A Tale of Unmet Needs and Broken Systems: Helene Recovery After 18 Months

A year and a half ago, Hurricane Helene devastated Western North Carolina, marking the costliest storm that has ever hit NC and the deadliest storm in the contiguous U.S. since Hurricane Katrina. Although the region has now transitioned to the long-term recovery phase, many of the same human needs that went neglected in the early months following Helene remain unmet as a result of bad policy choices and broken disaster recovery systems.  

With no new disaster recovery funding from the state since June, it is time for the NC General Assembly to step up and make the investments that Western NC needs and strengthen the systems that allow communities to recover when a disaster strikes.  

Strained economies following a disaster are not inevitable 

When a disaster hits, businesses close and workers lose their jobs — all the more so in a region like Western NC that is heavily dependent on small businesses, which often don’t have locations outside the affected region to help maintain revenue. How quickly the situation is stabilized and returns to normal levels is a function of the quality of our disaster recovery systems and the choices of policymakers.

By comparing the unemployment level in counties in Western NC with pre-Helene levels, we find that unemployment remains significantly elevated.

The lack of economic recovery in the region is the result of failing systems and poor policy choices.  

Unemployment benefits are a key mechanism for stabilizing economies during a crisis. By providing workers who lose their job with income, households can maintain spending, ensuring not only that they are able to pay their bills and meet their needs but also provide revenue for businesses, who are then able to stay open and maintain their payrolls.  

However, both our state Unemployment Insurance (UI) and federal Disaster Unemployment Assistance (DUA) programs pay out far too little in benefits for too short a duration and for too few workers.  

With state UI benefits capped at 20 weeks and DUA benefits capped at 26 weeks, 78 weeks after Helene, unemployed disaster survivors who were eligible at all have long ago exhausted the meager assistance these programs provide. Without robust income supports, survivors not only suffer, but also businesses because families don’t have dollars to spend locally.  

With the ongoing uncertainty and loans businesses have taken on following the COVID-19 pandemic, small businesses owners have been calling for revenue stabilization in the form of grants or forgivable loans.  

Early in 2025, Dogwood Health Trust, in collaboration with Gov. Josh Stein, provided $55 million in grants for small businesses, ultimately supporting over 2,100 businesses and helping to retain over 8,000 jobs. Yet the program had over 7,350 applicants, meaning only about one-fourth of applicants received a grant.  

In May, the NC House introduced a bill that included more funding for small business grants, yet the NC Senate blocked these efforts and ignored what small businesses said they need, instead throwing millions of dollars at tourism ads.  

The way to enable a full economic recovery is funding small business grants tied to payroll retention. Alongside these grants, the NC General Assembly needs to use our robust UI trust fund — second in the nation only to Oregon — to strengthen our state UI program, including through the inclusion of expanded assistance for workers who lose their job due to a disaster.  

These changes should not be one-off fixes but developed into lasting systems that provide all North Carolinians with confidence that when a disaster strikes, mechanisms are in place to support them in recovery.  

Unmet housing needs remain a serious issue for survivors 

Hurricane Helene destroyed and left tens of thousands of homes uninhabitable. Displaced homeowners found themselves having to juggle rent and a mortgage. With the loss of income and the rising cost of rent due to landlords and property management companies taking advantage of the supply shortage, tenants faced the threat of homelessness following waves of evictions.  

Fortunately, FEMA announced last week that housing and rental assistance programs for Helene survivors have been extended for an additional six months. But even setting aside the demanding eligibility requirements and the frequent improper denials for FEMA programs, several long-term housing needs remain.  

Long-term housing recovery is dominated by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR). Although CDBG-DR money is flexible funding that can be used for any long-term unmet recovery needs, grant recipients often use the money as a major source of funding for home rebuilding.  

For instance, NC decided to spend $1 billion of their $1.4 billion allocation on housing recovery. While homes are finally being rebuilt through the Renew NC Program, a series of issues remain:  

• Relocation assistance: To maximize the spending on home rebuilding, Renew NC has chosen to offer no temporary relocation assistance to provide families with shelter or a place to store their possessions while their homes are rebuilt. As a result, families that would otherwise be eligible have pulled out of the program or did not bother to submit an application at all. 

• Hotel denials: Compounding the problem, many hotels have policies that prohibit residents with home addresses in the same ZIP code from booking a room, as well as prohibiting guests from staying for more than 90 days. These policies mean that disaster survivors who could otherwise afford to rent these rooms are left without a place to stay.  

• Accessibility and inspection standards: In Eastern NC, the home rebuilding process is still ongoing from hurricanes Matthew (2016) and Florence (2018). Yet many of the homes that have been completed face basic construction issues and fail to meet the accessibility needs of occupants despite passing inspection.  

• Insufficient funding: Excluding CDBG-DR funding, the state has estimated a total of $5.3 billion in unfunded residential damage in Western NC. That means that $1 billion CDBG-DR allocation covers less than 20% of this unmet need, leaving tens of thousands of disaster survivors without a path to permanent housing.  

These problems should be addressed promptly while we are still early in the home rebuilding process. NC Commerce has already received $120 million from the NC General Assembly for home reconstruction and repair. This is money that is available and can be used by Renew NC to provide temporary housing assistance.  

This should not be a one-off fix but a permanent solution so that we have the systems in place to support survivors for future disasters, and addressing this systemic need must go hand in hand with thinking about how these temporary relocation services are going to be provided. Alongside this, there is an opportunity to craft a more robust inspection process that requires periodic check-ins with homeowners present and a meaningful appeals process that includes the opportunity to address problems after move-in.  

Similarly, at the federal level, another round of CDBG-DR funding is needed so that more survivors can rebuild their homes. But the longer-term systemic issue is one of statutorily authorizing the CDBG-DR program so that Congress does not need to approve funds for each disaster, streamlining the distribution of these essential funds, and ensuring that recovery efforts aren’t held hostage to the political agendas of those in power.  

Building a state where all can thrive 

Nearly $45 billion of the total $60 billion in estimated damage remains unfunded, and these needs are not limited to housing and the Western NC economy. But they are some of the most essential and neglected human-facing elements of recovery, and they serve as a powerful illustration of the need to develop more effective disaster systems, especially with disasters becoming more frequent and more severe. 

In the past, for storms of a comparable scale, the federal government funded anywhere from 32 percent to 78 percent of the total damage. So, with less than 10% of the total damage caused by Helene funded by the federal government, the recovery effort out west also serves to demonstrate that building these systems requires coordination among state and federal governments and that these systems cannot be built by states alone.  

But North Carolinians cannot afford to wait any longer on federal action. In the absence of sufficient federal support, we are relying on our state’s elected leaders to step up — and that requires making different choices. 

Our state lawmakers must move away from their relentless tax-cutting approach and instead invest in the needs of our communities, from Western NC to Eastern NC. Disaster survivors should not have to wait a decade for their homes to be rebuilt, only to discover those homes are falling apart upon completion or that they will never be rebuilt at all. Workers and small businesses should not be left to fend for themselves while they recover, because that hurts us all. 

North Carolina is a state rich in resources. Our lawmakers must stop siphoning those resources to big corporations and the ultra-wealthy while families and communities struggle to make ends meet. We need investments in systems that allow all North Carolinians not just to get by, but to recover and thrive.