JC Lyle
Executive Director
On September 14, 2018, Hurricane Florence made landfall in the Cape Fear Region, bringing 15-30” of rain, 11 tornadoes, and 90 mph sustained winds. North Carolina reported 42 deaths and over $16 billion in damage. Immediately after the storm, leaders of businesses, nonprofits, churches, and government came together to develop response and recovery plans.
A few months later, I wrote about the formation of Long Term Disaster Recovery Groups (LTRGs) in each county to coordinate efforts to restore our community to wholeness.
A visitor from an LTRG in Houston, one year into Hurricane Harvey recovery, advised the New Hanover County LTRG to establish our coalition as a permanent group: recover from Florence, prepare for and respond to future disasters, and address the chronic problems exposed and exacerbated by the storm.
“Recover from Florence, of course. But don’t just return to pre-storm normal. Use the connections, resources, and awareness generated by the storm to make your community even better than before,” he said. “Don’t waste this disaster.”
Three years later, I see signs that we have heeded his advice.
LTRG’s are still making a difference.
In all the counties that WARM serves, LTRGs are still active. They continue to help Hurricane Florence survivors find resources. (Yes, there are still many people waiting for help.) During this time, the LTRG’s have also responded to Hurricanes Dorian (2019) and Isaias (2020) as well as the Covid-19 pandemic.
When hurricanes bear down, county Emergency Operations Centers (EOC) spin up. Each LTRG has a representative in their EOC, helping manage storm response. When the immediate emergency has passed, the EOC spins down, but the LTRGs keep working.
Gov. Roy Cooper is still closely monitoring the recovery effort following Hurricane Florence, with a particular interest in the work being done in the Cape Fear region regarding home repairs. As the chair of each LTRG Construction Committee, WARM maintains a list of ongoing, needed, and completed hurricane-related repairs. The ongoing unmet needs of the Cape Fear region are shared by Phil Triplett, State of North Carolina Voluntary Agency Liaison, in a weekly briefing with NC Emergency Management Director Mike Sprayberry and Governor Cooper.
Today, LTRGs are still very active in hurricane response, with the focus shifting to resilience through urgent home repairs. In Pender County’s LTRG, construction partners are working closely with county leaders and the Office of State Budget Management to make sure every penny of Disaster Recovery Act money is used to repair or replace homes for qualifying homeowners. They engaged Legal Aid of NC to assist residents with their FEMA claims and appeals and rectifying Heir Property issues, which can complicate proof of ownership that FEMA requires.
On September 11, Brunswick County’s LTRG, known as Volunteer Organizations Active in Disaster (BRUNSCOVOAD), successfully hosted their first Hurricane Preparedness Expo with many participants sharing valuable resources and information to the residents of Brunswick County. “BRUNSCOVOAD is the only LTRG in the state to respond to a disaster without a state or national declaration,” said Triplett enthusiastically, in reaction to BRUNSCOVOAD’s response to a February 2021 tornado.
New Hanover County’s LTRG, New Hanover Disaster Coalition (NHDC), works closely with the City of Wilmington and county governments in their ongoing COVID-19 response. Such responses include providing locations for vaccine clinics, disseminating information to the public through trusted sources, and providing food and financial assistance where necessary.
Affordable housing is in the conversation.
Before Hurricane Florence, it was rare to hear anyone mention affordable housing outside of the human service sector. The term was misunderstood, and most people imagined dilapidated apartment buildings and crime.
Affordable housing is a broad term that means total housing costs (including utilities) do not exceed 30% of gross household income. For example, if you earn $5,000 per month and your housing costs do not exceed $1,500, it’s affordable to you. The market provides housing in this range.
People in our area earning near the minimum wage or living on fixed incomes find it difficult to find housing costing less than 30% of their income. Generally, when policymakers and social service workers use the term, they are talking about housing not offered on the open market.
Hurricane Florence damaged or destroyed thousands of below-market rentals and owner-occupied naturally occurring affordable homes in our state. The problem could no longer be ignored. Everyone is talking about it now, not just the human services sector and local government.
In July 2019, I served on a Power Breakfast panel with Mike Sprayberry, Director of NC Emergency Management, to discuss recovery from Hurricane Florence. Sprayberry said, “Our number one priority in emergency management is affordable housing” for several reasons: homes in disrepair are most likely to be damaged or destroyed by storms, and due to the loss of affordable options, displaced people have nowhere to go.
Hurricane Florence’s spotlight on substandard and affordable housing made its influence on sectors like health and economic development even more apparent.
Access to safe, stable, affordable housing impacts physical and mental health. Accessibility upgrades help prevent falls for an older adult. Removing contaminants in old carpet and mold behind sheetrock improves the respiratory health of an asthma patient. Repairing a broken heating system alleviates stress for a single mom. Recent studies show that every $1.00 invested in home repairs saves Medicaid and Medicare $19.00 in health care costs.
Affordable housing plays a vital role in economic development. The June 2021 Power Breakfast topic was the recent real estate boom. All four panelists mentioned affordable housing as an issue that impacts everyone: local government needs a strong tax base; businesses need employees who live where they work; and workers need a home that leaves enough income for other necessities. Many companies consider access to affordable housing when comparing alternatives for a new location. Architect Chris Boney suggested that incentives to promote affordable housing are vital because “the issues of economic disparity that we have in the community affect every aspect of the economy all the way upstream.”
Other signs of new attention on affordable housing include:
- Creation of the joint city-county Workforce Housing Advisory Committee,
- Workforce housing incentives and zoning changes that lower barriers to creating affordable units built into Wilmington’s new Land Development Code,
- Required approval by City Council of a rezoning request for multifamily housing on the condition the applicant’s affordable housing tax credit application is approved.
Equity is a priority in recovery and resilience.
Inequity in storm recovery is historically a hidden problem. After Florence, New Hanover County leaders recognized not all our citizens experience a disaster in the same way or have the same resources to recover.
Some families turned their evacuation into a “hurrication” to Disney or Europe. Some families didn’t even have access to a car and couldn’t leave their homes.
Some homes and businesses in the county had power restored in 3 or 4 days. While others went without power for 16 days.
In response, the county established a new Office of Recovery and Resilience. Its director, Beth Schrader, takes equity very seriously. She has led county efforts to improve communication with and invest in high vulnerability neighborhoods. She credits the difference in approach to two main factors: disaggregating the data to identify challenges with housing, food, transportation, and other essentials; building trust by listening and responding, working with the community instead of just for the community.
“These are the kinds of infrastructure investments that take years to improve,” Schrader says. But the work has already been fruitful in hurricane preparedness planning, such as moving relief supplies to more accessible locations, revising evacuation plans to prioritize the people isolated by flooding, and developing new ways to communicate when the power is out.
The data and relationships have also been critical during the pandemic response. The county was intentional and strategic in hosting vaccination clinics in historically marginalized communities, setting up in churches and other trusted community centers with familiar faces to greet guests.
Equity in energy resilience is also a priority because lack of power impacts many other things: storage of food and medicine, business openings, the ability to charge a cell phone, and gas pump operations. The county has been so innovative in its partnerships with state, federal, and private partners to study the cost/benefits of energy investments that the California Utility Commission is traveling to our region to learn about the project.
The verdict.
As I reflect on the struggles and achievements of the past three years, I can honestly say we’ve given our best to our community’s long-term recovery, committed to addressing chronic problems together, and are now realizing its rebirth. We have not wasted this disaster.