\n<\/p>\n
ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week.<\/p>\n
\n These highlights were written by the reporters and editors who worked on this story. \n <\/p>\n Slogging through a thick slop of mud and rock, Brian Hill passed the roof that Hurricane Helene\u2019s floodwaters had just ripped off someone\u2019s barn and dumped into his yard. Then he peered into the unrecognizable chaos inside what had been his family\u2019s dream home.<\/p>\n The century-old white farmhouse, surrounded by the rugged peaks of western North Carolina, sat less than 15 yards from the normally tranquil Cattail Creek. As Helene\u2019s rainfall barrelled down the Black Mountains last September, the creek swelled into a raging river that encircled the house. Its waves pounded the walls, tore off doors, smashed windows and devoured the front and back porches.<\/p>\n Brian and his wife, Susie, had just bought the house a year earlier. They had a 30-year mortgage \u2014 and, now, no house to live in. Because their home didn\u2019t sit in the 100-year floodplain, they had not purchased flood insurance.<\/p>\n Across Helene\u2019s devastating path through the Southeast, people like the Hills turned to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. FEMA doles out financial help after a major disaster for everything from home repairs to rental assistance. Once she could get a cell signal, Susie applied.<\/p>\n It took months of persistence, but eventually the Hills were among the lucky ones. They received close to $40,000, just shy of the maximum amount FEMA provides for rebuilding and repairs.<\/p>\n But farther up Cattail Creek, a man whose wife was killed in floodwaters said he checked his FEMA application one day and noticed it was marked \u201cwithdrawn,\u201d a surprise since he\u2019d received no explanation. Elsewhere in Yancey, another man said he realized FEMA had denied him aid because his birthdate was a year off on his application. A third man said his application \u2014 which he filled out just days after hiking down a mountain severely injured \u2014 seemingly vanished from the system.<\/p>\n Watch Our Documentary About the Hills\u2019 Efforts to Rebuild<\/p>\n<\/p>\n FEMA\u2019s application process can be onerous, particularly for people who\u2019ve lost their homes. And it can be especially daunting for those with lower incomes who may have fewer resources.<\/p>\n An analysis by ProPublica and The Assembly found that among the more rural counties hardest hit by Helene, the households that got the most housing assistance tended to have the highest incomes. The income disparity is especially stark in Yancey County, where the Hills live.<\/p>\n In North Carolina\u2019s Hardest-Hit Rural Counties, the Highest-Income Homeowners Typically Received the Most FEMA Housing Assistance<\/p>\n Notes: Applicant income is self-reported to FEMA. Charts depict the median amount of assistance. The hardest-hit counties are the 10 counties with the highest per-capita rates of homeowners receiving housing assistance. The more rural counties are Ashe, Avery, Haywood, Henderson, McDowell, Mitchell, Polk, Watauga and Yancey. The chart does not include Buncombe County, which is classified as urban, is the area\u2019s most densely populated county, and is home to many regional and local nonprofits that assisted with FEMA applications and appeals.<\/span><\/p>\n A ProPublica investigation earlier this year found that despite dire warnings from the National Weather Service, many people in Yancey were unaware of the enormity of danger Helene posed. The storm killed 11 people there, the highest per-capita loss of life for any county in North Carolina.<\/p>\n The Hills, who are both public school teachers, do not fall in the highest-income brackets FEMA identified. Households in the middle range tended to get about as much FEMA housing assistance money as the lower-income ones, or even a little less. But experts say the Hills did have something in common with the highest-income households: They had the luxury of time to pursue every dollar of federal aid that they were qualified to receive. That\u2019s because they received full pay for seven weeks while schools were closed. That allowed them to navigate FEMA\u2019s bureaucracy during a crucial time when, for many others, pursuing the aid felt insurmountable.<\/p>\n Our analysis looked at counties with the highest per-capita rate of households receiving FEMA aid for housing assistance, an indicator of where Helene hit people the hardest. Housing assistance includes separate buckets of money that cover both rental assistance and home repairs and rebuilding. Apart from Buncombe County \u2014 home to Asheville and by far the most urban county in the region \u2014 lower- and middle-income households overall got lower amounts of this aid compared to the highest-income earners.