Published on November 13, 2025 Posted in Stories

A Year Into the Recovery in WNC, the Need for Legal Aid Continues

Legal services organizations that mobilized last fall to provide Hurricane Helene disaster relief share stories, updates and perspectives as mountain communities slowly rebuild.

In the year since the remnants of Hurricane Helene roared into Western North Carolina, causing widespread, catastrophic damage and claiming the lives of more than 100 residents, emergency relief efforts such as shelters and rescue operations have given way to critical infrastructure repair, demolition and rebuilding projects, and government funding allocations for individuals and businesses that sustained losses in the storm.

As mountain towns marked this first anniversary and pressed on in what will likely be a decades-long recovery, members of North Carolina’s legal services community remain committed to the work — more common in the eastern part of the state, where hurricanes and flooding are hazards of proximity to the coast — of supporting residents’ civil legal storm-recovery needs.

In the past year, legal aid organizations and volunteers from the private bar have dedicated thousands of hours and allocated significant resources to help survivors, from replacing lost documents and filing Federal Emergency Management Agency applications and insurance appeals to verifying property rights and securing death benefits for families who lost loved ones.

The work comes amid widespread cuts in funding for legal nonprofits at both the federal and state levels, including the North Carolina General Assembly’s July 9 provision freezing 2026 grant making by NC IOLTA, that have put pressure on staffing and services.

Here, we share stories, updates and perspectives from four organizations — Pisgah Legal Services, Legal Aid of North Carolina, Disability Rights North Carolina and the North Carolina Bar Foundation — that are providing civil legal assistance to residents in the region.

This photo, taken in the days immediately following the Sept. 27, 2024, storm, shows the effects of flooding on a street near Biltmore Village in Asheville.

Pisgah Legal Services

Pisgah Legal Services, a nonprofit legal aid organization that serves WNC, quickly launched their disaster-recovery efforts in communities across their 18-county service area.

As Executive Director Jackie Kiger noted during a panel discussion with fellow legal aid organizations and the NC IOLTA Board of Trustees in September, their work in disaster recovery remains a priority even as residents’ needs for other civil legal services grows — sometimes as a result of the storm. She cited examples including the following:

The region’s longstanding crisis in affordable housing has been exacerbated by the storm’s damage to property and now leaves more low-income residents without affordable and stable housing.
Domestic violence is increasing as more people, feeling limited in their options, stay in dangerous situations that have been further fueled by the trauma of the storm and its aftermath.
More consumer fraud cases are popping up as substandard repairs made in the weeks after the storm come to light.
Even though the original FEMA filing deadline has passed, new claims are being pursued as secondary storm damage such as wood rot and mold is uncovered and as private insurance denials create new areas of need.

“The reality is that people are living in unsafe conditions. We know children are living in homes with no heat, no running water, damaged roofs,” Kiger said. “We’re hearing cases that are shocking our attorneys, and that says a lot.”

In a video the organization put out on the first anniversary of the storm, Pisgah Legal attorneys share the stories of two survivors whose insurance claims were denied, noting the ongoing role legal aid resources play in helping them navigate their appeals.

This video from Pisgah Legal Services provides an update on the nonprofit’s disaster recovery work, including stories from two survivors whose insurance claims were denied.

“Pisgah Legal works in partnership with dozens of other nonprofits and community organizations,” Kiger adds in the video. “This work continues today, on insurance appeals, mortgage and foreclosure issues, disaster-related debt and consumer scams. We’re using the power of the law to rebuild hope and to restore justice, right here in Western North Carolina.”

In continued support for WNC, the nonprofit’s website lists upcoming filing deadlines and recovery events as well as resources for survivors.

Even as Pisgah Legal and their partners remain committed to this work, however, financial concerns arising from state and federal funding cuts threaten their ability to fully staff critical programs. These cuts could have devastating implications for low-income residents should another Hurricane Helene hit North Carolina, Kiger told the NC IOLTA board.

“This storm is a reminder of how little we control when it comes to the needs and priorities of legal aid,” she said. “The storm and its decades-long recovery needs emphasize how important it is that organizations like ours are nimble and prepared.”

An aerial photo of the Blue Ridge Mountains taken in April 2025 shows houses spread out along winding roads surrounded by tall trees and marked changes in elevation — conditions that have made some aspects of disaster recovery more challenging.

Legal Aid of North Carolina

Staff from Legal Aid of North Carolina — a statewide nonprofit with a dedicated Disaster Relief Project — “came together quickly after Helene hit to meet the emergent needs of the community,” Alicia Edwards, project director, and Jonathan Perry, western regional manager and managing attorney of the Foothills Office in Morganton, reported in December 2024. LANC’s four offices in WNC moved quickly to partner with Pisgah Legal Services and other organizations and agencies to share their expertise and resources.

