ASHEVILLE – Western North Carolina residents expecting to receive home repairs after Tropical Storm Helene may be out of luck unless Congress supplements a $500 million funding gap, the state’s top recovery official said May 22. It is the latest plea for more federal aid since late 2024, when Congress last appropriated aid for the region.
Funded by a $1.4 billion Community Development Block Grant for disaster recovery through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, RenewNC’s $807 million Single-Family Repair program has 2,865 active applications. Most of the applications — over 1,800 — fall into phase 1 of the program, which is designed for poorer residents who make below 60% area median income.
But for over a year, Gov. Josh Stein, WNC leaders and state recovery officials have said that funding appropriated for Helene recovery has lagged significantly. Helene caused an estimated $60 billion in damages across the region — Congress has only approved $4.6 billion of the nearly $12 billion allocated to storm repairs. In total, the housing program is roughly $500 million short, Director of the Governor’s Recovery Office Matt Calabria said during the May 22 Governor’s Advisory Committee on WNC Recovery meeting…