Leland family one of hundreds still waiting for Rebuild NC funding for Hurricane Florence

Star-News (Wilmington, NC)

May 7—In the days following Hurricane Florence, the only way to reach Don Johnson's home was by kayak.

As Florence stalled over the Cape Fear region, its downpours swelled Town Creek, which runs behind Johnson's home in Leland's Stoney Creek Plantation neighborhood. The water rushed into the first floor of Johnson's home, filling the rooms with six feet of water and causing significant damage. Video of Johnson's home was broadcast on several cable news channels to show the storm's devastation.

"We literally lost everything," Johnson said. "All of our memories, a lifetime of things that can't be replaced."

In the months following the storm, Don Johnson and his wife lived with friends and spent a several months living in a trailer provided by Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) as they ripped their home down to the studs to complete needed repairs that cost them well over $150,000.

With no flood insurance, the couple was forced to fund the repairs using their personal savings and using up other assets. They received fu from FEMA and additional money their homeowner's insurance, which helped, Johnson said, but that barely made a dent in the total invested in home repairs.

Johnson submitted an application last fall to ReBuild NC, a program run by the North Carolina Office of Recovery and Resiliency, to help offset the couple's expenses. He said he hopes to get at least $100,000 from the program. ReBuild NC's Homeowner Recovery Program is designed to help homeowners repair, reconstruct or elevate homes damaged by Hurricanes Matthew and Florence.

More than half a year later, his application is still winding its way through the eight-step review process that needs to be completed before the couple can receive funding. The series of steps include application submission, reviewing an applicant's eligibility, checking to make sure the funding doesn't duplicate disaster assistance previously received, home inspections and environmental review, a determination of the money awarded, selecting a contractor, and, finally, construction.

Because Johnson has already finished rebuilding his home, he only needs to move through step five — the funding award.

The couple has been stuck in step four — the inspection stage — since the end of December, even though all of the home inspections were completed at the beginning of January, Johnson said.

Johnson worries about not being able to pay his loan payments because of the delay in receiving the funding. He's sold off some of his assets, including a lawn mower and a utility trailer, to make ends meet, and his wife has withdrawn money from a retirement account.

"This money, we really, really need it and we needed it a long time," he said.

The funding Johnson is looking to receive is part of a community development block grant intended to provide disaster recovery to people impacted by damage from Hurricane Florence. The money was given to states impacted by Hurricane Florence by Congress in May 2019.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development gave instructions to states on how they could use the money in January 2020, more than 500 days after Florence hit Southeastern North Carolina.

The next day, a Hurricane Florence Action plan was posted online for a required 45-day comment period and was approved by HUD on April 27, 2020. Program applications opened on June 15.

Before Hurricane Matthew hit the state, it had been years since North Carolina had received disaster relief in the form of community block grants, according to Laura Hogshead, the chief operating officer of the North Carolina Office of Recovery and Resiliency.

Community block grant funding from HUD is typically the last money to come to a disaster-affected area, following agencies like FEMA and the U.S. Small Business Administration, Hogshead said.

"HUD is designed to be the funding of last resort," she said. "It is the funding that comes in after everyone else has done what they can do and it is to fill that remaining last gap, and for a lot of families that is a big gap,"

North Carolinians living in counties impacted by either Matthew or Florence — which includes New Hanover, Brunswick and Pender counties — can still apply for funding from ReBuild NC, Hogshead said.

But receiving that funding could take months, Hogshead said.

"Because they are federal funds, they have to go through a very rigorous process," she said.

The applications are subject to an audit. If they're not approved by the audit, the funds need to be returned. "We don't want to go through this whole process and then at the end of the day be asked to repay the funds," Hogshead said.

The N.C. Office of Recovery and Resiliency was unable to provide the average amount of time that it takes for the program to move an application through all eight steps because the process is "individual for each family," Hogshead said, and the length of the process can depend on many variables. The home inspection tends to take the longest, especially if inspectors find mold, lead or asbestos in the home.

ReBuild NC has received approximately 7,500 applications from hurricanes Matthew and Florence.

So far, five of the applications for relief from Hurricane Florence have moved fully through the eight-step review process from application to completed construction. More than 1,100 applications have been moved to completed construction for Hurricane Matthew, according to data provided by the N.C. Office of Recovery and Resiliency.

In the Cape Fear region, ReBuild NC received 617 applications from New Hanover, Brunswick and Pender counties following damage from Hurricane Florence. Pender County saw the highest number of applications with 279.

ReBuild NC received 96 applications from all three counties after damage from Hurricane Matthew.

The N.C. Office of Recovery and Resiliency is contracting with Horne, a disaster recovery company, to process applications and manage individual cases. There are currently 400 employees working on applications from North Carolina residents who were impacted by hurricanes Matthew and Florence. One hundred of those workers are case managers.

Johnson gets an email from his case manager nearly every week, but the messages are usually identical and ReBuild NC won't commit to a timeline for when the review will wrap up, he said. The waiting is frustrating and his situation is becoming increasingly dire as his debts pile up.

"We're on the verge of losing what little we have left, and they don't care," Johnson said.

Hogshead said the office is doing their best to review applications in line with the federal standards.

"We process the applications as quickly as we can according to each individual circumstance," she said. "We don't try to make a discernment about who is in greater relative need than the other person."

Johnson said he never thought he would still be trying to recover from Hurricane Florence more than two and a half years later.

"Before this happened to us, when we would hear about a storm in Texas or somewhere else, we assumed that within a couple of years those people had their life back together and were marching on. But here we are two and a half years later and we still don't have our life back together.

"The storm continues on. It's something we live every day."

Reporter Emma Dill can be reached at 910-343-2096 or [email protected].

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