This story is part of Living in Limbo, a special package of stories exploring housing after Helene through four unique angles. Read the rest of the stories.
For nearly four months, Peggy Hairston has been unable to live in the house in Henderson County where she’s spent the last 20 years with her husband and two adult daughters.
Hairston is one of around 12,000 people in Western North Carolina displaced by Hurricane Helene.
In late September, the nearby French Broad River filled her home with two and a half feet of water.
“It was like an explosion. Things were everywhere,” she recalled. “There were onions in the bedroom. And shampoo was in the kitchen … It was mud and it was bugs – lots and lots of bugs and spiders.”
“It was like an explosion. Things were everywhere,” she recalled. “There were onions in the bedroom. And shampoo was in the kitchen … It was mud and it was bugs – lots and lots of bugs and spiders.”
The water ruined some of Hairston’s most cherished possessions: her wedding dress, old family photos, a lifetime’s collection of Christmas ornaments, and paintings passed on from her grandmother.
She has been picking up the pieces ever since. Several times a week, she returns to her home in Etowah, where she lived with her husband Bruce. Together, they bag up items from the house and toss them in a rented dumpster. Occasionally, they find items that survived, like a collection of china that was packaged in a protective container. But those moments are few and far between, Hairston said.
“I had everything I needed. I didn’t need anything,” Hairston said, reflecting on her life pre-Helene. “Sometimes I just can't bag it up. I just sit there and I cry.”
The musty, flood-battered house sits at the end of a cul de sac and backs up to a small creek. There’s a big backyard with trees that Hairston and her family planted. One of Hairston’s favorite parts about the house was the quiet, something she has deeply missed over the last few months.
For the first few weeks after the storm, Hairston stayed in a spare bedroom at her neighbor’s house. Her husband slept in the garage to keep watch over their home.
In late October, Hairston was granted a hotel room as part of the Federal Emergency Management Agency Transitional Sheltering Assistance program, which helps disaster survivors.
The closest hotel Hairston was able to find was at the Country Inn and Suites in Asheville’s Westgate Plaza – a thirty minute drive away from her home in Etowah.
“It's lonely,” she said. “I don't know the people here. We all kind of stay to ourselves.”
Aside from the loneliness, she misses simple things like her icemaker and Instapot. She misses seasonal baking. Mostly, she misses her old life.
At the hotel, a few items have helped Hairston, a retired office worker, feel a little more comfortable in her temporary home. She purchased decorative gourds for Thanksgiving and a small table-sized Christmas tree. She perched a framed photo of her late parents on her desk, next to the printer she uses to complete paperwork for insurance and FEMA claims.
The process of fixing her house and figuring out what to do next is complicated, she said. Her homeowner’s insurance covers flood damage but not roof damage. But some of the damage to her house came from a leaky roof. She’s gotten some payouts from her insurance and from FEMA, but not enough to pay for another place to live. And the total damage to the house is still unclear.
And she still owes an $1,100 monthly mortgage on her currently uninhabitable house.
“I can't pay the mortgage and rent because rent is ridiculous,” she said. “Especially with a dog and a cat. There's no way I could do that right now.”
She and her husband decided to apply for a FEMA Hazard Mitigation Grant, which would help repair her home and raise it several feet off the ground since the structure sits in the floodplain. The service could take up to four years to complete, according to FEMA spokesperson Steve McGugan.
As they are still awaiting the results, Hairston made another move – this time, back to her property.
Nonprofit Hope For Crisis donated a camper for her and her husband to live in just before Christmas, and the Hairstons have moved it on their property.
“A nice lady, Susan Stevens from Nebraska, had been following the storm and what was happening here. She said she's got a camper and she's not using it anymore. So she donated it,” she said.
“I signed up online and within an hour they called me and said they had a camper for me. And we get to keep it. She sent the title.”
Not long after accepting the camper, Hairston was told by FEMA that she was eligible for 18 months of lodging in a mobile housing unit at an RV park.
Hairston declined that offer. “If we went to the other place, we'd have just temporary housing again,” she said.
Gerard Albert III contributed to this report.