Where housing needs are huge after Helene’s wrath, tiny cabins offer shelter in NC

After Helene’s rains struck, Thomas Whiteside and his grandson watched a creek near their Black Mountain house rise hundreds of feet in minutes. Had they waited to evacuate, they would have been trapped inside when water reached the windows.

Weeks later, Whiteside received a free, temporary shelter on his property from Cabins 4 Christ, a group created to help some of the many people made homeless by Helene. This past week, he received even more news: The group will rebuild his roof for him, free of charge.

In his 51 years of living in Black Mountain, Whiteside never expected a storm as bad as Helene, he said. He also didn’t expect the community’s response to the damage to be so strong.

“I’m 67 years old. I’ve been retired for 20 years, medically retired, and sometimes you just feel like you don’t get the help you need. But during this mess, honey, I’ve got more help than I can shake a stick at,” he said.

Helene’s floods and mudslides damaged at least 100,000 homes in Western North Carolina, according to a state count. As of this week, FEMA has committed over $52 million in displacement assistance and more than 5,300 families are currently checked into hotels.

The momentous task of repairing and rebuilding could take years as owners navigate government aid, securing insurance payouts, obtaining building permits and the rest.

Seeing this reality, many nonprofits stepped in to help, with everything from knocking on doors to offering free, immediate repairs to driving caravans of campers to hard-hit areas where displaced residents have been living in tents.

Devin Taylor is the founder of Campers Care, a disaster-relief ministry based in Virginia. He and his wife Julie started Cabins 4 Christ to provide temporary shelter in the wake of Helene’s devastation.

The group’s mini homes are 8 x 16 foot shed-like structures. They have no running water, no kitchen and no electricity, but come stocked with a composting toilet, storage space, supplies like water and a small cooking stove, a mattress and occasionally solar panels, Taylor said.

The sheds also have insulation and an extra layer of plywood to keep them warmer, he said, and both individuals and families continue to sleep in them as winter nears.

The group routinely checks on people given the cabins to ensure they have enough supplies including propane for cooking and heat, blankets and food.

“We don’t just give them something and say, ‘Here you go, sink or swim,’” Taylor said. “We actually have a team of people that go back out and check on their needs, especially the elderly this time of year.”

Cabins 4 Christ is about shelter

Whiteside was the first to receive a cabin from Cabins 4 Christ, but the group has homed 141 families or individuals in over 90 cabins built by the group and in donated campers and trailers it received, Taylor said.

The group usually draws around 100 to 125 volunteers a day to Camp Cedar Cliff outside Asheville to build the cabins, manage donations, and repair homes in the area, he said.

On Nov. 25, volunteers from across the country, some individuals and others whole families with children, worked on the grounds of the Christian-oriented camp’s welcome pavilion, which now looks more like a construction site than camp site.

People drove from Colorado to donate a camper and from Texas to help cook for volunteers. Some materials have been driven in from as far away as New Mexico, he said.

“Some stay a day or two, some stay longer,” Taylor said. “I’ve got people here that’ve been here since day one, from as far away as California, and sleeping in their cars.”

Each morning starts with a huddle where volunteers receive hot food and beverages before they get to work hammering, sorting donations, delivering cabins or traveling to nearby homes to make repairs.

Whiteside, whose home was too badly damaged to reoccupy, was connected to Cabins 4 Christ by his daughter, who suggested he reach out and ask for help.

He lived in his cabin for around a month before he received a Nomad camper trailer with a bathroom, furnace and bed gifted by another group in early November. He still likes to sleep in the cabin, in a recliner that helps his back pain.

The cabin is a “Godsend,” Whiteside said. It has allowed him to stay on his property and keep watch of his car and damaged home. Most importantly, it was a safe roof over his head.

Once his roof is repaired and his home is safe to move back into, his older sister who also lost her home to floods in Swannanoa will move in with him.

“The Lord is opening his doors, and the Lord’s inviting anybody to walk in who wants to, and Devin is standing there right now with him holding the door,” he said.

Welcomed by Camp Cedar Cliff

Helene’s destruction took down cell phone service across western North Carolina counties hit hard by the historic storm. Shortly after that, FEMA staff flew to Camp Cedar Cliff via helicopter and set up a temporary communications tower to help with rescue efforts, said camp director Tim Brady.

The portable tower trailer had a 40-foot tall extending antenna and was up for three days, he said.

After that, the camp hosted 200 Duke Energy lineworkers in cabins while they worked to restore power in hard-hit Asheville and the Swannanoa Valley.

The camp was damaged by the storm, Brady said, but surrounding areas were hit much worse, he eventually saw.

“The whole time I was thinking, ‘this is awful, we’ve been hit so hard. You know, what a story this is going to be to tell people how bad this was,’” he said. “When we finally got to the front gate and were able to get a vehicle out of camp, we realized we were blessed because of the loss of life right outside of our gate.”

A human resources director from Buncombe County Public Schools called Brady in mid-October, he said, and asked if the camp would be willing to host a new organization called Cabins 4 Christ. It needed a place to build cabins for 30 teachers.

From there, they just kept building.

Coping with damage and challenges

As the need for emergency housing wanes, Cabins 4 Christ is pivoting to helping people repair and rebuild their permanent residences, Taylor said.

During Thanksgiving week, Cabins 4 Christ volunteers were dispatched not far down Old U.S. Highway 70 in Swannanoa to the home of a woman expected to give birth on Dec. 5.

One volunteer was Michael Barry-Rec, a builder from Virginia there to help Cabins 4 Christ for a week.

The homeowner was pregnant and stuck in the home when it flooded up to the window, Barry-Rec said. The group was hustling to have her house livable by the time the baby comes.

“The devastation breaks my heart, but the people that have risen and have come down to help offsets that despair. It really is something to be part of and witness,” he said.

But the work isn’t always easy or free of complications. Relying on donations means that construction materials may not be compliant with building codes and regulations. In one case volunteers couldn’t use donated insulation for a home that didn’t have insulation before Helene because it wasn’t the right grade.

With so much demand, it takes time to land needed inspections while trying to get people back into their homes as quickly as possible, especially because some families resorted living in tents after the storm.

One reason Cabins 4 Christ hasn’t installed electricity or plumbing in its sheds is because it would be too difficult to comply with state building codes, Taylor said.

“We build them the way that we do so that we could be good partners, not only with our ministry partners, but also good partners with our local government,” he said.

Despite so many challenges, it’s been inspiring to see the community come together and help each other amid tragedy, Brady said. He’s especially proud of religious groups.

“It’s too soon to say, ‘here’s the silver linings,’ because there’s no silver linings in clear view yet,” he said, yet: “Churches and the faith-based organizations like ourselves… have just shut down and said there’s nothing more important than meeting the needs of our community.”

This story was originally published December 4, 2024 at 5:30 AM with the headline "Where housing needs are huge after Helene’s wrath, tiny cabins offer shelter in NC."

Nora O’Neill

The Charlotte Observer

Nora O’Neill is the regional accountability reporter for The Charlotte Observer. She previously covered local government and politics in Florida.