House leaders have filed a bill that would put substantial funding into the North Carolina Office of Recovery and Resiliency to complete its backlog of around 1,000 projects in Southeastern NC
The bill is called the , a jab at former governor Roy Cooper, who founded the beleaguered program. It would pump $217 million into Rebuild NC, which aims to repair or replace homes destroyed by Hurricane Florence (2018) and Hurricane Matthew (2016). Nearly a decade after the first storm made landfall, there are still hundreds of homes that haven't begun construction, and the
The renewed funding can鈥檛 come soon enough for folks like Karen Gladden, who is frustrated with delays and is now stuck in a financially risky situation. She applied for the program soon after Hurricane Florence. Her double-wide experienced catastrophic flooding during the hurricane, she said.
"It had tried to split in the middle, so you could see where the ceiling and the wall and sheet rock and stuff had cracked and fell off," she said.
She used every bit of her insurance payout to put a new roof on it. FEMA did some substantial repairs to her main living areas, but there were still sections of the house that stayed in the same condition they'd been in the day after Florence.
"They basically did what they could and they left it, and that's what I was kind of stuck with," she said.
Gladden applied for Rebuild NC: a program aimed at filling the funding gaps left by insurance companies and FEMA. She went through the process for several years, and in early 2024 was approved for a rehab. But when inspectors came out, they realized the conditions in her home had deteriorated too far for rehabilitation.
"They said that due to the damage and the issues with the mold and things like that, that they were going to offer me a full replacement because it wasn't, it wasn't worth trying to rehab it anymore," she said.
The house deteriorated that far because of the delays. Once an applicant is accepted into the program, they aren't allowed to make any changes or improvements to the home. Gladden couldn't do any work on her own, or seek help from other agencies.
Finally, she finished the process and was approved for demolition and reconstruction. She moved out of her Hampstead home in November, and moved into a rental funded by the program.
鈥淪o I moved out that weekend. That following week in November, the contractor called me. He was actually pulling up at the house, and he had just gotten a call and said that all construction had stopped," she said.
Now, Gladden said her Temporary Relocation Assistance (TRA) funding is delayed: the payments that are meant to help her cover rent. Her rent is due at the start of March, and she鈥檚 worried she and her son will need to move out.
"I might have to dig back into the savings a little bit. And I said, we're going to have to pay this month's rent out of our pocket," she said. "If that check doesn't come any time between now and mid-March, then we're going to start packing it up."
She plans to move in with her mother 鈥� but that's an hour away in Warsaw, and Gladden worries about how that'll impact her commute to work.
Gladden has been back to her house in the time since she moved out, though it was supposed to be demolished and rebuilt by now.
"My kids basically grew up in that house, and that's always been my home. That's where I come home to, that's where I put my feet up, you know," she said.
But ever since the hurricane, even though she stayed in that house for years with closed-up, moldy rooms, things just aren't the same.
"That place has not been a home since that hurricane. It's just a house to me. And every time I pull up in the yard, that's all I see. Is a house, just a house," she said. 鈥淚 don't feel like I have a home anymore.鈥�
The C.O.O.P.E.R. Accountability act would also implement reporting and accountability requirements for the program, which has been plagued with budget overruns.
WHQR reached out to NCORR about the delayed TRA payments, but did not receive a response before press time. This article will be updated as more information becomes available.
