fema slow to process north carolina home buyouts

You may recall that President Trump said that the Biden Administration and the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) response to Hurricane Helen was abysmal. Now almost a year later, the disaster process for buying out damaged properties (which there is a program for) to remove them from being damaged again in a future disaster (mitigation) has ground to a halt. This is on the current administration’s watch—not the Biden Administration.

You can read this article on the issue, Hundreds of residents signed up for FEMA buyouts after Helene. Not one has been approved

North Carolina has had a strong emergency management program for many years. It sounds like they were “johnny-on-the-spot” in forwarding claims to FEMA, where they have appeared to die. It is alluded in the story that the claims process is being held up by the bureaucratic measure that Kristi Noem, Secretary of Homeland Security had put in place that she had to sign-off on all payments $100K and above.

See this article on that specific issue impacting many other aspects of the DHS governing process: Noem’s demand for sign-off on $100,000-plus Homeland Security expenses is delaying operations ‘critical to protecting national security’: report