Echoing Kiger’s comments, Edwards emphasized in the discussion with the NC IOLTA board in September that significant legal needs persist a year after Helene.

“People are calling us more than ever for their legal needs,” she said. “Their immediate post-storm needs have been met, but so many other problems are coming up in the aftermath.”

She cited a few examples:

Property-related legal cases, including heir property concerns exacerbated by missing or incomplete documentation, are ongoing.
The state-funded recovery program created for Western NC, Renew NC — which has dedicated $807M in federal funding to housing recovery in 29 counties and prioritizes low- to moderate-income families — does not include assistance for temporary housing options, which are needed as displaced residents work to rebuild their homes or await decisions from FEMA and/or insurance claims.
As the state evaluates the risk of future landslides and other storm-related impacts in mountain regions, Edwards said, an emerging question is, “Can homes even be rebuilt in those areas?”
Inquiries involving the region’s thousands of private roads and bridges, often the only way to access homes in remote mountain communities, represent an entirely new legal issue for LANC’s disaster relief team and their partners.

LANC’s September 2025 Pro Bono Newsletter provided a recap of support the organization delivered through the Aug. 27 “Ask a Lawyer” disaster recovery hotline, offered in partnership with Pisgah Legal and the North Carolina Bar Foundation. Fifty-six attorneys and 46 call screeners volunteered their time to assist 347 callers — a 60% increase in clients served compared to the first hotline held in June.

“People are calling us more than ever for their legal needs. Their immediate post-storm needs have been met, but so many other problems are coming up in the aftermath.”

“We’re still getting calls from storms that took place in 2016, 2018, 2020 and 2021,” Edwards noted in her remarks to the NC IOLTA board. “And [Tropical Storm] Chantal hit central North Carolina in July.”

As work in WNC continues, LANC’s statewide scope means they must be ready for the next storm — which could happen anytime during hurricane season, which ends Nov. 30. “Every storm is unique, so we have to be flexible,” Edwards said. “But legal needs for the people affected tend to be the same.”

The nonprofit’s critical work in disaster relief and preparation this year has taken place amid cuts to its workforce and services in the face of fiscal uncertainties.

On Oct. 21, LANC announced the closure of its Rocky Mount office, which serves a six-county area (including three counties designated as legal deserts), as a result of the NC General Assembly’s freeze on 2026 NC IOLTA funds. It has since announced the closing of its Pembroke and Goldsboro offices as well.

“Legal Aid of North Carolina will lose approximately $6.3M in IOLTA funding due to the freeze,” the Oct. 21 announcement explains. “Without IOLTA funding, Legal Aid of North Carolina estimates that thousands of North Carolinians — including veterans, seniors, survivors of domestic violence and disaster victims — will go unserved. Rural areas will be hardest hit, with 48 of North Carolina’s 100 counties already considered ‘legal deserts.’”

Disability Rights North Carolina

Like LANC, NC IOLTA grantee Disability Rights North Carolina also manages a Disaster Recovery Project, one that is focused on ensuring that members of affected communities who have disabilities are able to weather and recover from natural disasters. This work is often done in real time and includes:

Monitoring shelters to make sure people with disabilities have what they need for their disability, including accommodations, food and medical supplies.
Making sure shelters and temporary housing are accessible and that families can stay together.
Advocating for people who are denied accommodations, such as special food or service animals.
Providing assistance quickly to meet urgent needs, such as helping people with disabilities use computers to apply for federal benefits and helping people who use ventilators and other medical devices access that equipment in an emergency.

The organization also provides information and resources about disaster preparedness and recovery.

On Oct. 8, 2025, the nonprofit published Refuge From the Storm: DRNC’s Advocacy Stabilizes Families and Prevents Future Harm, which tells the story of one family’s desperate search for a safe home during and after Hurricane Helene — and how Disability Rights NC advocates assisted them in finding permanent housing and resources for their child with autism. An excerpt is below.

Just days before Hurricane Helene hit Western NC, a mother and her three daughters, including one autistic child, moved from Florida to Asheville. Mom thought she had secured the most important piece of their new start: safe housing with a Section 8 voucher. But as the storm approached, her plans unraveled. The apartment complex she planned to move into suddenly claimed it had no Section 8 units available, even though emails confirmed otherwise. With nowhere else to go, the family ended up in a disaster shelter, awaiting the storm, unsure what would come next.

Disability Rights North Carolina staff met the family in Asheville at a disaster relief hub during our monitoring working the affected region. Using our authority as NC’s Protection and Advocacy organization, DRNC staff monitored numerous disaster shelters to ensure they were accessible and that residents fully understood their rights and the services available to them.

