Homelessness in North Carolina Up 33% After Hurricane Helene

Natural Disasters Drive Homelessness as Safety Nets Are Being Cut

The aftermath of Hurricane Helene has been cited as a source of the 33% increase in homelessness seen in the latest numbers for North Carolina. While the country as a whole saw a slight decrease in overall homelessness, North Carolina saw the largest increase of any individual state.

More than 4,000 emergency shelter beds were added as a direct result of the storm. The increase was also observed across all categories of homelessness measured in the Annual Homelessness Assessment Report. The number of families with children now experiencing homelessness has risen by 24 percent, while the number of unaccompanied homeless youth is up by nearly 35 percent.

This is a pattern we’re likely to see more often as the effects of climate change worsen and federal disaster response becomes less effective.

Disasters Drive Homelessness

The effects of natural disasters on homelessness levels were demonstrated clearly in the data from North Carolina. Two of the state’s Continuums of Care saw a huge increase in the wake of the storm, the Asheville/Buncombe County CoC, where the storm was focused, and the Balance of State CoC, which covers the surrounding areas.

These two CoCs together reported an increase of more than 4,000 people in one year, virtually all of whom were made homeless as a direct result of Hurricane Helene. A single disaster made the state’s homeless population swell by a third in the blink of an eye.

But Asheville and its surrounding areas are just the latest places we’re seeing this pattern play out. It has happened many times before, and in many cases, victims of those disasters are still struggling to rebuild their lives years or even decades down the line.

A recent UCLA study investigated the factors contributing to homelessness across the United States. It emphasized the importance of addressing climate change and its associated natural disasters as a key vector for homelessness.

“Each home lost to climate-related events, per 10,000 people, was associated with a significant 1 percentage point greater increase in homelessness,” said lead author Kathryn Leifheit. “Our findings underscore the reality that homelessness can be seen as a predictable consequence of climate disasters, so governments should focus on housing stabilization in their disaster response plans, while dedicating adequate funding to provide housing-specific services.”

FEMA Under Fire

The first time President Trump publicly spoke about dismantling FEMA, he was standing in the wreckage of Hurricane Helene, four months after it had passed through the area. “FEMA’s turned out to be a disaster,” he told the assembled reporters. “I think we’re going to recommend that FEMA go away.”

Then-head of DHS, Kristi Noem, took that recommendation to heart. During her tenure, she fired many of the institution’s most experienced officials, instituted policies that slowed funding to a crawl, and jeopardized the agency’s most basic operations, like keeping the lights on, literally. After ordering that any expenditures over $100,000 require her personal approval, countless funding applications languished on her desk.

While the agency threatened to withhold funding from Democrat-voting states or from organizations with DEI initiatives, it lacked the organization to approve timely funding for its own utility bills or renew the contracts of the trained guards who protect the agency’s secure locations that house dangerous materials like anthrax, ricin, and live viruses.

The consequences of Noem’s unique leadership came to a head during the Texas floods, when 134 people lost their lives, including a large number of children. The response to this disaster was drastically slowed by the agency’s cost-cutting measures, even as Noem publicly announced that the response to the flooding was “the fastest in history that FEMA has ever responded to a disaster.”

The new rules prevented FEMA officials from staging trained search-and-rescue teams closer to the disaster zone as the situation unfolded, leading to delays that likely cost lives. In the end, Noem’s authorization didn’t come until 72 hours after the flooding started.

Now that Noem has been ousted, many of the most harmful policies are slowly being reversed. But getting the agency back up and running at full capacity will take months, if not years, a timeline the country may not have as it enters hurricane season once more. And that’s assuming that the political will to fix FEMA holds out long enough to actually do so.

Officially, the White House has not backtracked on its earlier statements and is still pushing the rhetoric that individual states should handle their own emergency response.

“It could take a decade to fix what they broke,” a high-ranking FEMA official told CNN. “And if we have a major disaster this year, we’re screwed.”

But with a powerful El Niño predicted this year, the risk of serious flooding is increased. And drought leaves other areas primed for sweeping wildfires. With the future as uncertain as ever, hearing that FEMA officials’ strategy is to hope we get lucky this time is not exactly comforting.

Another Hurricane Season is Here

June 1 marked the start of another hurricane season in the United States, which runs until November 30. FEMA is currently undergoing yet another leadership change, and many fear the agency has been left unprepared to deal with whatever may come. And it remains to be seen whether wildfire victims in the blue state of California will be dealt with differently than hurricane victims in red Florida.

What we know is that sooner or later, another disaster will come. And when it does, it will disproportionately affect the poorest people in the region who are unable to evacuate, have nowhere sturdy to shelter in place, and can’t gather the proper equipment to protect themselves and their families.

If left unchecked, the vicious cycle will continue indefinitely. Disasters will make people homeless, and those same people will be left more vulnerable to the next disaster because they are homeless.