A light dusting of December snow had turned the mountains white, but Elizabeth Clark barely noticed. It had been 438 days since Hurricane Helene’s floodwaters destroyed her home’s foundation, flooded the first floor, ruined the septic system and swallowed nearly everything her family owned. Her mortgage company paused payments for a year, but now is pressing her over the $270,000 she still owes on a house that is no longer safe to live in.
“I’ve never missed a payment in my whole life,” said Clark, a neonatal nurse at a nearby hospital. “Here now, at 42 years old, I’m having to consider foreclosing.”
In November 2024, Clark applied for a voluntary FEMA-funded buyout that would let the government purchase her storm-damaged property at its pre-flood value, allowing her family to move on while also reducing future disaster risk. Instead, more than a year later, she has heard almost nothing.
After weeks in a hotel and eight months renting from friends, Clark, her husband Calvin and their three school-aged children now live nearly an hour away in a small home they once rented out. The commute back to school, sports and grandparents is long, and losing their tenants has been another financial blow.
“There’s so little information,” she said. “Nobody really has any answers. We are just sitting here, waiting.”
Clark is far from alone. More than 800 storm victims across Helene-ravaged western North Carolina have applied under FEMA’s Hazard Mitigation Grant Program. By Dec. 15, nearly 600 buyout requests had been sent to Washington. Not a single one has been approved.
Governor Josh Stein called the paralysis “absolutely unacceptable” and warned that families remain trapped “paying expenses on homes they cannot live in while they await word from FEMA.” FEMA declined to comment.
The delays stand in stark contrast to President Trump’s promises during a visit earlier this year, when he vowed to “slash through every bureaucratic barrier” and said “every single inch of every property will be fully rebuilt, greater and more beautiful than it was before.” Instead, many of his own supporters in rural North Carolina are stuck in financial and emotional limbo.
“The uncertainty has taken a heavy toll – financially, emotionally, and on my family’s sense of security,” Clark wrote in an August letter. “It is heartbreaking to think that, after surviving a disaster, we may lose everything because of timelines and red tape that are beyond our control.”
Rob Moore of the Natural Resources Defense Council said FEMA buyouts have long helped people escape repeated disasters, but even under normal conditions they move slowly. Now, with FEMA facing staffing cuts and political uncertainty under Trump, delays are worsening. A 2019 study found buyouts take a median of five years to complete.
“Under the best of circumstances, these things take more time than they should. But these are clearly not the best of circumstances,” Moore said.
Local governments in North Carolina moved unusually fast after Helene, opening applications just months after the storm. But federal approvals never came.
“We were hoping that because we started earlier, that we would see buyouts already started and/or reconstruction already started, but we haven’t seen that,” said Buncombe County manager Avril Pinder. “There is hope, but that hope is dwindling because it’s been a year now that they’ve applied for this, and they’re still carrying a mortgage or rent someplace else. And they’re trying to move ahead with their lives.”
For Carey and Steve Hayo, whose Hendersonville-area home was wiped out by a landslide during Helene, the wait has been just as brutal. With no mortgage but no insurance coverage for landslides, they have lost nearly everything and are now living in their third temporary home.
“It’s like a bad nightmare,” Carey Hayo said. “You get hopeful, and then you don’t hear anything … There’s just no information.”
For Trump voters across western North Carolina, the message from Washington has become painfully clear: the president who promised to cut red tape and rebuild their homes has instead left them buried in it.
