In poorer neighborhoods, no recovery yet from Matthew

Jan. 27--The mounds of muddy debris and splintered furniture are long gone from front yards.

Most roads that crumbled into raging floodwaters are rebuilt.

And aside from a few rotting stumps here and there, you'd never know how many massive trees were ripped out of the earth by their soggy roots on that Saturday in October, nearly 16 months ago.

Hurricane Matthew's scars have faded in many parts of Cumberland and Robeson counties, where the devastation from flooding was among the most severe in North Carolina. That's largely thanks to millions of dollars from the government, charitable aid and legions of volunteers. No one is having to live in a motel today because of Matthew.

"We are very proud of what we have done thus far, how we have responded to the needs of our residents," said Jay Reinstein, an assistant city manager for Fayetteville, referring to all local, state and federal officials and the community at large.

But drive off the main corridors, into the largely poorer neighborhoods of Fayetteville and Cumberland County, and you'll see scars that have yet to heal. Go to communities where modest homes were built on low-lying land near Rockfish Creek, Beaver Creek, Lock's Creek or Blounts Creek. There, the houses sit vacant, shuttered and gutted. Many of those homeowners -- people who didn't have a lot of money to start with -- lost everything they owned.

William Graham Jr. is among them. He is a 96-year-old who went to live with a daughter in Charlotte after the hurricane flooded his little brick house in the Hollywood Heights neighborhood off Skibo Road. Graham had lived in the house on Louise Circle for more than 50 years. It is where he and his wife raised their nine children.

Graham is bedridden now. His daughter, Elaine Graham Turnipseed, blames the stress of the disaster in part for her father's decline.

"He was just heartbroken," Turnipseed said. "Losing his home and his independence. Just very sad."

City officials initially wanted to reconstruct and elevate her father's home, she said, but they decided it wasn't worth the cost. Now, the state has agreed to buy it using federal funding through the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program. Turnipseed said her father was told the price will be the home's appraised value before the hurricane.

The mitigation program will be used to buy seven other homes on Louise Circle. They'll be demolished, and the land deeded back to the city. Eighteen more homes scattered throughout Fayetteville also will be bought, elevated or reconstructed.

The money to buy Graham's home should become available by May. By then, it will have been more than a year and a half since Hurricane Matthew dumped as much as 15 inches of rain on Fayetteville.

The 28 homes getting hazard mitigation money is a small number, considering that the city mailed about 675 letters to homeowners in March saying they may become eligible. Reinstein said about 200 applied for assistance.

The mitigation program is aimed at preventing repeated flood damage to buildings that are insurable under the National Flood Insurance Program. As such, only homes in a designated 100-year floodplain qualify. The city and county got $4.7 million through the program. When the city sent the letters to homeowners, Reinstein said, it was told to send them to everyone in the floodplain. Officials didn't know then how much money would become available, he said.

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MATTHEW: Before and after

Left: Chris Bundy and Junior Jones walk through floodwaters to retrieve items from their home on Macon Street in Lumberton, Oct. 12, 2016.

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----The floodplain stipulation apparently rules out any mitigation money for people on Pennystone Drive, where Rockfish Creek rose to roof levels at the end of the street.

Pennystone Drive is off Tom Starling Road, near the Cumberland County Industrial Park. Only two houses in unincorporated areas of the county qualified for the mitigation program, said Tracy Jackson, an assistant county manager.

Virginia Bethea's home on Pennystone is uninhabitable, like most of her neighbors' homes. Its tax value before the flood was about $80,000. Today, it's worth a little more than half of that, according to tax records.

After the hurricane, Bethea let volunteers begin the reconstruction process under the direction of the N.C. Conference United Methodist Church Disaster Relief Center.

Don Evans, the organization's site coordinator, said volunteers had rebuilt more than half of Bethea's house when she told him she would be applying for a buyout.

Evans, whose organization has so far rebuilt two homes on Pennystone Drive, said he had no choice but to stop construction on Bethea's home. It would do little good to pour more money into the house if it is going to be acquired and bulldozed, he said.

Bethea said she heard about the buyout program from a neighbor, Evelyn Lindsey, whose backyard has been consumed by a sinkhole. Lindsey thinks she's going to get mitigation money, but that seems unlikely, at least anytime soon. Lindsey already received $33,300 in Federal Emergency Management Agency individual assistance to fix her home. That's the maximum allowed under FEMA's guidelines, but considerably less than it would take to fully restore her home.

Reinstein, the assistant city manager, said another $6.1 million in mitigation funds may become available to the city and the county. But again, it's unlikely Pennystone Drive residents will see any of it because of the floodplain requirements.

County officials say they have tried to advise Lindsey, Bethea and other Pennystone Drive neighbors who believe they are getting the runaround.

"I just feel like we are being used to get money into the state... and then we are always left out of the picture," Lindsey said.

