The Last Porch on the Block

Hollis Porch is not a real person. He is an imagined character whose circumstances are built entirely from documented buyout cases in Buncombe County, North Carolina, and comparable programs in Texas, Virginia, and Illinois. His street does not exist. His spiral notebook does not exist. His situation, unfortunately, does, replicated across hundreds of households caught in the gap between FEMA approval groups.¹

In Buncombe County, North Carolina, the Swannanoa River crested at 26.1 feet during Hurricane Helene in September 2024. More than sixteen feet above flood stage. Twenty-one months later, the county has begun closing on its first buyout properties: 23 parcels concentrated along Old U.S. Highway 70 and nearby streets in Swannanoa and East Asheville.²

But the buyout program has four groups, each running on its own clock. Groups 1 and 2 (47 properties) started closings in late May 2026. Group 3 (142 properties) received FEMA approval in May but hasn't begun appraisals. Group 4 (72 properties) is still under FEMA review entirely.³

None of the first approved buyout properties had been demolished as of June 2026.⁴ The houses still stand. They're just empty.

Hollis Porch, 46, is an HVAC technician who bought a small ranch house off Old US 70 in 2019. He applied for a buyout in early 2025 and landed in Group 4. He is sitting on his front porch with a spiral notebook in his lap and a thermos of coffee that he refills from inside twice during our conversation. The notebook, he explains, is his flood journal. He started it the week after Helene.

You keep a notebook. What's in it?

Hollis: Dates, mostly. When people left. When the power came back on at which house, and then when it went off again because nobody was there to call the company. I've got a page for each house I can see from this porch. There were nine houses I could see. Seven if you don't count the ones you had to lean for. Now four still have people in them. The other five, lights off. Two of those closed with the county already, I think. The other three, people just... left. Went to stay with family. One guy, Rick, he's renting in Black Mountain. Still owns this place, still paying on it, waiting on Group 3.

What does the street sound like now?

Hollis: You think losing a neighborhood is a visual thing. The empty driveways, the tall grass. But it's the sound first. I used to hear Rick's dog at six in the morning. Linda across the way, she'd slam her screen door. You could set a clock by it. Kids waiting for the bus. Now it's just... river. Which is sort of a sick joke, right?

“

Some nights I sit out here and it's so quiet I can hear the Swannanoa moving and I think, you son of a bitch, you're the only one who stayed too.

When you applied for the buyout, did you think it would take this long?

Hollis: They told us twelve to twenty-four months for FEMA review, and then three to four years to complete the project after that.⁵ I heard those numbers and I thought, OK, that's the government being cautious, it'll move faster. That was seventeen months ago. I haven't heard a thing. Group 4 meetings aren't expected until fall, maybe.⁶

Meanwhile, Gerald Allen down the road, he closed on his place in June. God bless him, he's 76, waited since December '24, and he said nobody told him anything for months.⁷ So even the people who got through say the silence was the worst part.

You're still paying your mortgage.

Hollis: Yeah. That doesn't stop. I looked into forbearance. Fannie Mae has disaster options, deferral, modification, whatever, but none of it kicks in automatically just because you filed a buyout application.⁸ The buyout clock and the mortgage clock are two completely separate machines, and they do not talk to each other. I owe more than this place is probably going to appraise for, too. The buyout pays pre-disaster fair market value.⁹ I bought in 2019, put money into it, and now... what's a house worth when the grocery store is gone?

The Ingles.

Hollis: The Ingles on 70. Only grocery store nearby. Closed indefinitely.¹⁰ There's a farmers market twice a month now, some nonprofit food access stuff. One of the organizers, good person, said straight up, "It's not putting a dent in the system, really. It's just what we can do right now."¹¹ So I drive to Black Mountain for groceries. I have a truck, it's fine. But what happens when they stop maintaining the road? That's not paranoia. In Charlotte-Mecklenburg, once enough contiguous properties get bought out, they can abandon streets and utilities to restore the floodplain.¹² Just roll up the infrastructure like a carpet.

