It’s time now for a fact-check of North Carolina politics. A post on X last month that’s been viewed nearly 1 million times claimed FEMA only delivered four mobile housing units to all of western North Carolina to shelter residents who were displaced by Hurricane Helene. For a closer look, Paul Specht, of WRAL, joins me now.
Marshall Terry: So, FEMA offers a couple of different ways to help people whose homes were destroyed or damaged, including putting people up in hotels. Bringing in these temporary mobile units for people to stay in is another option. How does that work exactly?
Paul Specht: FEMA told us that the financial assistance is what they deploy first. The agency approved rental assistance enhancement in North Carolina that provides what they call 200% of the fair-market rent in western North Carolina. What that means is if the designated fair market rent is $1,000 bucks, well, FEMA will pay each household up to $2,000 bucks a month for that rent. That's sort of their first line of attack or defense.
And then the direct housing units, which are trailers or mobile homes, are considered the second line. It's for people who, for whatever reason, can't or won't use hotels, or need rental assistance.
Terry: So, FEMA says as of Nov. 25, nearly 5,000 families were checked into hotels through that program. But how many of these mobile housing units has FEMA brought into western North Carolina?
Specht: As of the date of the social media post, the number was 13. Since then, that's increased to now more than 50 as of the time we posted this fact-check. The agency told a local TV station there in Charlotte that they had hoped to get people in 100 temporary units by Thanksgiving.
Terry: What has FEMA said about why it hasn't been able to meet its goal?
Specht: They claim that there are logistical issues. Obviously, the weather affected the roads out there. It also affected the land. There are a couple different ways they've talked about getting people into these temporary units — that could be in a commercial park, where the land is flat. Some people are hoping to get these units on their own private property, but in some cases that's tough. It's mountainous, and some people lived on the sides of mountains and on hills.
Terry: Just who is Matt Van Swol — the person who posted this claim about only four mobile units being delivered?
Specht: He's an Asheville resident who's been posting a lot about the government response to Helene. We reached out to Matt and said, Hey, where are you getting this figure that only four temporary housing units had been in use by Nov. 20? And he pointed to an article by the Asheville Citizen Times — it was quoting Buncombe County officials from a press briefing that week, and they had said four FEMA housing units had been placed on private sites. It was unclear whether these officials were talking about private housing units in Asheville, or in Buncombe County, or in all of western North Carolina.
And so we reached out to Buncombe County and said, Hey, it looks like there may be some confusion here. What were you referring to in this briefing?
And they said the four number was just for Buncombe County. We then reached out to FEMA, and they gave us that 13 number for all of western North Carolina.
Terry: So how did you rate this claim?
Specht: We rated it 'half true.' The exact number was off. The number at the time in western North Carolina was 13 — not four, as Matt said.
But he has a point here that the number's low — especially when we look at timeline, that two months had gone by. And so, we rated this 'half true.'
