Joseph Kemper talks about help from the community after Tropical Storm Helene devastated the Black Mountain Manufactured Home Community
SWANNANOA -- The walls and floors of Nelson Cruz's home sat completely bare.
It was where he and his family lived for 16 years, the house now uninhabitable after flooding from Tropical Storm Helene roared through the community in September. Everything they owned had been taken out, with only the wooden frame left.
Cruz's home sits on the edge of Black Mountain Manufactured Home Community, a collection of dozens of mobile homes up a hill across the Swannanoa River. It's one of around 138,000 mobile homes across Western North Carolina, many of which took the brunt of the historic devastation.
Spray paint marks rows of buildings deemed unsafe for habitation. Lines showing the high water mark sit more than six feet off the ground in some areas.
Cruz has worked for weeks to bring his home back to what it once was. There's still plenty to do, and he's received little help outside of a GoFundMe created by his daughter. He said he estimates the delivery costs alone to be around $17,000.
"It's hard, but we have to do it," Cruz said.
Mobile homes make up 15% of residences in Helene disaster declaration counties
Cruz has worked on the house whenever he has time in between stints painting houses two to three days a week. Much of that money is going toward rent nowadays. His family has been sheltering in an apartment running at $1,500 a month in addition to the $500 rent he still pays for the plot of land the mobile home sits on.
Roughly 15% of houses in counties under a major disaster declaration in North Carolina are mobile homes, according to a report from the U.S. Census Bureau. That excludes numbers coming out of Mecklenburg County, which was separated in the report as the federal agency said the area skewed data from more rural counties that faced much of the extreme weather.
Residents in mobile homes are more likely to be harmed in severe storms like Tropical Storm Helene. The Federal Emergency Management Agency does not consider mobile homes to be safe during hurricanes.
Residents face a long road to recovery, said local Realtor Antonio Garcia. Many of the people living in Black Mountain Manufactured Home Community work in service or labor fields and lost work for weeks or even months at a time this fall.
That comes on top of rising housing costs. Many Buncombe County residents have turned to mobile homes as one of the last affordable housing options, Garcia said.
Garcia is working with a nonprofit called Community Organized Relief Effort, or CORE, which has stayed in the neighborhood for weeks working to repair around 24 houses. He estimates repairs for most of the homes will run upwards of $50,000.
Cruz's family is looking to leave their longtime home if they can afford it. Returning under the threat of another flood would be difficult, he said.
While some people have made plans to move or have abandoned their homes altogether, most hope to stay, said Kirsty Greeno, the construction site supervisor at the mobile home community for CORE. She said most of the people she works with hope to be where they know people best.
"People are fighting for their community as well right now," she said.
Storm impacted large number of state's vulnerable populations
Cliff Stewart, 76, was inside his home in the early morning of Sept. 27 when officials knocked on his door urging him to evacuate. But Stewart, who uses a wheelchair, couldn't make it out of his mobile home when the flooding began. That's where he stayed, left with no way to escape as the water rose up to the wheels of his chair.
Officials found more than 22% of people living in affected counties are considered to be highly vulnerable by the Census Bureau. That refers to a person with three or more vulnerabilities based on components such as poverty, age and broadband access.
The area includes a disproportionate number of older adults as well, with roughly 22% of the people living in affected counties being 65 years or older, compared to 17% in other counties. The population is at higher risk during storms than others, with two out of three deaths in the state during Hurricane Florence being older adults according to FEMA.
Data shows that communities of color are more likely to face hurricanes and other natural disasters, with experts pointing to decades of redlining pushing people into areas with poor infrastructure.
Joseph Kemper was lugging construction materials into his mother's home on Nov. 19. It's been weeks since she left her home in September, only making it up the hill when downed trees stopped her from driving further. She stayed in her car, watching the water come into her home and destroy everything she owned.
Curtis Bond, who lives in a teal mobile home nearby, planned to move some of his belongings to a junkyard on Nov. 19. He experiences chronic pain, which often prevents him from doing manual labor after suffering a herniated disc at work several years ago.
He is still working to receive Social Security Disability Insurance, after not being able to work. He said he wishes he could do more to help, noting everything people lost in the storm.
"It's forever changed our lives," Bond said.