Lula Mays hasn’t been home for more than a year.
The 70-year-old had lived in the Burton Street neighborhood in West Asheville her entire life. It’s where she raised her three sons and her granddaughters. And it’s the place she planned to leave to her family when her time comes.
Hurricane Helene changed those plans.
The storm brought a torrent of rain and downed trees, which flooded Mays’ basement and damaged her roof. It rendered her home unsafe to live in, forcing Mays to move to a hotel and eventually relocate to a rental home paid for by a nonprofit.
"What I miss most is being there cooking and cleaning, things that I usually do. I miss that,” Mays said of her housing experience post-Helene. “I really do miss being near my neighbors, and not driving so far going to church.”
After an unsuccessful attempt to repair her house through other avenues, Mays applied for the state-run Renew NC program, which is helping Helene survivors rebuild their homes.
The program is funded by a Department of Housing and Urban Development grant and is meant to help fill gaps left by FEMA and other recovery efforts. It prioritizes low-income homeowners who are elderly, disabled, or have children, making Mays, who is retired and requires kidney dialysis three times a week, a good candidate.
Despite that, it’s unclear if she’ll see her house repaired.
Due to a policy decision made by Asheville leaders, the Renew NC program will only spend up to $3 million for construction and repairs on single-family homes in the city– enough to repair the houses of eight people.
The city received its own HUD grant and voted to allocate $3 million of the $225 million to single-family home repairs. The rest will go toward rebuilding infrastructure and low-income, multifamily homes, among other things. The amount dedicated to single-family homes stemmed from a misunderstanding that Asheville City Council members had over a partnership with Renew NC. When City Council voted last year on how to spend the HUD grant money, many on the Council mistakenly thought that the state would help pick up the tab on repairs.
Mays was initially denied from the program because of a complication with documentation of home ownership. She has appealed the decision and is working to provide Renew NC with her proof of ownership. While she does that, the city is continuing to review other applications and starting to spend its $3 million.
By the time Mays gets her case accepted, the city may be out of money.
More than 100 homeowners remain waitlisted
In Asheville, 285 people have applied to the program and more than 100 households are approved but remain waitlisted. Almost half of the waitlisted applicants are known as Phase One Priority One, meaning the homeowners make less than 60% of the area median income and are elderly, disabled, or have children.
The city could make the program available to more people, but that decision would require council members to shift more of its HUD grant to the home repair program. And moving anything over $5 million would require a public hearing and a vote by the Asheville City Council.
That decision won’t come before council until at least June, according to city staff.
While policymakers mull the decision, homeowners in the city face a long and uncertain wait, despite being approved as eligible for the program.
“They just leave these families lingering. They’ve got to put a tarp on the side of their house to try to keep the water out. They’ve got buckets in the house catching water, all that kind of stuff. And it's been like that since the storm.”
Through interviews with applicants living in Asheville, BPR learned that some homeowners are living in their damaged homes with mold and other hazards, including rotting floors, broken windows and damaged roofs.
One homeowner in Asheville, who asked to remain anonymous, told BPR that while he waits for an update from Renew NC, he is living in a home damaged by a downed tree. With a tarp over his roof, he and his father are trying to fix lingering mold and water damage on their own.
Other applicants in Asheville told BPR that they’re living in rental homes for the foreseeable future. If their homes aren’t approved for the repair program, they said they may need to eventually move back into their damaged homes.
Temporary conditions are ‘very disheartening’
Yvette Jives, a social worker and member of the city’s Helene Housing Recovery Board, has been outspoken about the need to allocate more money towards the single-family housing program.
As part of her work, Jives supports residents of the Burton Street community, a historically Black neighborhood, where at least five homes were damaged by downed trees and a creek that overflowed during Helene.
Lula Mays, a Burton Street resident, is one of the people Jives is helping through her appeal process.
In an interview with BPR, Jives described the conditions in these damaged homes as “very disheartening.”
“They just leave these families lingering,” Jives said. “They’ve got to put a tarp on the side of their house to try to keep the water out. They’ve got buckets in the house catching water, all that kind of stuff. And it's been like that since the storm.”
There are dozens of people who are in a similar position as Mays, waiting to hear if the city has enough money to help them. Most of these people won’t see their applications move forward because of the city’s current funding allocations.
For Jives, that’s unacceptable, especially for communities like Burton Street, one of Asheville’s few remaining Black neighborhoods.
“We have a closeness in our community. We have people that care about each other in our community, which is something that's kind of lost right now,” she said.
She told BPR she hopes the city moves some of the $28 million currently set aside for the development of low-income, multi-family housing into the home repair program.
“I am in favor of putting money back into homes, investing into the homes, building these homes up and not just patchwork,” she said. “Then these families can also maintain the home at that point. And then, as I’ve said over and over and again, build up generational wealth.”
One of the lucky ones
For the few the program can serve, the experience is life changing.
It’s helping Sybriea Lundy move back to her home in the River Arts District, more than 18 months after Helene flooded her property and ruined the HVAC, electrical system and, later, the home’s entire foundation.
Since the storm hit in late 2024, the single mother has been on an 18-month-long journey to get back inside the house that she shared with her two young daughters, one of whom has a disability.
Lundy first moved into the home after being incarcerated. Back then, it was a group home for women fresh out of prison who needed a stable place to live. Lundy eventually saved enough money to purchase it from the owners and she kept a spare room for women in need.
After the storm, Lundy said she worked with a dozen case workers from various aid programs before finally securing assistance through Renew NC.
“We were fortunate, even though we got passed from multiple case managers, that they all kind of stayed on top of it and followed through,” she said in an interview with BPR.
The storm caused $124,000 in damage to her home, which is above the cap for repairs and triggers a total rebuild. Her new home cost $450,000 – the maximum amount allowed by Renew NC. The program rebuilt it on stilts to avoid future flooding.
Though it’s not been an enviable experience, Lundy considers herself one of the lucky ones.
She is slated to move into her new home next month, something she has mixed emotions about.
“I’m mourning the loss of what we had while happy about what we are getting,” she said. “But still I’m torn about the people who are in worse condition than us that aren't going to have access to the program.”