Since the hurricane, Bethea said, she has been paying the mortgage on a home she has owned for 22 years while living with her daughter or friends.

"I don't have anything still. I have no transportation, I don't have nothing," Bethea said. "It kind of breaks you down."

Evans, with the Methodist relief center, sympathizes with the Pennystone Drive residents.

"They are going through a death, for all practical purposes. It's just like a death," he said.

If he could hire professional contractors instead of relying solely on volunteer labor, Evans said, people would be back in their homes much sooner. But that's not the reality. In December, Evans was lined up to oversee repairs or reconstruction of 55 more homes in the county.

"Our job is to work ourselves out of a job," Evans said. "I want to do all I can do, but I cannot control the government."

There is another large pot of money called Community Development Block Grants-Disaster Recovery. That money, from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, has yet to be distributed, in part because of a temporary hold when hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria rocked other states and Puerto Rico last year.

Nearly 200 residents in Cumberland County have applied for the aid since an application center opened at the Department of Social Services in mid-December. The center continues to take applications.

The recovery program earmarks $237 million for North Carolina, 80 percent of which will go to the four counties hardest hit by Matthew: Cumberland, Robeson, Edgecombe and Wayne.

Cumberland is expected to get nearly $35 million, with $23 million of that going to Fayetteville. Robeson County will get more than $70 million. The money must be used to help low- to moderate-income people. It can be spent in multiple ways, such as home repairs or building new public housing. But state officials estimate it will be months before the money becomes available.

Fayetteville plans to spend $6.3 million to rehabilitate or reconstruct 60 single-family homes, and nearly $9 million to repair or develop rental housing. It will spend $5 million on a 100-unit homeless shelter and day center, and $2 million to build 50 single-family homes off Bunce Road.

Cumberland County plans to spend $2.5 million to repair or reconstruct 25 single-family homes; nearly $6 million to develop multi-family rental housing; and $2.5 million for a 50-unit homeless shelter.

What about Pennystone Drive?

It is still unclear whether the county will use any of that money to buy Lindsey's home, with the sinkhole in the yard.

"Every situation is different," said Jackson, the assistant county manager. "What she thinks might happen may or may not happen."

Reinstein and Jackson could not provide an estimate on how many people in the county are still unable to move back into their homes. Roger Ingram, a FEMA spokesman, couldn't give an estimate either, but he knows they are out there, struggling.

"It just takes a long time to recover," said Ingram, whose own home was destroyed by Hurricane Fran in 1996.

Ingram said 14,804 people in Cumberland County applied for FEMA individual disaster assistance money. The agency responded with more than $16 million for everything from repairing homes, covering rents and paying for food, appliances, moving, storage and transportation.

Now, it's a waiting game for the rest of the money to arrive.

In Fayetteville's Buxton Village, a neighborhood off Old Wilmington Road consisting almost entirely of homes built by Habitat for Humanity, some of the homeowners grew tired of waiting.

Tammy Laurence, director of Fayetteville's Habitat for Humanity, said all 95 homes in the village required a total rebuild after the hurricane. Of those, she said, 42 accepted Habitat's help and are now back in homes that are like new.

The others declined Habitat's assistance, choosing instead to use FEMA and other sources to rebuild. Some of the homeowners wanted better amenities than Habitat could offer, Laurence said. Others ran into unscrupulous contractors who took the money and ran, she said.

Storage units still sit in the front yards of some village residents who decided not to wait for volunteers to fix their homes.

State officials say they are moving as fast as they can to take care of people who have fallen through the gaps.

But, they say, every level of government has policies and procedures that must be followed. They say they understand the frustrations of those who continue to struggle.

"If you are one of those people who were impacted by this disaster, it doesn't feel fast. We know that," said Julia Jerema, a spokeswoman for the N.C. Department of Public Safety. "It's never fast enough. That's why the unmet need is so great."

But she and Nick Burk, resiliency chief for N.C. Emergency Management, said other states have been envious of the way North Carolina has been able to pull communities and resources together. They said part of the reason is that North Carolina has learned lessons from a multitude of past natural disasters.

Burk said the biggest hurdle now is getting people back into adequate and affordable housing. Most people who continue to struggle are poor. They didn't have insurance and now have few places to turn.

"The impact to the housing stock was just so massive," Burk said. "In disasters of this magnitude, there is just never enough money to cover it."

The hurricane damaged or destroyed nearly 100,000 homes in North Carolina. That's more homes than in all of Fayetteville.

"Rebuilding after a disaster is a long process," Burk said.

Staff writer Greg Barnes can be reached at [email protected] or 486-3525.

GRAPHIC: FEMA payout by ZIP code

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TIMELINE:

We look at the events of Hurricane Matthew through the Observer's coverage of the flooding a week prior and the relief efforts.

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