When winter snow dusted the mountains around Fairview, North Carolina, Elizabeth Clark barely noticed. More than a year after flooding from Hurricane Helene tore apart her home, uncertainty has become her constant companion.
It has been 438 days since floodwaters undermined her foundation, destroyed the septic system, and swallowed nearly everything her family owned. Her mortgage company paused payments for a year, but patience is wearing thin on the $270,000 still owed on a house that is no longer safe to live in. Trump’s FEMA is refusing to pay out buyouts for mortgages on homes in North Carolina that are no longer livable after the storms last year. Many now face foreclosure.
“I’ve never missed a payment in my whole life,” said Clark, a neonatal nurse. “Here now, at 42 years old, I’m having to consider foreclosing.”
In November 2024, Clark applied for a voluntary buyout through a program funded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The initiative is designed to purchase flood-damaged homes at their pre-storm value, helping families relocate while reducing future disaster risks by removing vulnerable properties from harm’s way, reports The Washington Post.
Clark and her husband, Calvin, have cycled through temporary housing, from hotels to borrowed rentals, before moving nearly an hour away to a small home in Waynesville. With three children still attending school near their old neighborhood, long daily drives, and the loss of rental income have added to the strain.
More than 13 months after applying, Clark has received no clear answer. She is not alone. More than 800 storm victims across western North Carolina have applied for buyouts under FEMA’s Hazard Mitigation Grant Program. State officials say nearly 600 applications had been sent to Washington by mid-December. So far, none have been approved.
North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein called the delay “absolutely unacceptable.” In a letter to FEMA leadership, he warned that “further delay of these approvals keeps communities and families in limbo.”
FEMA declined to comment.
Experts say buyouts are critical but notoriously slow. Rob Moore of the Natural Resources Defense Council noted that even under ideal conditions, buyouts take years. “Under the best of circumstances, these things take more time than they should,” he said. “But these are clearly not the best of circumstances.”
For Carey and Steve Hayo, whose home near Hendersonville was obliterated by a landslide, the silence has been devastating. Living in their third rental since Helene, they say hope rises and falls with every unanswered call. “It’s like a bad nightmare,” Carey Hayo said. “You get hopeful, and then you don’t hear anything … There’s just no information.”
Back in Fairview, Clark faces another mortgage deadline with no clarity ahead. “There’s so little information,” she said. “Nobody really has any answers. We are just sitting here, waiting.”
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