<\/p>\n In some counties, the highest-income homeowners received two to three times as much housing assistance as those with lower incomes.<\/p>\n Yet income isn\u2019t supposed to play a role. FEMA aid for home repairs and rebuilding is intended to help begin replacing a primary home or make it safe and habitable again, not restore one to its prior state. In theory, a couple living in a million-dollar home and another in a starter house should be eligible for the same level of assistance. For instance, couples who live alone generally would qualify for aid to cover one bedroom, one bathroom and one refrigerator, even if they had three of each.<\/p>\n FEMA did not respond to ProPublica and The Assembly\u2019s requests for comment. The agency previously told the Government Accountability Office, according to a 2020 report, that it encourages all survivors with property damage to apply, and those with minimal damage are \u201cdriving down the average award amount.\u201d<\/p>\n Disparities in who receives FEMA aid have long been known to researchers, including Sarah Labowitz, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who studies and writes about disasters and publishes the Disaster Dollar Database.<\/p>\n \u201cDisasters pull back the curtain on inequity,\u201d Labowitz said. \u201cIt\u2019s a vicious combination of things that make it so much harder for people without a lot of money to get what they need from FEMA.\u201d She pointed to FEMA inspectors who undervalue damage to more modest homes, FEMA\u2019s onerous documentation requirements and a \u201cbrutal and discouraging\u201d appeals process.<\/p>\n The agency itself has also known about the problems. Several years ago, NPR obtained an internal FEMA analysis showing that the poorest homeowners received about half as much to rebuild their homes compared with higher-income homeowners. The 2020 GAO report noted that homeowners in communities with the most socioeconomic vulnerabilities, like being below the poverty line and not having a high school diploma, received significantly less assistance than those in less vulnerable communities.<\/p>\n The Hills\u2019 home was destroyed outside, first image, and inside, second image.<\/span><\/p>\n The disparity we found in Yancey was equally striking in Haywood County, where water flows down 13 peaks towering above 6,000 feet. Households there making more than $175,000 typically received $11,000 in housing assistance; households below that threshold received about $5,000.<\/p>\n Michelle and Jeff Parker, who live about 70 miles southwest of the Hills, in Haywood, had evacuated during the storm. Like the Hills, they returned to find their house had been filled with water. They too had lost virtually everything, down to their wedding photographs.<\/p>\n Michelle Parker has struggled to get FEMA to cover her rent after her home was flooded by Helene.<\/span><\/p>\n But the Parkers had been here before. In 2023, they finished repairing their 936-square-foot home after Tropical Storm Fred\u2019s floodwaters filled it with 4 feet of water in 2021. That time, their house had been rebuilt by a state-run program. They received $50,000 from their flood insurance and just $1,644 from FEMA for rental assistance.<\/p>\n When Helene hit just a year after they got back into their home, they decided the risk of rebuilding was too great. Jeff, a former wastewater treatment plant operator, was on disability. Michelle was working as a medical assistant and could take only a couple of weeks off after Helene. They applied for a hazard mitigation buyout, another program offered through FEMA, instead. It would pay them the property\u2019s appraised value before the storm and turn it into green space.<\/p>\n But that process could take years, and their home was unlivable. They figured they would at least get rental assistance from FEMA in the meantime.<\/p>\n The couples\u2019 situations diverged in important ways, and they applied for different pots of FEMA housing assistance. But their journeys underscore how disaster survivors with varying resources are able to navigate FEMA\u2019s application process.<\/p>\n Susie and Michelle spent hours plodding through FEMA\u2019s online system, uploading documents, deciphering bureaucratic letters and making myriad phone calls to the agency.<\/p>\n After weeks of pestering FEMA, the Hills received just under the maximum $42,500 for home repair and rebuild assistance for damage to things like the home\u2019s walls, windows and doors, plus about $9,000 from other FEMA aid programs. The money played a critical role in helping them start rebuilding.<\/p>\n The Parkers received $2,210 for the first two months of rental assistance to help pay for temporary housing. Michelle continued to nag FEMA for months seeking longer-term help; the agency will pay rental assistance for up to 18 months, which could translate to an additional $7,500.