by Jennifer Berry Hawes, ProPublica, and Ren Larson, The Assembly

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Slogging through a thick slop of mud and rock, Brian Hill passed the roof that Hurricane Helene’s floodwaters had just ripped off someone’s barn and dumped into his yard. Then he peered into the unrecognizable chaos inside what had been his family’s dream home.

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’s 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.

Brian and his wife, Susie, had just bought the house a year earlier. They had a 30-year mortgage — and, now, no house to live in. Because their home didn’t sit in the 100-year floodplain, they had not purchased flood insurance.

Across Helene’s 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.

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.

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a man whose wife was killed in floodwaters said he checked his FEMA application one day and noticed it was marked “withdrawn,” a surprise since he’d received no explanation.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 — which he filled out just days after hiking down a mountain severely injured — seemingly vanished from the system.

FEMA’s application process can be onerous, particularly for people who’ve lost their homes. And it can be especially daunting for those with lower incomes who may have fewer resources.

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.

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.

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’s because they received full pay for seven weeks while schools were closed. That allowed them to navigate FEMA’s bureaucracy during a crucial time when, for many others, pursuing the aid felt insurmountable.

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 — home to Asheville and by far the most urban county in the region — lower- and middle-income households overall got lower amounts of this aid compared to the highest-income earners.

In some counties, the highest-income homeowners received two to three times as much housing assistance as those with lower incomes.

Yet income isn’t 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.

FEMA did not respond to ProPublica and The Assembly’s 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 “driving down the average award amount.”

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.

“Disasters pull back the curtain on inequity,” Labowitz said. “It’s 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.” She pointed to FEMA inspectors who undervalue damage to more modest homes, FEMA’s onerous documentation requirements and a “brutal and discouraging” appeals process.

The agency itself has also known about the problems. Several years ago, NPR obtained an internal FEMA analysis........

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