Has anyone told you that's planned here?

Hollis: No. Nobody's told me anything. That's the whole situation in one sentence. I'm in Group 4. I'm not in the conversation yet.

Do you want the buyout to come through?

Hollis: (He sets the thermos down. Picks it back up.)

I want to want it. How's that? I know I should take it. I know this house is going to flood again. I know that. I fix air conditioners for a living. I understand when a system is broken and you stop putting money into it. But there's this woman down in Montgomery County, Texas, Kathleen Adams, she's been waiting six years, spent fifty thousand dollars on repairs, and she said, "I love it here. I have so many mixed emotions about leaving it, but I can't stay."¹³

When I read that I thought, OK, so it's not just me. It's not Appalachian stubbornness or whatever people want to call it. It's that leaving a place you built your life in feels like agreeing that it's over. And I'm not ready to agree.

What would you do with the notebook if you left?

Hollis: (laughs) Take it with me. It's the only record that these houses had people in them. The county's going to demolish everything eventually, seed it back to grass, put a deed restriction on it. Open space in perpetuity.¹⁴ No future structures, no insurance, nothing. Which is the right thing, probably. For the floodplain.

“

But somebody should remember that Darla Keeney lived in that yellow house and grew tomatoes that would make you cry, and Rick had that dumb dog, and Linda slammed her screen door every morning at 7:15. The floodplain doesn't remember that. The deed restriction doesn't remember that.

(He taps the notebook.)

So I write it down.

Are you staying?

Hollis: I'm here.

As of July 2026, Buncombe County's Group 4, 72 properties still under FEMA review, has no projected closing timeline. Meetings with property owners are expected in early fall 2026. The county has stated it has "zero control as to how long things sit at the federal and state level."¹⁵

The homes that have closed have not yet been demolished. The neighborhood, for now, still looks like a neighborhood. It just doesn't sound like one.

Documented buyout dynamics drawn from Buncombe County HMGP records, Harris County Flood Control District guidance, and comparable programs in Newport News, VA and Olive Branch, IL. See Georgetown Climate Center, Managed Retreat Toolkit; Harris County Flood Control District, Voluntary Buyout Guidance (2020). ↩
Asheville Citizen Times, July 6, 2026: https://www.aol.com/articles/helene-damaged-property-buyouts-fema-090648000.html ↩
WFAE / BPR, May 11, 2026: https://www.wfae.org/2026-05-11/fema-greenlights-more-than-140-buyouts-in-buncombe-county ↩
Asheville Citizen Times, July 6, 2026. ↩
WUNC, January 14, 2026: https://www.wunc.org/2026-01-14/fema-approves-first-batch-of-home-buyouts-homeowners-still-face-a-lengthy-process ↩
Buncombe County Helene Recovery update, May 19, 2026, per WFAE / BPR. ↩
Gerald Allen's closing documented in Asheville Citizen Times, July 6, 2026. ↩
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac disaster forbearance guidance does not create an automatic foreclosure stop tied to a buyout application. See CRS Insight IN11911: https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IN11911 ↩
FEMA HMGP buyouts are appraised at pre-disaster fair market value. See FEMA program guidance and CRS Insight IN11911. ↩
NC Newsline / Yahoo, October 2025: https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/swannanoa-post-helene-wishlist-fema-100140033.html ↩
Community food access organizer quoted in NC Newsline / Yahoo, October 2025. ↩
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Storm Water Services: https://stormwaterservices.mecknc.gov/floodplain-buyout-program ↩
Community Impact, May 26, 2026: https://communityimpact.com/houston/conroe-montgomery/real-estate/2026/05/26/after-the-water-rises-how-fema-maps-can-affect-insurance-rebuilding-and-buyout-options-for-montgomery-county-homeowners/ ↩
FEMA deed restriction requirements per Georgetown Climate Center, Managed Retreat Toolkit, and Harris County Flood Control District guidance. ↩
Montgomery County Recovery Manager Morgan Lumbley, quoted in Community Impact, May 26, 2026. ↩