<\/p>\n Then Jeff died from cardiac arrest in June at age 56. Michelle felt like she was operating in a fog. She couldn\u2019t handle another stressor.<\/p>\n So when FEMA\u2019s call wait times soared to two to three hours after the deadly Texas floods on July 4, she gave up on pursuing additional rental assistance from FEMA.<\/p>\n \u201cI got tired of calling,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n First image: Michelle\u2019s husband, Jeff, with their Chihuahuas, Cloey and Sweet Pea. Second image: Inside Michelle\u2019s camper.<\/span><\/p>\n Michelle\u2019s memorial to her husband and their Chihuahua, Sweet Pea, includes a stuffed animal that plays a recording of Jeff\u2019s voice, a box with the Corvette emblem containing Jeff\u2019s ashes and a box with Sweet Pea\u2019s ashes.<\/span><\/p>\n After disasters strike, households with lower incomes can face major challenges, beginning with the early steps of the rebuilding process, which include finding temporary housing and transportation. Some residents lack reliable internet access or cell service. They have less money to pay professionals for estimates or attorneys for advice. Throw in the added hurdles of rugged topography, and western North Carolina posed particular challenges to those faced with rebuilding after Helene.<\/p>\n Alicia Edwards, who directs the Disaster Relief Project for Legal Aid of North Carolina, said she wasn\u2019t surprised by our analysis, which found that in six of the 10 counties most impacted by Helene, the lowest-income households got less in FEMA\u2019s housing assistance than those at the highest income level.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople with lower incomes are at a huge disadvantage,\u201d Edwards said.<\/p>\n The application process can be onerous and overwhelming, particularly for people who just survived raging floodwaters and the destruction of their homes and communities. And it can feel downright impossible to navigate for those with less money or other resources.<\/p>\n In Buncombe County, our analysis found the opposite trend. The lowest-income families there typically received more housing assistance than those with higher incomes. It\u2019s also where residents tend to have better access to resources, as many regional nonprofits are based there. Pisgah Legal Services has had an office in Asheville for decades.<\/p>\n Several of the counties with pronounced income disparities are among the most rural counties heavily impacted by Helene. Yancey, Mitchell and Polk all have populations under 21,000.<\/p>\n The region also is home to both higher-income retirees, who can have more free time and more experience navigating complicated finances, and lower-income multigenerational families. In more rural areas, many of the latter tend to distrust the federal government and are reluctant to pursue assistance, said Morgan Monshaugen, disaster recovery program director with the Housing Assistance Corp., a nonprofit that serves Henderson, Polk and Transylvania counties.<\/p>\n A vacant apartment complex, first image, and a mobile home park, second image, in Haywood County, North Carolina, that were damaged by Helene.<\/span><\/p>\n The month before Helene struck, Tulane University researchers released a literature review of 25 years of research on barriers to equitable disaster recovery. They noted common themes, including the confusing aid process and challenges navigating bureaucracies. They also pointed to research that shows inspectors\u2019 biases and time pressures can play a role.<\/p>\n Before 2020, inspectors would go through a long checklist of items that could qualify for repair or replacement money. Someone with more things could therefore get more aid.<\/p>\n After FEMA changed that system, inspectors now record notes about standardized factors such as roof damage and the height of flood marks inside. The amount of damage puts a household into one of several levels, each of which determines how much and what type of repair and rebuild assistance it can get. Some households get additional money for things like heating, venting and air conditioning or septic systems.<\/p>\n \u201cIt shouldn\u2019t have to do with anything other than what was damaged and what was repaired,\u201d Edwards said. But she worries biases can still creep in. \u201cIf they feel you are a credible person, they could give you a little more assistance, even subconsciously,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n The agency\u2019s decisions come in the form of mailed letters, each regarding a different pot of money. Some letters might have a dollar amount granted. Others might announce denials. It isn\u2019t always obvious that survivors can appeal \u2014 an even more arduous process for many.