In Asheville, a Natural Disaster and a Housing Crisis Collide

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Heavy rains had been drenching Western North Carolina over the final week of September 2024. On that Thursday night, Ursula Crawford was fixing dinner at her West Asheville rental when water and mud started seeping under her door. 

“Within minutes, the apartment filled,” Crawford recalled. She placed her caramel-colored dachshund, Ginger, on the bed and called her landlord, who booked them a hotel room.  

But as Hurricane Helene pounded the region throughout that night and the following morning, the apartment Crawford had lived in for four years was rendered uninhabitable.

A year later, the 74-year-old is still without a home. After multiple relocations, Crawford and Ginger now live in a homeless shelter in West Asheville, where they share a room with five other people. It’s her first time living in a shelter.

She’s not alone. Housing is the top self-identified unmet need Helene survivors have reported to North Carolina Emergency Management Disaster Case Management. According to Buncombe County’s Helene Recovery Plan, 372 residential units were destroyed during the storm, about half of them rentals.  And while federal programs exist to help homeowners rebuild, there are fewer options for people in other housing situations. 

Last fall, the legislature allocated $1 million for rental assistance to the 26 storm-impacted counties, and while Buncombe County and Asheville have provided additional assistance, it hasn’t been “nearly enough to address the need,” said state Rep. Lindsey Prather, a Democrat who represents Buncombe County. “Our legislature should and could have provided more help to renters in WNC after the storm,” she wrote via email. “Instead we have further exacerbated the ongoing housing crisis in this region.”

Who is Homeless?

In Buncombe County, the sudden crisis of a natural disaster collided with the slow-moving crisis of homelessness. People who run shelters and provide related services who spoke to The Assembly say anecdotally they believe the population of unhoused folks in Asheville has risen since Helene, but exact figures are hard to determine. 

“I don’t know that anybody has those numbers,” said Beth Trigg of Swannanoa Communities Together, a nonprofit organization supporting people displaced by the storm. 

Asheville maintains a Homeless Management Information System, which providers update when people who are unhoused access services. But it’s still hard to give more than a day-by-day count, said Buncombe County Homelessness Program Manager Lacy Hoyle. “I don’t even know if that would be accurate,” she said, because not every service provider participates. 

“Many people who are part of that population are fairly transient, and they move from area to area as they’re able,” she said. 

The nearest-to-reliable estimate—or, at least, the one the federal government relies on—is the point-in-time count, which is conducted over two days every January. In 2025, the count put Asheville’s unhoused population at 755, up from 739 in 2024. Service providers say point-in-time counts are a brief snapshot and may be inaccurate.

But within that marginal increase, a more concerning trend was hiding: a 50 percent increase in the number of people who were unsheltered. That figure covers people staying in cars and tents rather than shelters. Thirty-five percent of them cited Helene as the reason they were on the street. 

Service providers are careful to note there are other factors contributing to housing insecurity in Asheville. A recent community survey found that 17,000 total renter households in Buncombe County spend more than 30 percent of their income on housing, and 7,000 spend more than 50 percent. 

Further exacerbating the crisis is Asheville’s economy, which is largely tourism-based. Both gig and service workers suffered from the downturn following the storm. Lodging sales, a broad metric for measuring tourism, is down about $20 million in 2025 compared with 2024, according to the Buncombe County Tourism Development Authority. Asheville had already become a popular second-home destination, with numerous luxury houses and apartments more suited to a snowbird’s bank account than that of a waitress. 

But something is different among the unhoused population post-Helene, said Asheville Poverty Initiative Executive Director Ben Williamson. Prior to the storm, some of Asheville’s homeless people seemed to embrace “freedom and choice” to live on the street, he said, despite the struggles of the experience. 

Now, Williamson said, “I feel like it’s more desperate.”

‘You Just Never Know’

Crawford never anticipated becoming homeless. 

“I grew up in a little middle-class neighborhood. I went to private school,” she said as she sat on a couch in the toy-filled common area of Safe Shelter, while Ginger napped beside her. “And here I am. … You just never know.”

She had been a social work case manager for children in foster care and people with disabilities for 40 years in New York and New Jersey. She also worked in food service, including in the cafeteria at Rockefeller Center, where she served the staff of the Today show. Throughout her life, Crawford and her late mother frequently visited Western North Carolina, leading her to settle in Asheville in 2011. 

Crawford drove for Uber, until her car was destroyed by a drunk driver before Helene, was a cook at the Comfort Inn, and staffed the North Carolina State Fair every year. She has always worked, often two jobs at a time.

After Helene struck, Crawford’s landlord paid for 10 days in a hotel. The landlord also moved some of Crawford’s possessions, including a grill and a kayak, into a storage unit. Crawford assumed she’d move back into her apartment eventually. But on November 14, she learned she couldn’t return. 

