MEDIA KIT

MEDIA KIT

We have prepared this press kit to facilitate media coverage of the ongoing Hurricane Helene recovery in Western North Carolina. News outlets have permission to use any of the content in this press kit, with credit to the Helene Survivors Committee. Please reach out to us with any questions or interview requests.

Helene Survivors Committee

In late September 2024, Hurricane Helene barrelled through the South, bringing strong winds and devastating floods to Southern Appalachia. Western North Carolina was particularly impacted. In Helene’s wake, the people of this area were faced with unimaginable destruction – over 100,000 homes destroyed; 53 billion dollars worth of damage to buildings, agriculture, and infrastructure; and at least 104 dead.

Rebuilding will take years, if not decades.

The federal response to this emergency has been criminally inadequate. Despite their claims to the contrary, FEMA has begun to force thousands of Helene survivors out of their Temporary Sheltering Assistance program, more commonly known as FEMA vouchers, which pay for displaced people to stay in hotel rooms. This move will evict vulnerable people – including the elderly, disabled people, and families with children – who have no homes to return to. Many have already been forced out onto the streets of Asheville in dangerously cold temperatures. 

FEMA has misled the media and the public about what has transpired here.

They claim that everyone whose TSA vouchers are expiring are people leaving the program because they have secured stable housing or because they have otherwise chose to leave the program. This is plainly false. We have now canvassed dozens of hotels and spoken with hundreds of people across the greater Asheville area. It is clear that these are people who have nowhere to go, whose homes are gone or uninhabitable. In fact, it is a paradox to ask people to find permanent housing while knowing that 100,000 homes have been destroyed in the area and the rebuilding has barely begun. FEMA should focus on helping with the rebuilding instead of pushing people into homelessness.

FEMA also claims that some people are removed from the program because they are unable to reach them. However, many people report having spent hours on the phone with FEMA or even going to meet with FEMA workers in person, only to get the runaround and be evicted anyway. Furthermore, volunteers from the Helene Survivors Committee have been knocking on hundreds of hotel doors to reach TSA recipients. Why can't FEMA, with its billions of dollars, do the same? FEMA even has the advantage of knowing their exact locations, down to the hotel room number.

As of January 6, FEMA officials reported that approximately 5,600 households were staying in hotels and motels paid for by FEMA. By January 14th, the number dwindled to fewer than 2,800. In other words, in just over a week, nearly 3,000 households were put out because they were deemed ineligible for the TSA program for one reason or another.

Under these circumstances, amid such criminal neglect, displaced Helene Survivors and community volunteers united to create the Helene Survivors Committee, organized around 3 key demands: 


1. Extend hotel vouchers until each resident has the ability to obtain secure housing

2. Use funds to repair and build permanent housing for all residents who have lost their homes. 

3. Provide sufficient shelter, food, and heat for any resident who has already been made homeless.


These modest and simple demands are reflected in our petition, which has gathered over 520 signatures to date. 

Volunteers with the HSC have spent countless hours knocking on hundreds of hotel room doors, talking to TSA recipients about these demands. In that process, we have collected stories from dozens of people whose experiences directly contradict FEMA’s lies. We have compiled a few of those stories in the video clips and quotes below

Interview clips and transcripts

  • Rhonda Clark

    “Rhonda Clark, I’m from Asheville right here, where we're at around here. Well, I didn't, I wasn't staying close to the water or anything, but I was, you know, my stuff was damaged. Everything I owned was in a building at a friend's and it got waterlogged and everything I own was damaged and they come and deemed that, you know, I wasn't, didn't need to – any money or anything, but they did give me a room, but it's been hard even keeping it, you know, with trying to get the extension and then I'd try to call and explain the situation. …So, it's just been nothing but more than trouble. FEMA doesn't care. I just don't understand why they can send billions of dollars to Ukraine, and they can't help their own people.I don't get it. It's just, you know, it don't make no sense. You know, I know it's not directly the FEMA workers’ fault. It's the government's fault, basically. Um, you know, honestly, I don't know what I would say at this point. Our government does not care about us. That's basically it. They still owe money to people at Katrina from 20 years ago. You know, they just, they don't care. They really don't care.”

