As people continue along the long road of recovery after the remnants of Hurricane Helene moved through the region, many are finding themselves out of a job, and might be encountering homelessness for the first time.
Carter County was among the hardest hit in the state, home to towns like Hampton and Roan Mountain. And During the first two weeks of December, temperatures in the county stayed well below freezing, ranging from the lower 20s to the upper teens. The closest overnight shelter for the unhoused is in the next county over, in Johnson City.
“And I just thought, ‘How is anybody going to sleep out in this tonight and live,” said Brandon Young, the pastor of Harmony Freewill Baptist Church in Hampton.
For the last three years, Young has been opening his church doors to serve as a warming shelter during the winter. When temperatures dip below 25 degrees, he welcomes anyone inside for the night who needs to get warm and eat some food.
“How can we keep this church door shut and not use our facilities when people are freezing to death outside,” Young said. “I mean, it's just not what Christ would have us to do.”
According to Young, an alarming amount of people in the county are actively without a home. Nearly 20% of the county’s population live in poverty, according to data from the state, and the average salary is less than $30,000.
“There's not any real jobs here,” Young said. “Carter County Schools is the largest employer. We have a small hospital. You take all the industries that was here, we don't have but a handful left.”
That leaves many people out of work or struggling to make ends meet. Last year, nearly 60 people were homeless in the county. And Young expects that number to have increased significantly in recent months, especially after Tropical Storm Helene moved through the region.
“The homeless have lost their nothing,” Young said.
Young, along with his church’s Youth Pastor Trevor Waycaster, have watched tents and temporary shelters that people had built for themselves throughout the area disappear since Helene struck.
“If you drive through Elizabethton and then you look at the park where the majority of this population stays, the majority of them have their tents and their stuff set up along the river banks,” Waycaster said. “That's gone.”
And on top of that, many employers in the region are being forced to close their doors due to the impacts of the storm, like yarn manufacturer Parkdale Mills. Two weeks ago, the company announced plans to close its factory in Mountain City, which’ll put 120 people out of work.
And it isn’t easy to help those who are unhoused after a natural disaster. Organizations like the Appalachian Regional Coalition on Homelessness rely on the use of federal funds from the office of Housing and Urban Development, which are only allowed to be spent on helping people who haven’t been directly affected by a disaster.
“And so what can we do on a small scale, when it's 25 degrees or less,” Young said. “We can bring people in that are cold, love them. Show them Jesus, feed them. Help them in some way.”
Young’s church has been acting as an emergency shelter for flood victims since the storm. To keep a warm place open for the homeless, he partnered with the pastor of Doe River Baptist Church in Elizabethton, Wayne Lyons.
“I was really praying for a way that our community can get involved for some time now,” Lyons said. “Our church has not been heavily involved in some time, and we needed some kind of spark to get them back into it.”
Lyons says the warming center is just that. Since it first opened in November, he’s seen growth not only in the people who show up for shelter, but also in his church members who volunteer.
“Once people start serving and they start volunteering and working, then they get eager to do it,” Lyons said. “So not only is it helping those that are staying here, that need the warmth, that need the food, it's also helping those that maybe they've been sitting on a Pew for a long time.”
In the last three years since opening the warming centers, the pastors have provided a warm place to sleep for 23 people, and helped 9 of them find permanent housing.
Waycaster says they work to make sure people have the resources they need to get back on their feet.
“It goes a lot further than just keeping them warm throughout the winter,” Waycaster said. “We build these relationships with these folks year round, and make differences in their lives … Let's see what we can do to get them out of their situation and better themselves.”
While the pastors all acknowledge that it will take years of work to fix the problem, they’re determined to work at it year after year, one warm bed at a time.
WUOT News Intern Caroline Barnes contributed to this story.
