President Ronald Reagan once said, “I think you all know that I’ve always felt the nine most terrifying words in the English language are: ‘I’m from the Government, and I’m here to help.'” That has been doubly true during Joe Biden’s presidency. Most Americans would be hard-pressed to think of anything the government has not touched in the last four years in which it hasn’t made a monumental disaster. But as people in California deal with catastrophic wildfires, there is another group of natural disaster victims that continue to get the shaft from the federal government.
On Friday, around 3,500 households in North Carolina are set to lose their Transitional Sheltering Assistance provided to them by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) after their communities were devastated by Hurricane Helene in late September 2024. This comes as two to four inches of snow are expected in the Asheville area this weekend, and temperatures hover in the low 30s.
FEMA began notifying families receiving the assistance–on January 3–who were no longer eligible for the program. The reasons for the ineligibility include that an inspection showed that their home was now habitable, they had declined an inspection, or FEMA was unable to contact those who were still receiving assistance to update their housing situation. As of January 6, more than 5,600 families were living in hotels paid for by FEMA, and around 2,100 families did meet requirements and will continue to receive assistance.
But the process is not as smooth for some as FEMA might want you to think. One woman has a very different story to tell, in an interview with Asheville’s WLOS-TV:
I have nowhere else to go but in the streets. I’ve called them several times. They have not answered anything, they have not extended, they told me I had to be out by January 10.
Another woman said that she had been waiting for her home to be inspected by FEMA for quite a while. She stated (in the WLOS-TV story linked above):
I’m still waiting on the inspection through FEMA and I called them yesterday as a matter of fact and she said, ‘Yes, you have an inspection due, don’t know whether they’re going to contact you. However, you need to be out by Saturday.’ Come this Saturday, I’m going to use my paycheck Friday and I’ve already been in contact with the animal shelter to take my dog because I’m not going to put my dog out here in these streets, you know. I don’t even know what’s going to happen in two days, not to be able to sleep in a bed or be warm at night, you know.
On Wednesday, those who face losing their FEMA assistance gathered at a town square in downtown Asheville to demand that FEMA extend the housing assistance.
FEMA’s response to the hurricane was sketchy from the start. Residents of the tiny town of Bat Cave said that they did not see many people from FEMA, and one resident said she did have an inspection scheduled, but inspectors would not drive around a “road closed” sign to do it. As of the first part of December, some residents had begun living in Yurts.
FEMA issued the standard “we’re doing the best we can” statement:
“Our inspectors have returned nearly 91,500 inspections and are about 98 percent complete with current inspection requests. At this time, it is taking between 4-5 days to fulfill an inspection request.”
Not reassuring if you are being told you must be out of your hotel room by Friday. The fact that anyone is still living in these conditions is a testament to the colossal failure of the Biden administration and the federal government. Fortunately, for the victims of the California wildfires, the federal government will soon be under new management.
In the end, the residents of Bat Cave did much of the cleanup and recovery themselves and later said they really didn’t need FEMA and didn’t want them to come. Probably a good idea.
