From Staff Reports

While the number fluctuates, “over 1,500” Buncombe County residents are still living in hotels, Hannah Vick, a FEMA assistant federal coordinating officer, reported in a Nov. 7 presentation to the Buncombe County Board of Commissioners, the Asheville Citizen Times reported on Nov. 13.

And, Vick told the commissioners, “the number of displaced individuals without housing may actually be higher,” the ACT added.

“What we see, especially with individuals in hotels, is that the recovery process for some families is not linear. They might be staying with friends and family right now and then in a week or two they call us and say: ‘I need a place to live,’” the ACT quoted Vick as saying.

In what she termed were just a few of the housing types ravaged by flooding caused by Tropic Storm Helene, Vick listed houses, apartments, trailers and condos.

The ACT added, “Many of those residents remain in hotels, according to Buncombe County and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, as both state, federal and county partners begin discussions of what long-term housing solutions look like.”

Immediately after Helene ravaged the region, local hotels “welcomed displaced residents (and) soon after, residents were able to apply for FEMA assistance to pay for hotel rooms was opened,” the ACT noted. “FEMA has also sought to put displaced residents in short-term rentals, asking second-homeowners to open their doors.”

When Commissioner Al Whitesides questioned whether hotels “would continue to serve residents next summer when tourists return, County Manager Avril Pinder replied that all hotels are paid ‘fair market rate’ and that they would continue to be used,” the newspaper reported.

Vick added that the agency is also assessing the eligibility of bringing in temporary housing on “about 400” properties across the county, the ACT noted.

To Vick’s assertion, the newspaper said that Pinder stated that “some properties likely won’t be able to sustain new or temporary housing after damage from the storm.

In response to Pinder’s assertion, the ACT quoted Vick as saying “Most of those sites are commercial properties, where pre-existing utilities and infrastructure is likely to already to be present.

Further, the ACT reported the following:

“‘We might put a manufactured housing unit on an already established commercial pad,’ Vick said of where temporary FEMA housing might be placed. 

“The agency could look at establishing a ‘group site,’ meaning a larger plot of land where they’d build several manufactured housing units for displaced residents...

“‘There isn’t a timeline on when the temporary housing units might be established,’ Vick said, but conversations about how to develop sites have already begun.

“The agency’s goal is ‘to get people into this longer-term housing solution as quickly as possible,’ Vick said. 

“It is the county’s belief that it will need a group site,’ Pinder added.”