Failed rebuilding efforts leave thousands of North Carolina families waiting years for homes

A North Carolina housing reconstruction program has left hundreds of families waiting more than seven years to return to their homes following Hurricanes Florence and Matthew, according to a state audit.

The program, known as ReBuild NC, mismanaged a $779 million budget, failed to track costs, and did not hold contractors accountable for chronic delays.

As of November, more than 300 families are still waiting for construction to be completed. Thousands of other applicants have either withdrawn or been disqualified from the program entirely.

Willa Mae James, 69, is among those caught in the backlog. She reportedly spent 459 days living in a hotel while waiting for her home to be repaired.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Helene in 2024, Gov. Josh Stein launched a new initiative, Renew NC, promising to rectify the failures of the previous administration. While the new program is currently assisting approximately 5,000 homeowners, it has already begun to exhibit similar issues, including rigid regulations and staffing shortages.

A state auditor’s report labeled the state’s recovery efforts a "disaster" in their own right. The report concluded that officials focused too heavily on bureaucratic processes rather than taking decisive action to house displaced residents.

The crisis unfolding in North Carolina serves as a stark indictment of state-level administrative paralysis. The core issue is not a deficit of capital, but rather a profound failure to deploy resources with the urgency required to support the state’s most vulnerable populations.

Analysis from former FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate highlights a classic bureaucratic trap: officials are "spending too much time on the process when their job is to be swinging hammers." This fixation on federal paperwork and procedural compliance has fundamentally shifted the mission’s objective. The priority has drifted from the rapid reconstruction of homes to the mitigation of legal and audit risks through exhaustive red tape.

Most alarming is the cyclical nature of these failures. The state’s "Renew NC" initiative, despite being launched with fresh leadership and promises of institutional reform, is already falling into the same patterns of inefficiency as its predecessors. This suggests that the bottlenecks are not merely the result of individual oversight but are symptomatic of an entrenched institutional culture. When rigid regulatory frameworks and localized staffing shortages persist across different administrations, it raises serious questions regarding the state’s capacity for institutional learning.

The human and fiscal toll of this administrative inertia is substantial. For residents like Willa Mae James, government delays translate directly into prolonged displacement and hardship. Simultaneously, these delays increase the burden on taxpayers, who must fund extended temporary housing assistance due to the state’s inability to complete permanent repairs. As disaster recovery becomes a frequent necessity rather than a rare exception, North Carolina stands as a cautionary tale: federal funding is only as effective as the state machinery tasked with delivering it.

While this story doesn't focus exclusively on the Vietnamese-American community, the red tape and systemic delays within federal disaster relief programs are a major concern for us all. These failures weigh heavily on our small business owners—from the nail salon industry to family-owned phở restaurants—and homeowners in disaster-prone regions like the Gulf Coast and across California. The lessons emerging from North Carolina underscore a vital point: personal preparedness is essential. In an era where government aid is often stalled by bureaucracy, we must continue to lean on our own resilience and community networks rather than relying solely on official support to protect our livelihoods and rebuild our homes.