure that they don’t.” she said.

If Trump were to scrap FEMA, it’s unclear what would replace it. ReBuild NC, the state hurricane recovery agency, racked up a big deficit in its response to prior storms and faced accusations of mismanagement. Stein put a different agency—the new Governor’s Recovery Office for Western North Carolina—in charge of Helene work. 

For Mayfield, the state senator, the idea of transitioning disaster management to individual states is a nonstarter. FEMA, imperfect as it may be, has the manpower and expertise on things like mapping damages and contracting with hotels, she said. 

“For [Trump] to say that it would be better for the states to handle disaster response is just an extraordinarily uninformed opinion,” said Mayfield. “Everything fits into very simple categories for him. And there is nothing about FEMA, or frankly, the federal government, that is simple.”

Jessica Wakeman is a freelance reporter based in Asheville.