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  • Randy Billiot

    “Um, I lost a lot. I lost my house. I lost the stuff I had. You know, the stuff I put in storage. All that's gone. Cause what? I didn't know the storage place was gonna go underwater, you know, be gone too. Yeah, FEMA gave us a hotel here. Along with a bunch of other folks. And then they just started kicking us out. You know. I guess it's getting to, costing them too much or whatever. That don't seem right. I mean the weather is cold out there and a lot of us, in fact a lot of the folks that got kicked out had nowhere to go. I'm in that same boat. And I'm handicapped.

    Well, I got, um, I gotta busted back and busted hip. I can't sit very long in the chair and the muscles spasms, I need another surgery. But I can't go get that done until I can figure out where I'm gonna be.

    And, it's stressful. Really stressful. I mean it. It's up there, you know, and you, and you think about, well, hell, what about those people that just kicked out those kids? And didn’t think a damn thing about it. Just, got to go. That was rough. I was like, hmm. I knew the people, they were pretty cool people.
     Yeah, it ain't over. And what used to be ain't there no more. It's gonna take years and years. Look at Katrina, it wiped out New Orleans. That's 20 years later and they still haven't got the 9th Ward built back. I know cause I had some kinfolk down there. Still don't have that built. Or any of that area.There's still folks doing without. Living out in tents. Snow on the ground. Kids. Living in tents. I mean, that's good old FEMA. Run by the government. Boom.”

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  • Nathaniel West

    “My name is Nathaniel West. I'm from Transylvania County, North Carolina. I have been displaced since October – mid-late October. I've been lucky enough to stay here, but it's been difficult getting information from FEMA. You know, misinformation. Them, you know, people having to protest in the streets just so we don't have to go out in the middle of snowstorms… There's people, I see people that's being pushed out into the street that have nowhere to go every day here. I mean, you know, right here there's carts of luggage. These people have nowhere to go.

    You know, I've been, I've been lucky to get an extension, but you know, for many people, I mean, a lot of nice people, you know, that I've met here and, you know, and they're literally having to go live in, God knows where, homeless shelters, if there is even spots in homeless shelters, I've heard they're full…I know a lot of people's come from out, you know, helping volunteering their time. I mean, it's, it's been, it's been awesome. I appreciate everything they've done. but there still is a lot of need and I know it's, you know, it seems like, you know, as soon, as soon as it's off, you know, off the mind, you know, everybody forgets, forgets about it, but there's still a bunch of people here in need.

    You know, I know now there's this horrible fires in California and, you know, that's, that's on the tip of everybody's tongue, but there's still a lot. I mean, there's still a lot of ruins here and a lot of damage and a lot, a lot, a lot of displaced families, children, you know. People with pets, you know, having to live in tents, you know, live in sheds.”

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  • Kevin Moreland

    “Okay, my name is Kevin Moreland. I was affected by the hurricane, Helene. The house that I was renting a place from was severely damaged by a tree falling through the house. I'm 63, disabled, dying of a lung disease that there's no cure for, and that's pretty much where I'm at.

    …

    I say they're wrong. We all need housing assistance. Where am I going to go? Where is my buddy that can't walk? Where is he going to go? He was supposed to have been out today or tomorrow. Luckily we have some, some community members that care and paid for his room. What am I going to do after the 24th? I don't know. I have nowhere to go. I'm on a fixed income. There's no places to rent. I mean, I make 900 a month. Where am I going to rent someplace? You know, and it's just there's no place to go. What are we going to do? What are people like me going to do?

     FEMA sent me to the state and they're all just saying there's a case manager. There's this, there's that, but nobody's doing anything and we're going to be out of time.

    It's not, it's not over with. We have all these people that have nowhere to go, no place to live, no way to get there, and that are disadvantaged, dislocated citizens. And we're citizens just like everybody else. Sure, we might be older, we might be on fixed income, we might not have a lot of money.

    We still need help too. There's a whole bunch of us. And nobody's listening, nobody cares. Somebody needs to step up and help us.”

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