by Jane Winik Sartwell, Carolina Public Press
April 18, 2025

With 1,500 evictions filed since Tropical Storm Helene, 100,000 housing units damaged or destroyed and an ever-growing number of people who are unemployed, the housing crisis in Western North Carolina has reached a fever pitch. 

Asheville’s “unsheltered” homeless population — those living on the streets —reached 328 in the city’s 2025 count. That’s up more than 100 from the year before — a record high. The total number is 755, if you include those sleeping in shelters.

In the months since Tropical Storm Helene ravaged the region, there have been some minor wins. Like community organizations that have stepped up, offering unprecedented support to those struggling to keep a roof over their head.

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But in a region where affordable housing was already rare, the destruction of available homes, coupled with the loss of steady income for so many, has resulted in an even tighter squeeze.

People living on the streets. Or in tents. Or trailers. 

It all adds to a picture of a region that has not fully recovered. 

Hitting too close to home

The storm, which struck in late September 2024, came at the worst possible time for residents already struggling to make rent. 

“It hit at the end of the month,” recalled Marcia Shoop, a pastor at Grace Covenant — a church that has become a lifeline for thousands facing housing insecurity. “Anybody that was late on their rent for September, they’re cooked because all of a sudden they don’t have wages.”

Many jobs — especially those in the service industry — still haven’t returned, leaving the mountain region with the highest unemployment rate across the state.

Grace Covenant Church has distributed $4.5 million in rental assistance since the storm. Even today, the house of worship is dispensing more than $90,000 weekly in rent checks. On a recent day in April, for example, 80 people walked through the doors in search of rent money.

But some organizations are finding it harder to provide help. 

At Homeward Bound, a homeless agency in Asheville, housing placement has become more difficult. 

“Ultimately, the hurricane increased the amount of street homelessness in Buncombe County and decreased the amount of vacancies that were available,” explained Ansley Carter, a housing placement manager at the organization.

Her team faces longer wait times to find housing for clients while simultaneously dealing with an influx of people in need of their placement services.

Many of Carter’s clients were living in the hotel rooms that the Federal Emergency Management Agency was providing as part of the agency’s temporary shelter assistance program. But now, that program has ended.

Numbers tell the evictions story

Homelessness in Asheville and across the mountains is on the rise, but at the same time, the rate of evictions hasn’t spiked the way activists were worried it might after the storm. 

Though activists were gunning for an eviction moratorium that never materialized, the rate of evictions remained fairly steady before and after the storm. That’s because of two things, according to David Bartholomew, a housing attorney for Pisgah Legal Services in Asheville. 

First, the Asheville Housing Authority paused all evictions for those who can’t afford to pay rent. And second: Rental assistance programs from FEMA, state and local governments as well as private organizations like Grace Covenant have helped people stay afloat.

But there’s been a massive increase in requests for Bartholomew’s legal services, he said. People are behind in rent, worried about what happens when FEMA assistance runs out and want to know more about their rights when it comes to negotiating with landlords.

Still, not everyone is safe from eviction.

Southwood Realty Company, which owns buildings in Asheville, Hendersonville and Waynesville, has filed 323 post-Helene eviction suits. For Michigan-based RHP Properties, which owns six developments in the Asheville area, that number is 262. 

Smaller landlords have also been struggling. Some housing units that weren’t destroyed in the storm ended up being sold — and their tenants displaced — due to landlords leaving the area after Helene, according to Carter.

Homeowners are feeling a similar pain.

“The funds people are getting back from insurance aren’t enough to rebuild their homes,” explained Fabrice Julien, a professor of health science at UNC-Asheville. “I’ve had many friends whose homes were impacted during Helene, and what they ended up getting back from assessors and insurance companies, it just wasn’t enough.”

‘Chaos’ in Washington

The unpredictability of the Trump administration is further complicating recovery efforts in Western North Carolina. 

The flow of $1.6 billion in federal disaster recovery funds promised by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development is in doubt.

“The uncertainty at the federal level is creating so much chaos that it is hard to figure out how to get the work done,” said Samuel Gunter, executive director of the North Carolina Housing Coalition. “We don’t know if resources are coming, and what this work of supporting people at the lower end of the income spectrum will look like. That money comes from a number of different buckets — HUD, USDA — and we just don’t know where the cuts are going to come from next.”

As the mountains prepare for summer tourism, the region is at a crossroads. With so many underemployed and unsure of when they’ll get their next rent check, the region needs the critical economic lifeline of visitors. 

The question remains whether current assistance measures will bridge the gap until the area’s economy can fully recover.

This article first appeared on Carolina Public Press and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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