<\/p>\n \u201cIt makes it impossibly hard for people to navigate,\u201d Edwards said.<\/p>\n Four months after Helene hit western North Carolina, debris still remained in Yancey County.<\/span><\/p>\n Susie Hill knew her family would need every dollar they could get to rebuild. So she filled out a FEMA application online and talked to someone at the agency by phone.<\/p>\n Slowly, aid from FEMA started arriving in their bank account \u2014 $3,514 first, a set amount for people displaced, then an initial $13,687 for home repair. In October, it reached about $22,000, roughly half of the $42,500 maximum in 2024 for home repair and replacement.<\/p>\n Then the money stopped.<\/p>\n As hope for more aid began to fizzle, Susie pestered FEMA. \u201cI was anxious about getting lost in the mix of so many people across the region in need,\u201d she said. The Hills\u2019 application was one of nearly 1.5 million that FEMA received across the six-state region devastated by Helene.<\/p>\n The Hills got more estimates, uploaded more documents. They set up a GoFundMe campaign that raised more than $53,000. And finally, in late November, they came close to reaching the maximum $42,500 payout from FEMA for home repairs, along with smaller amounts from the agency\u2019s other aid buckets.<\/p>\n \u201cUnfortunately,\u201d Susie said, \u201cI think it is a bit of a socioeconomic situation where we have jobs, where we know people that know people, that maybe have money or that are able to help us, or that have the skills to help us, where other people are just trying to make it day to day.\u201d<\/p>\n Susie Hill<\/span><\/p>\n Yancey is home to the most families per capita \u2014 about 175, or roughly 1 in 36 homeowners \u2014 who got the top amount of FEMA home rebuild and repair assistance. Our analysis of more than 75,000 North Carolina homeowners who applied for the assistance in the counties hardest hit by Helene found roughly 1,300 homeowners, or just 1.7%, received the maximum payout.<\/p>\n The Hills had decided to relocate their historic house to a spot on their property farther back from the creek. The FEMA money would cover most of that cost, a critical first step toward gutting it and rebuilding.<\/p>\n On an icy cold day in mid-January, house movers put I-beams underneath the water-damaged structure and used hydraulic lifts to raise it. Then, they hauled it to safer ground.<\/p>\n A family in Tennessee donated a camper for the Hills to live in. After three months of bouncing around, they parked it near the shell of their house. Standing at the front door, to the right, they could see the vast destruction along Cattail Creek. To the left, they could watch their home slowly come back to life.<\/p>\n Susie had to wash their clothes at the elementary school where she works. For other things, they used water carried from a neighbor\u2019s well. Brian had to haul the contents of the toilet to the septic tank. But it was a home.<\/p>\n Cattail Creek, now calm, flooded during Helene and destroyed the Hills\u2019 home.<\/span><\/p>\n An hour\u2019s drive away, the Parkers had sought refuge during the storm at Michelle\u2019s mother\u2019s house. Jeff had fractured his ankle two months before the storm and used a wheelchair. They weren\u2019t taking chances after fleeing their home under darkness \u2014 Michelle carrying their two Chihuahuas, one under each arm \u2014 when Tropical Storm Fred hit three years earlier.<\/p>\n When they returned home after Helene, their shed was gone. Instead, other people\u2019s structures lay in their yard. Inside, the contents looked like everything had been spun around. Their refrigerator lay on its side. The washing machine sat wedged on top of the dryer.<\/p>\n \u201cIt ruined everything \u2014 everything,<\/em>\u201d Michelle said. \u201cI was ready to just die right there. I was like, I can\u2019t go through this again.\u201d<\/p>\n First and second images: Michelle\u2019s home shows signs of destruction from Helene almost a year later. Third image: A vacant house near Michelle\u2019s home.<\/span><\/p>\n A friend set up a GoFundMe, which raised $1,875. The Parkers\u2019 flood insurance paid out $80,000, far below the $209,000 the home had been appraised for a year before. Michelle remembers FEMA offering a free hotel, more than 60 miles away in Tennessee, a distance made farther as Helene\u2019s waters took out parts of Interstate 40. Michelle and Jeff were grateful to receive a donated camper to live in. But their property still had no water or electricity, and they had to rent a place to park it.<\/p>\n The rent for that gravel parking space is $900 a month. Donors paid half, but Michelle has to come up with the rest. <\/p>\n Michelle turned to FEMA. She requested more rental assistance and uploaded an employer letter, a rental agreement, utility bills and a rent receipt. She called FEMA repeatedly.