“My landlord had sent me a message saying that it was going to be a while,” Crawford recalled, “and then she was going to jack up the rent to $1,200. I’m, like, ‘Oh, man!’” She had been paying $825 before the storm. 

Around Thanksgiving, Crawford went to Cincinnati to stay with family. Her relatives’ work schedules made it an “agonizing” six weeks, she recalled, as both worked the second shift. 

Trigg of Swannanoa Communities Together said it’s common to see people who lost their housing due to Helene being displaced “multiple times” as circumstances change. 

Crawford returned to Asheville in February, after a conversation with a FEMA representative who told her she qualified for hotel stay through May. “On that day, I reserved a room for three months at a hotel,”  Crawford recalled. “Standing at the front desk is when I was told the FEMA rep gave me wrong information and I didn’t qualify.” 

She said FEMA did offer her a hotel room in Flat Rock, a neighborhood in Hendersonville that is about a half-hour drive from Asheville. “Well, I don’t have a car,” said Crawford. “How am I going to get to Flat Rock?” 

Crawford said she “spent a lot of my money for a few weeks,” covering 10 days in a hotel room out of pocket for $1,500. But she realized that wasn’t sustainable. She also noted that due to recovery groups coming to town, “it was difficult to find a hotel room near Asheville.” She hadn’t been successful finding affordable housing, despite making 27 phone calls regarding rentals. “I’m like, ‘Well, wait a minute—where’s the $900 places?’” she said. “There aren’t any $900 places.” 

Crawford also visited Buncombe County’s Helene resource center in downtown Asheville but was unimpressed: “They just give you a list of housing projects.”

Crawford said she received $2,700 from FEMA to replace some of her possessions, which is also helping cover the $250 a month cost of her storage unit. But she didn’t qualify for any other resources, she said, because FEMA determined that her house was habitable—she just can no longer afford it.

After a few weeks, Crawford decided to move on from relying on the goodwill of friends and family and started looking at shelters. But most of Asheville’s shelters don’t allow pets, and she was not going to abandon her dog. Around the same time, Ginger started peeing blood. The 7-year-old dachshund needed surgery to remove three bladder stones. Crawford relied on a new credit card, a FEMA disbursement, and money from a friend to pay the $2,000 bill.

“As much as I love my Ginger, the decision to keep her has had disadvantages,” she admitted. Even though it was still winter, Crawford seriously considered sleeping on the street with Ginger. In late February, she was referred to Safe Shelter, which does accept animals. 

Now Crawford is one of six women sharing a bedroom converted from a classroom in a former Montessori school. She’s found it difficult at times to negotiate shared lights and temperature; as a lung and breast cancer survivor, she’s concerned about pneumonia. The shelter also requires guests to vacate for six hours each day to do deep cleaning. That has been particularly hard on Sundays, when the nearby West Asheville Library where she likes to pass the time is closed.

Still, Crawford said she has learned a lot from her sheltering experience. She said she previously knew nothing about fentanyl but has now met multiple people in recovery.  

“I’ve had to learn to relate to all types of people,” she said. 

‘Unrestricted Abundance’

People who were unhoused before Helene have had their own chaotic experiences over the last year. 

Initially, as the National Weather Service’s warnings about the storm grew more severe, the city and county worked with service providers to alert people who were unhoused. “We knew people were camping by the river, and we were particularly concerned,” said Hoyle, the manager of the county homelessness program. 

Still, Helene caught some by surprise. Josh Morrow, Drop-In Community Center coordinator for Sunrise Community for Recovery & Wellness, said he knew three people who firefighters had to rescue from a tree behind a Walmart. 

And Safe Shelter Executive Director Christian Chambers said they took in a man the fire department rescued under a bridge across the French Broad River. “He came to us soaking wet,” Chambers recalled. He estimates about 50 people stayed at Safe Shelter during and after Helene; the usual head count is 20. Most had lost their tents and other belongings, he said.

“I feel like it’s more desperate.”

Ben Williamson, Asheville Poverty Initiative executive director

For people like Crawford who are experiencing homelessness for the first time after Helene, it has been “a culture shock,” said Chambers. But it’s still jarring for many who were unhoused beforehand.

Immediately after the storm, an abundance of resources flowed into the region for everyone to share. Official distribution centers and ad hoc mutual aid at bars and restaurants around Asheville offered free meals, bottled water, toilet paper, and diapers. There were medic tents, public showers, and laundry trailers. There were extraordinary efforts made to get people their insulin, their specialized baby formula, or their suboxone for opioid addiction. As many in Asheville will attest, it was a unique outpouring of generosity that extended to all neighbors.

