PC(USA) congregations look back one year later at Hurricane Helene’s devastating impact
The Rev. Dr. Marcia Mount Shoop pens an account detailing Grace Covenant Presbyterian Church’s unwavering response
It’s been a year since Hurricane Helene hit Western North Carolina. Different metrics are used after a natural disaster to measure its impact: the number of lives lost (248 recorded), the number of homes destroyed or damaged (some estimates as high as 200,000), the dollar amount of economic losses (in North Carolina alone estimates exceed $54 billion), and how much it will cost to rebuild (some estimates exceed $200 billion). Hurricane Helene’s numbers are staggering, and they tell only a fraction of the story of how life changed that day in September 2024, exactly a year ago on Saturday.
Hurricane Helene was not just a hurricane; it was also a devastating geologic event. The storm triggered more than 2,000 landslides in our region. In the area I live in, 16 people died in mudslides, some of which were several miles long. The storm spawned multiple tornadoes. All told, Hurricane Helene took out at least 40% of the trees in Buncombe County.
One of the most devastating impacts to our region was the mortal blow our county’s infrastructure took. The City of Asheville was without clean running water for 53 days after the storm destroyed our water filtration system. In an economy that leans heavily on tourism and service work, you can do the math. Hotels and restaurants were brought to a standstill. Hospitals, schools, nursing homes, factories, small businesses, and homes of all shapes and sizes could not flush toilets, wash dishes and clothes, or sanitize equipment normally.
Like many other churches, the church that I pastor, Grace Covenant Presbyterian Church, sprang into action right after the storm hit. We opened our doors and figured things out together. At the six-month mark after Hurricane Helene, we had done more than $5.5 million in rent support for storm survivors. We had done over $500,000 in utility bill support, and we have no way to count all the free supplies we have handed out. A year later, we, alongside some of our community partners, are still doing rent support, providing free supplies, and assisting those facing utility bill shut offs. Many of our service economy workers are not back to full-time hours. Some of them worked for businesses that no longer exist. Some of them work for businesses that are not sure they are going to make it.
Imagine if you lost months of wages because your local economy screeched to a halt, but you still had to pay your rent on time to avoid eviction. Renting carries with it the constant specter of eviction if a renter is late with their rent even one time. Rent subsidies are difficult programs to have access to in our country. In Buncombe County before the storm, the waiting list for Section 8 vouchers was two years long. In 2023 in the United States, 49.7% of all renters were “cost burdened” as defined by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. That means more than 21 million households in 2023 were spending 30% or more of their monthly income on rent. A sobering number of households in our country are just one personal emergency or natural disaster away from becoming unhoused.
Rent support means that when you hit a hard stretch because of a job loss, a health emergency, or a natural disaster, you have a way to get your rent paid to avoid eviction. At Grace Covenant, we created a low- barrier application system because of the sheer magnitude of the disaster. Hundreds of people were lined up at our door every day, even months after the storm. This past July we opened one day of the month for rent support and had 110 apply. We were able to stop 23 evictions that were already in the courts for a total cost of $67,000. And we assisted many others who were in immediate danger of eviction. In one day, we spent $110,000 to help keep people housed. In cooperation with community partners and the Buncombe County Long Term Recovery Group, we are prioritizing storm survivors who are facing eviction and paying their full rent so they can have a fighting chance to stay afloat as the local economy continues to recover.
Even in the best of times, rent support has the capacity to be a thread that strengthens the whole economic ecosystem. It supports renters by helping them stay housed and avoid having an eviction on their record. Having an eviction on your rental history makes future renting very difficult, if not impossible. Rent support helps property owners because evictions often end up costing those who own rental properties. Rent support supports business owners by keeping a trained work force in place. And rent support helps the whole community stabilize after a natural disaster.
The rent support we did at GCPC did not come from any state or federal funds. Over 60% of our donations were from private donors all over the world. The rest of the funds came from grants disbursed by local philanthropic organizations like the United Way of Asheville and Buncombe County and Dogwood Health Trust, as well as grants from the City of Asheville and Buncombe County. Neither of the grants from local governmental agencies were from hurricane relief funds. In April 2025, the North Carolina Eviction Watchdog released data about how evictions rates were impacted by Hurricane Helene in Western North Carolina. Normally there is a spike in evictions after a natural disaster, but these numbers showed that eviction rates in Western North Carolina are actually lower than they were before the storm. The impact of robust rent support on our local economy after one of the most destructive natural disasters to hit the United States is undeniable.
As our country settles into this next phase of climate change, epochal weather events will be more frequent and more devastating. Our collective resolve to take good care of each other in this historical moment can be about something other than political polarization and competing claims about truth and consequences. Human beings can adapt, and we can learn from difficult experiences about how to strengthen what makes us a nation in the first place: we, the people. The better we are at disaster responsiveness and sharing resources with those most impacted, the safer and stronger local communities will be. The safer and stronger our local communities are, the safer and stronger our nation will be.
The Rev. Dr. Marcia Mount Shoop is pastor and head of staff at Grace Covenant Presbyterian Church in Asheville, North Carolina.
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