<\/p>\n Michelle and her friend Krista Shalda outside Michelle\u2019s camper. Michelle has struggled to pay the rent for the lot where the camper is parked.<\/span><\/p>\n FEMA has faced years of criticism from people applying for assistance. Chief among their complaints: inconsistent payouts, the onerous application process, incomprehensible communication and confusing rules.<\/p>\n Jeremiah Isom lost his home and work tools in the Yancey County floodwaters and has since been living here and there. He\u2019s struggled to find a job and has grappled with a FEMA application, complicated by deaths in his family and property ownership issues. It doesn\u2019t help that he\u2019s reluctant to ask for help, much less aggressively seek it from the federal government. Just plowing through each day is hard enough.<\/p>\n \u201cEveryone is so eaten up with PTSD,\u201d Isom said. \u201cIt\u2019s got your head so scrambled.\u201d<\/p>\n FEMA has been working on improving its application process. From 2021 to 2024, it announced changes aimed at improving access and equity, including making home repair money available to underinsured households. Another change cut an onerous rule requiring applicants to first apply for a U.S. Small Business Administration loan, which approved less than 4% of all applicants from 2016 to 2018.<\/p>\n Before President Donald Trump took office in January, FEMA also had spent more than a year hiring a team of engineers, designers and product managers to help modernize the online application process. They faced a key challenge: The back-end system that runs much of the process at disasterassistance.gov is 27 years old.<\/p>\n A key problem is that when survivors check their application status, they often see simply that it\u2019s pending. They get no indication of where the application is in the process or why. The FEMA team was working to change that.<\/p>\n Michael Coen, the agency\u2019s chief of staff when the team was formed, noted that people are used to going on Amazon and getting updates about when their order is out for delivery and when it\u2019s about to arrive. Coen said survivors wonder, \u201cWhy can\u2019t FEMA do that?\u201d<\/p>\n Volunteers cut firewood in Swannanoa, North Carolina, four months after Helene hit the region.<\/span><\/p>\n Yet since the Trump administration began slashing the agency\u2019s workforce, the team focusing on improvements to the online application process has disintegrated. In January, the team had at least 10 people. Now, it\u2019s down to two. The rest took the deferred resignation offer or were pushed from their posts, current and former FEMA employees told ProPublica and The Assembly.<\/p>\n \u201cThey all are gone,\u201d said Alexandra Fer\u010dak, who until May was chief of service delivery enhancement, part of a relatively new office at FEMA. Her team worked closely with the digital team. \u201cWe had so much knowledge and expertise, it was unprecedented,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Without that in-house expertise, major changes are \u201cnot going to be effective,\u201d said a FEMA employee who worked with the team but asked not to be named out of fear of retribution.<\/p>\n FEMA did not respond to questions about the team. But in late August, more than 180 current and former FEMA employees signed a public letter to Congress warning that cuts to the agency\u2019s full-time staff risk kneecapping its disaster response capabilities.<\/p>\n In response, Kristi Noem, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, which includes FEMA, said she is working hard to \u201cstreamline this bloated organization into a tool that actually benefits Americans in crisis.\u201d The agency then suspended most who had signed their names to the letter.<\/p>\n The Hills had their house moved back from Cattail Creek and temporarily propped up until they could get a new foundation laid. But the foundation work depended on the weather, which was varying degrees of terrible all winter.<\/p>\n Heavy rain triggered flashbacks to Helene, and in February it poured. But one Sunday morning, the Hills turned on the gas fireplace in their camper as the temperatures plummeted and the gray rain turned to snowflakes. Despite the gloom outside, they were gleeful.<\/p>\n A retired contractor from Texas volunteering his skills had become the guiding force in their rebuilding. Volunteers from other states also showed up to help. A group from a church in Georgia who work in construction had just visited. They asked what the Hills wanted in their house.<\/p>\n The Hills mostly wanted to add a bathroom so that their daughter, Lucy, who was 9 at the time, would have her own. The men would try to add one. When they left, the Hills went out to dinner using a gift card and declared it the best day ever, or at least something that had been hard to come by since the storm: a great day.