Dennis Fultz spent ten years in his Leicester home before Hurricane Helene tore it apart in September 2024. On Thursday, two years almost to the moment, North Carolina Governor Josh Stein drove out to Leicester and personally handed Fultz the keys to a brand-new house built through the state’s Renew NC Single-Family Housing Program.
The handoff, detailed in a release from the NC Department of Commerce, marks Fultz as one of the first homeowners to move into a fully reconstructed permanent house under the program. As Governor Josh Stein
highlighted in a social media post reflecting on the road to recovery, homeowners across the region are gradually returning to safe, secure housing after the storm upended thousands of lives…