“It was a good snapshot of what it would be like if we could offer those resources regularly,” said Hoyle. Williamson described it as a period of “unrestricted abundance” for the housed and unhoused alike. (Some in Asheville feel the wildfires in California redirected the nation’s attention to another crisis in a more media-dense area.)

Helene also gave everyone a snapshot of the difficulties their unhoused neighbors face. Tens of thousands lost electricity and water, relying on meals like Cup Noodles for weeks at a time. 

The storm “served in a lot of ways as a great equalizer,” said Williamson,  showing the lengths people have to go sometimes to acquire resources. The experience also showed the difficulty of communicating with loved ones without regular access to cellular phones or Internet.

Micheal Woods, executive director of Western Carolina Rescue Ministries, agreed that Helene was a unique situation that left the unhoused population in perhaps a better position to survive without immediate access to resources. And for those who are long-term unhoused, the tragedy made them feel seen: “They actually saw the aftermath of the storm bring awareness to their need.” 

Still, Homeward Bound Homelessness Services Director Alanna Kinsella is careful to underscore that the unhoused population has had to navigate an added layer of chaos post-Helene.

“If you were really in crisis and your brain was juggling things up and you were confused— ‘Is it Monday, or is it Wednesday?’—like a lot of us were, you might not have gotten the resources,” she said. 

‘There’s No Money for That’

One resource that didn’t flow in after Helene was housing assistance. 

Although imperfect, FEMA programs could be accessed by people who had housing before the storm. Renters were, at the very least, able to use FEMA funds to replace belongings or cover short-term hotel stays. But things remained “status quo” for unhoused people who didn’t qualify for federal disaster programs, Trigg said. 

Williamson, of the Asheville Poverty Initiative, put it bluntly: “There’s no money for that.” 

Beyond case management services, unhoused people have “very little access to federal or state support” following a natural disaster, Trigg explained. She noted that Swannanoa Communities Together has helped people who were unhoused acquire new tents, or in some cases campers, as have Homeward Bound and Beloved Asheville.  

Immediately after the storm, Asheville’s unhoused population was able to use the temporary shelters that popped up alongside other displaced residents. The Red Cross established shelters at a Gold’s Gym location, Swannanoa First Baptist Church, Trinity Baptist Church, Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College, and the Western North Carolina Agricultural Center. At its peak, 585 people displaced by Helene sheltered at three locations in Asheville one night in early October. 

But those shelters closed one by one as people found other places to live or returned to their homes. In late fall, only the location at the Gold’s Gym remained; it closed Dec. 31.  

FEMA’s Transitional Sheltering Assistance program, or TSA, housed 13,317 displaced households in hotels through May. That program is intended for people whose housing was damaged or destroyed in a natural disaster, but in the chaos immediately following a storm it has provided rooms to unhoused people, too. 

But as FEMA began reviewing TSA eligibility in January, it deemed those who were homeless before the storm ineligible–meaning they had to move out of their hotel rooms or pay for them themselves.

They were identifiable in part because many of them listed a day center as their main address, according to Kinsella of Homeward Bound, which operates the center.

‘What We Had Before Didn’t Work’

Many in the homelessness services community hope Helene could provide a reset for how the city serves its least resourced. 

“What we had before didn’t work for a lot of people,” said Williamson. Asheville and Buncombe County could use the rebuilding funds to provide affordable housing, accessible bathrooms, and improved public transit—if leaders don’t squander the opportunity. 

Williamson admitted to feeling “defeated” now that much of the surplus resources after Helene are gone: “There’s no 24/7 bathroom. … There’s no showers.” 

“I grew up in a little middle-class neighborhood. I went to private school…You just never know.”

Ursula Crawford on becoming homeless after Hurricane Helene

Donations have also slowed for the nonprofit Western Carolina Rescue Ministries, which operates an overnight shelter, and finances have gotten “pinched,” Woods said. 

Monetary donations are “definitely not coming in” anymore, said Trigg. “We can see the funding cliff coming.”

For now, Crawford and Ginger are on several waiting lists for rentals. “I’m not going to get excited about it yet,” she said. “Because everything just seems to take forever. … The reality is that there is a six-month to a year waitlist.” 

Crawford said she will look for a job again once she’s settled in her own place—“primarily because of Ginger. I can’t take her to work.” In the meantime, she volunteers for 12 Baskets Cafe, the free cafe operated by the Asheville Poverty Initiative. She’s taking free tap dance classes at a recreation center. And she’s dreaming about a goal she had even before Helene hit: moving to Panama. 

Rent is cheaper there. 

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Jessica Wakeman is a freelance reporter based in Asheville.