<\/p>\n A few months later, a feeling of hope spread across western North Carolina as the dogwoods and redbuds bloomed in puffs of purple and white. Dandelions dotted patches of grass amid the persistent brown muck of mud and fallen trees. Friends and volunteers became fixtures at the Hills\u2019 house. They depended on so much kindness from people. Brian spent every spare minute working on repairs as well.<\/p>\n With help from FEMA and their community, the Hills are rebuilding their home. Signs of normalcy have slowly returned, including a neighbor\u2019s horses coming by to graze.<\/span><\/p>\n Without that initial FEMA money, the Hills\u2019 wrecked house might still be sitting in the moonscape of mud and destruction that persists along Cattail Creek. Instead, as summer waned, the house had electricity, siding, floors, insulation, drywall \u2014 and a bathroom for Lucy.<\/p>\n On this one-year anniversary of Helene\u2019s destruction, the Hills expect to move back in any day. Thousands of others aren\u2019t even close.<\/p>\n Michelle now lives alone in the camper. For the past year, donors have been paying half the rent for the lot where she parks the camper. In November, that assistance will come to an end. Michelle has a job working with autistic children but cannot afford the $900 a month on her own.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s just a gravel spot,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n Like the Hills, Michelle credits friends and nonprofits for getting her through the last year. \u201cThey just swarmed in and started helping \u2014 and lots of them,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n \n Helene\u2019s Unheard Warnings<\/strong>\n <\/p>\n In the spring, Mountain Projects, a local nonprofit that provided the camper, offered her a discounted modular home and a plot of land. Other nonprofits like United Way and Salvation Army have offered to help cover some of the home\u2019s expenses, but Michelle still must come up with $81,000 not yet covered by her insurance or donations.<\/p>\n The buyout program she applied for would pay her the fair market value of her home before the storm, minus her insurance payout. But if she is approved, it could be years before she sees that money. \u201cI\u2019m worried,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n She and Jeff were preapproved for a mortgage loan, but without his income, she isn\u2019t sure she will still qualify. Michelle is thankful for so much help. But a year after Helene, moving into a permanent home feels more unreachable than ever.<\/p>\n The home offered to Michelle by Mountain Projects<\/span><\/p>\n ProPublica and The Assembly know recovery in western North Carolina is far from over, and so is our reporting. If you have applied or thought about applying to the state housing recovery program, RenewNC, fill out this form. You can reach us with questions or other stories at helenetips@propublica.org.<\/p>\n Mollie Simon contributed research, and Nadia Sussman and Cassandra Garibay contributed reporting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week. Reporting Highlights One Year After Helene: People who lost their homes turned to FEMA for aid. Some are still slogging through red tape. Wealthier<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24245,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[1122,6970,14753,2285,2171,14752,3686,769,242,247],"class_list":{"0":"post-24244","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-social-issues","8":"tag-aid","9":"tag-carolina","10":"tag-counties","11":"tag-fema","12":"tag-fight","13":"tag-hardesthit","14":"tag-helene","15":"tag-hurricane","16":"tag-north","17":"tag-propublica"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24244\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/24245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\n Chart: Ren Larson, The Assembly. Sources: Federal Emergency Management Agency Individuals and Households Program, U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey, U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Classifications.
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\n First image: Courtesy of Michelle Parker. Second image: Jesse Barber for ProPublica.
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\n <\/span><\/p>\nThe Daunting Process<\/h3>\n
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\n <\/span><\/p>\nHills of Challenge<\/h3>\n
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\n <\/span><\/p>\n\u201cThey Are All Gone\u201d<\/h3>\n
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\n <\/span><\/p>\nOne Year Later<\/h3>\n
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