Ms. Ann in her hotel room where she’s been living since Hurricane Helene. Credit: Estevan Hernandez
Around 5:20 a.m. on Sept. 27, 2024, Lenora Ann Wells grabbed her emergency flashlight and looked outside of her trailer in Swannanoa, North Carolina at the rising waters gushing through the trailers around her. An emergency evacuation team called out in the distance. Wells, who goes by Ms. Ann, called back, but they couldn’t hear her over the raging flood waters, which she described as sounding “like a hundred trains.” She flashed her light onto the nearby trees to signal the evacuation team, who eventually rescued Ms. Ann, her cat Garfield, and the handful of possessions she had managed to grab. Ms. Ann’s trailer, along with the rest of her belongings, were destroyed by the flood.
After losing her home, Ms. Ann first stayed in a hotel in Boone followed by a shelter. She was then placed in a massive warehouse arranged by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, the U.S. government agency tasked with providing assistance before, during, and after natural disasters.
Since Thanksgiving, she has been staying at the Red Roof Inn in Asheville along with dozens of other Hurricane Helene survivors.
On Jan. 24, Ms. Ann will be cut off from FEMA’s Temporary Sheltering Assistance program and kicked out of her hotel, along with thousands of other desperate Helene survivors who are still trying to rebuild their lives.
There are currently about 5,600 people across Western North Carolina being housed through the FEMA TSA program, also known as “hotel vouchers.”
FEMA initially announced that housing assistance would end on Jan. 10 — right as a massive winter storm promised to bring inches of snow to the area. FEMA informed local media outlet WBTV that individuals would be removed from the program if: an inspection of the applicant’s home has deemed their home “habitable”; the applicant declined to allow FEMA to inspect the home; or the agency could not make contact with the applicant.
FEMA Director Deanne Criswell further told Fox News, “When we call them, if we don’t hear from them, the only thing we can do is assume that they’ve been back in their home.”
But Ms. Ann went door-to-door at the Red Roof Inn to speak with her neighbors. They managed to get a list of other hotels housing Helene survivors and knocked on those doors too. What they found shocked them: Dozens of people, just like Ms. Ann, still desperately needed FEMA’s emergency housing assistance, yet were being told that assistance would be terminated in just a few days. Their canvassing showed that what FEMA was telling the media did not reflect reality.
So Ms. Ann and her displaced neighbors began to speak out. They held a protest in downtown Asheville. They went to the mayor’s office and demanded to speak with her, ultimately meeting with the City Manager, Debra Campbell. Campbell agreed to call FEMA about an extension. Several hours later, FEMA announced a 24-hour extension, followed by another 48-hour extension. This was a victory for Ms. Ann and her neighbors, who were able to keep people from being kicked out of hotels during the worst days of the winter storm.
Despite its promise to further extend the program to Jan. 25, FEMA ended its assistance for numerous recipients on Jan. 14. The agency claimed that anyone whose vouchers had not been extended were either “returning to habitable homes” or had “withdrawn from FEMA assistance.” For Ms. Ann and many others, this was not true, and many were kicked out of their hotels with nowhere to go in still freezing temperatures.
In response, Ms. Ann and the other residents launched a petition and formed the Helene Survivors Committee. They are currently organizing at various hotels to recruit more people ahead of the next cut-off date, Friday, Jan. 24. Their demands of FEMA include:
1. An extension of hotel vouchers until each resident has the ability to obtain secure housing;
2. Use of funds to repair and build permanent housing for all residents who have lost their homes; And,
3. To provide sufficient shelter, food, and heat for any resident who has already been made homeless.
‘To the rich, it’s like you don’t matter’
Ms. Ann was born and raised in Clyde, North Carolina, a town just west of Asheville. Her father was a volunteer firefighter, and she was raised to help those less fortunate. She speaks with a southern Appalachian accent and does not mince her words, especially when speaking out against what she sees as injustices. This quality was evident when she, along with other members of the Helene Survivors Committee, gave an impassioned speech at a recent Asheville City Council meeting.
She has a deep love for working-class southern Appalachians, who she affectionately calls “mountain people.” This is reflected in her anecdote to us about one of the scariest moments of her life. As she and her cat boarded that inflatable emergency raft, the rescue team told her that she had to get to dry land because the waters were rising too fast and the boat was too small for anyone else.
Ms. Ann refused to leave her neighbors behind, telling them, “You’re not going to put this on me. Beat on doors, beat on walls, do whatever you have to do to make noise to get people’s attention and get these other people out of here. This little rubber boat will hold eight to ten more people.”
The rescue workers agreed, ultimately rescuing several more of her neighbors.
“The only bad thing about North Carolina,” she followed, “Is that everybody thinks everybody is an ignorant hillbilly and that still irks the hell out of me to this day. We’re not. We’re human, the same as anybody else. And you know, it’s just the community. People pull together and do. We’re honest people. But to the rich it’s like you don’t matter, you’re a peon, you’re ignorant and you’re stupid — it’s just crazy how society looks at us.”
An unjust system
Ms. Ann spent $7,000 to move into the trailer that was destroyed by Hurricane Helene. After submitting a FEMA claim, she received just $750. Just before our interview, Ms. Ann received an offer to move into an RV donated by one of the many Western North Carolina residents who have been working tirelessly to scrape together donations and aid to help Helene survivors in the face of FEMA’s failures.
Unfortunately, Ms. Ann’s story is not unique under the capitalist system. As climate disasters like Hurricane Helene and the Palisades fire become more common, more and more working class people will find themselves in dire need of meaningful federal assistance, yet will receive only scraps in return. Meanwhile, our government spends billions of dollars bailing out banks and funding wars abroad. This is because under capitalism, our government serves the agenda of a handful of billionaires rather than the working-class majority.
This agenda remains no matter which ruling-class party is in power, although the second Trump administration has forecasted that it will adopt it in a much more brazen fashion.
That is why on Jan. 20, people across the country will come together on Inauguration Day to launch their own agenda: the people’s agenda. This is an agenda that says loudly and clearly that we are going to fight back against climate catastrophe; endless imperialist wars; attacks on immigrant rights, LGBTQ rights, and women’s rights; and continued wealth transfers from the working class to the billionaire class.
For Ms. Ann and the people of Western North Carolina who have been abandoned by the capitalist system, the fightback has already begun!