Our advocates guided this family through the process of finding permanent housing and connected them with autism-related assistance and community resources including Vaya Health, the school district and other connections to start building a web of support.

In addition to the grants supporting these disaster response services following Hurricane Helene, in 2025 NC IOLTA appropriated funds for Disability Rights NC’s education rights and homelessness prevention projects through $550K in Civil Legal Aid grants. As with Pisgah Legal and LANC, DRNC is facing concerns about their funding in 2026.

In a message to the community updated on Oct. 8, 2025, the organization shared with stakeholders their decision to lay off six team members, reduce staff hours and pause new client intake in response to the IOLTA funding freeze and other uncertainties.

This photo taken in November 2025 shows the spectacular fall colors of the mountains surrounding Boone, an annual draw for many tourists from across North Carolina and beyond.

North Carolina Bar Foundation

As the charitable arm of the North Carolina Bar Association, the North Carolina Bar Foundation is a source of funding and pro bono support to North Carolina legal services organizations that work to advance values including access to justice and service through the profession.

The NCBF programs staff engages NCBA members in pro bono service, working alongside the NCBA Young Lawyers Division — which coordinates the North Carolina Disaster Legal Services program — to promote pro bono opportunities, providing recruiting, training and coordinating of volunteer lawyers and paralegals to respond to emergent civil legal cases in the aftermath of natural disasters. As part of their annual “blue sky planning” efforts, the NCBF convenes a meeting with other disaster-relief organizations and government agencies to identify needs across the state.

“We are regularly connecting with peers in other states to share resources, technologies, outreach strategies, volunteer training materials and other guidance.”

As NCBF Senior Director Kim Bart Mullikin explained to the NC IOLTA board in September, “We organize the private bar to respond to the needs of North Carolinians affected by disaster.”

In the wake of Hurricane Helene, NCBF expanded their existing pro bono partnership with LANC to include Pisgah Legal Services, recruiting and training hundreds of attorneys and advocates to help staff in-person clinics and phone hotlines over the last year. As NCBF is able to serve clients whose income falls above the threshold to qualify for legal aid, this partnership expanded the reach of disaster-relief services in WNC and helped speed resources to residents who desperately needed legal support.

Bart Mullikin shared some highlights of this collaborative approach to disaster relief during the September panel discussion with the NC IOLTA board:

A national organization with expertise in disaster recovery legal aid work donated technology that the partners used to coordinate their efforts.
Many out-of-state lawyers offered pro bono services in the wake of Hurricane Helene. While it added “an extra layer of complexity” secure out-of-state practice approval for these volunteers, their contributions brought additional support at a time when North Carolinians needed it.
While FEMA appeals may not be a familiar practice to many attorneys, Bart Mullikin noted that it is “not too difficult to train pro bono lawyers to do them. And this partnership with other legal assistance organizations means we all now have a dedicated team of lawyers trained to help clients navigate those specific challenges.”
The NCBA’s Paralegal Division has also been very engaged in this work. “The NCBA Paralegal Division members provided critical assistance with pro bono case management, a huge undertaking for this disaster response effort,” Bart Mullikin said.

The Disaster Legal Services pro bono program continues to contribute to efforts in WNC, providing training, resources and volunteer opportunities for members of the NCBA. And while many challenges remain for communities in WNC, Bart Mullikin emphasized to NC IOLTA’s board that North Carolina’s legal community has a great deal to celebrate.

“Our disaster recovery program in North Carolina is a shining star across the nation,” she said. “We are regularly connecting with peers in other states to share resources, technologies, outreach strategies, volunteer training materials and other guidance. It really drives home how effectively we all work together to provide critical disaster legal services in our state.”

Reinforcing that sentiment, in June 2025 the NCBA bestowed the Outstanding Collaborative Pro Bono Award to these organizations and their partners in the coordinated response to the need in WNC: Pisgah Legal, LANC, NCBF, NCBA Young Lawyers Division, NCBA Paralegal Division, North Carolina Pro Bono Resource Center, American Bar Association Young Lawyers Division and FEMA.

Conclusion

By the one-year mark of Hurricane Helene, many mountain towns were once again open for business, with municipal and tourism campaigns urging North Carolinians to the east to visit for the fall colors and crisp autumn air.

The season represented an opportunity for the much-needed infusion of funds into these communities. As the panelists noted, all of the counties in the storm’s path have experienced economic loss — not just in tourism but in income from property taxes, unemployment, relocations of many residents and businesses to other areas, and more. It’s not yet known how the storm will ultimately affect the overall population of the region.