North Carolina disaster recovery officials appealed to a General Assembly oversight panel for more support nearly 18 months into the recovery from Hurricane Helene. But lawmakers voiced skepticism over higher-than-expected costs and the sluggish pace of home construction.
NC governor seeks nearly $800 million in state funding in latest Helene recovery request
The committee met one week after Gov. Josh Stein submitted his $792 million budget request to the General Assembly for the third phase of the Helene recovery process, focusing on economic recovery, home rebuilding and infrastructure needs.
Renew NC has completed work on only 30 single-family homes, according to Stephanie McGarrah, deputy secretary for community revitalization in the North Carolina Department of Commerce. Another 136 homes are in the construction pipeline out of more than 2,500 approved applications — ranging from homes requiring only minor rehabilitation to ones that need to be entirely replaced.
Rep. Karl Gillespie (R-Macon) said the progress is woefully inadequate, calling it “an insult” to celebrate the 30 completed homes when thousands more remain without a solution.
“We got a lot of people scattered throughout the mountains that need help. And we need to be focusing on helping them, not some small successes that we’ve had,” he said.
McGarrah said work is being delayed in some cases because no state money was earmarked to help residents temporarily relocate while the work is completed. Housing scarcity in some areas is also a problem.
“We just have people who are scared,” McGarrah said. “They’re like, ‘I’m living in a damaged home. I would love to have another, have it repaired, but I don’t have any place to go and I don’t have any way to pay for it.’”
She said lawmakers would likely need to change the law for Renew NC to be able to pay for temporary housing using the $120 million appropriated by the legislature for the Home Reconstruction and Repair Program. And in a “wrinkle that we were not anticipating,” McGarrah said the U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development told them they should not use both state and federal funds for temporary relocation.
If funding were not an issue, though, she said she believes the program could complete work on 800 homes each year.
Lower-than-anticipated federal assistance and delays in funding, particularly during two Department of Homeland Security shutdowns, have also slowed recovery efforts in the region, motivating the governor’s request for greater state funding.
Matt Calabria (left), who leads the Governor’s Recovery Office for Western North Carolina, and Jonathan Krebs, Gov. Josh Stein’s advisor for western North Carolina, testify before state lawmakers on Hurricane Helene recovery efforts on Jan. 29, 2025. (Photo: Galen Bacharier/NC Newsline)“Although we’ve seen a fair amount of FEMA awards of late, continued delays in processing FEMA reimbursements for things such as debris removal, or facility repairs, are still straining the finances of so many of our cash-strapped local governments,” said GROW NC director Matt Calabria. “Funding issues and a lot of changes at the national level have trickled down and certainly affected things for us on the ground.”
That turmoil has included the firing of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who has been succeeded by former Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin. Mullin has already rescinded Noem’s requirement that she review all contracts over $100,000, which state leaders had repeatedly cited as an obstacle to a speedy recovery.
State lawmakers challenged the recovery officials on the ballooning costs of major infrastructure repairs, such as the I-40 repair project, whose cost estimate has risen from a little over $1 billion to $2 billion.
“How would you bridge the gap of those funds if the governor’s request is not met?” Sen. Warren Daniel (R-Burke) asked Calabria.
Calabria noted that 90% of that cost for that project will be covered by the federal government. “The increase in cost is mostly, thankfully, not going to be borne by the state, but still does present an increase in required funding,” Calabria said.
In closing remarks, Gillespie expressed disappointment over what he called inefficiencies in the recovery process. “We’re going to have to have a lot more conversations and a lot more oversight and a lot more efficiencies in the program to ever make this work out.”
“We’ve got less than 30 folks back in their homes, and you’re proposing that we’re going to do 800 a year,” said Gillespie, who serves as House majority whip. “The numbers don’t add up, and meanwhile, the citizens of North Carolina are suffering.”
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