Washington is offering money to move. Don’t expect flood-soaked North Carolina residents to bite.

Congress has poured billions of dollars into programs to buy out homeowners and help them relocate to safer areas after natural disasters. But they're not expected to win over many residents in flood-ravaged rural North Carolina.

Powerful storms, worsened by climate change, are causing more frequent flooding and destroying communities once considered safe — including those wiped out by Hurricane Helene, which killed more than 230 people across the Southeast.

Zeb Smathers, the mayor of Canton in western North Carolina, said he’s no longer comfortable persuading people and businesses to remain after heavy rainfall from Helene overflowed the banks of the Pigeon River just three years after a “once-in-a-lifetime” flood hit the town of 4,400. So Smathers is looking to federal programs to help residents and business owners who want to move out of the town.

“There was a western North Carolina that existed before this and there’s the one that comes after,” Smathers said in an interview. “I’m numb, but I experienced this three years ago — which allows us to ask some of the tougher questions.”

But Smathers admitted he didn’t expect many residents to take up the offer from the federal government. There’s not many other places nearby for people to go, he said, since Helene brought “apocalyptic” damage to all corners of western North Carolina, where housing affordability is a top concern. Many people simply want to hold on to their properties, many of which have been in their families for generations, he said.

Those factors will hobble programs designed to lessen personal and financial hardship as well as costly taxpayer-funded disaster responses.

The bipartisan infrastructure law of 2021 added $3.5 billion in funding to the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Flood Mitigation Assistance program, which buys out severely flood-damaged homes as part of a policy to keep people out of harm’s way while reducing taxpayer spending on future disasters. It added another $500 million in low-interest loans and $1 billion to a grant program to support community projects to reduce disaster risks.

The flood assistance program pays pre-disaster market-based prices for properties that have been damaged by floods — the most costly type of natural disaster in the United States — and which are most prone to future flooding. FEMA said that most of its property acquisitions come through the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program, for which funding is made available through federal disaster declarations.

The swaths of Appalachia that Helene devastated in North Carolina are also priority zones for the Biden administration’s efforts to steer investment to impoverished areas dealing with persistent pollution and environmental degradation. Several Census tracts in the affected region fall into a scoring system that identifies vulnerable areas that President Joe Biden has vowed would receive 40 percent of all federal clean energy and climate benefits, an effort designed to bolster equity in places long overlooked for investment.

But aid workers, community groups and environmental organizations say few people are likely to take advantage of federal programs that are flush with new funding from Congress. Their long family ties to the area, skepticism about the federal government and a dearth of affordable housing in nearby communities all point to people trying to rebuild in the same place — potentially leaving thousands of residents vulnerable to the next storm.

“We’re a heavy Republican state, let's just say that. They don't believe in climate change, don't believe in environmental justice, believe that DEI is from the pits of hell,” said Paula Swepson, executive director of West Marion Community Forum, a community organization working to overcome racial barriers to development in nearby McDowell County. “So how can we continue to fight and let people know that these things are real – and if you didn't believe it, how do you think this happened?”

Officials in many towns, however, don’t know how to access the federal programs, which require them to submit cumbersome applications when many of them are focused on immediate disaster needs. Rules for accessing federal funds for rebuilding often require substantially damaged homes to elevate , at considerable expense, even as local politicians will face pressure to relax building codes to speed recoveries.

And even if people want to pursue federal incentives to relocate, the rising cost of living in western North Carolina offers few prospects for displaced low-income residents.

The area of western North Carolina that Helene ravaged is already one of the least affordable in the state, said Eric Maribojoc, a real estate professor at the University of North Carolina. People spend a disproportionately higher share of income on housing costs there compared with areas like Charlotte and Durham.

People who have fled rising home prices in booming Buncombe County, home to Asheville, have already contributed to rising rents in the region, said Audrey Moore, marketing coordinator with McDowell Local Food Advisory Council. Many are elderly, living on fixed incomes and cannot easily relocate. For now, they are faced with returning to “dilapidated trailers” with no electricity and autumn temperatures dropping near 40 degrees Fahrenheit. In the long term, there’s little clarity about where they will end up.

“There is no next place for people to go,” she said.

Over the next six months, residents in the pocket of Appalachia that suffered damages from Helene should expect to hear about FEMA-backed offers to buy flooded homes, said Lisa Sharrard, a Columbia, S.C.-based flood consultant. For those who seek to stay, in addition to the costly rebuilding requirements for receiving federal money, they will likely need to purchase flood insurance, another expense for counties where only about 1 percent of homeowners owned such policies before Helene.

In 2023, federal hazard mitigation funds were used to acquire or make improvements on 637 properties, according to FEMA data. That came in a year that saw 28 disasters costing at least $1 billion of damage, a U.S. record, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

“That program will probably be extended in a way western Carolina that it hasn't been before,” Maribojoc said of flood buyouts. “In the past, we've been looking at coastal houses falling into the sea by erosion, and now we have to sort of have those same discussions in western Carolina.”

Joel Scata, a senior attorney with the environmental group Natural Resources Defense Council, said those towns will likely have trouble accessing the federal dollars despite the fact Congress targeted new buyout funding to the type of low-income communities reeling from Helene. That’s because those town governments lack the “technical knowhow” to navigate the complex grants, he said.

And as well-intentioned as those policies are, mistrust of government runs deep in places like McDowell County, according to Amy Stevens, program manager with community organization McDowell Access to Care and Health. That antipathy to Washington’s intervention has made it difficult for her to convince people to even sign up for immediate disaster relief aid.

“Especially in our area, folks come in from the government talking about trying to buy your land – that’s not going to go over too well,” she said.

But staying will be expensive, too. Helene will further constrain that housing supply. FEMA will also update floodplain maps, placing new conditions on how and where to build.

Local politicians will face political pressure to grant variances to or repeal local ordinances designed to prevent future flooding in order to speed rebuilding and lessen short-term hardship, said Chad Berginnis, executive director of the Association of State Floodplain Managers.

Sharrard said many towns are simply “shell-shocked,” so they entertain building back the same way, quickly, even if it leaves them exposed to a repeat incident.

“I call that the emotional factor,” she said. “They want to get back to things as normal as possible.”

People in the region commonly live in homes passed down through families over generations. Others live in manufactured homes. They are not wealthy despite living in an increasingly pricey area.

And many of those homeowners lacked a mortgage and were therefore not required to obtain flood insurance that could insulate them from unexpected, damaging costs. Most people in that situation elect to forgo that protection, meaning they will pay out of pocket or take out a loan to rebuild or sell the land, said Roy Wright, president of the Insurance Institute for Home and Business Safety.

Homeownership without a mortgage in the affected counties is close to 50 percent, compared to 25 percent in wealthier, more urban counties like Mecklenburg, Maribojoc said. Now, after Helene may have destroyed many homeowners’ biggest financial assets, they may lack the savings to buy another home outright or may struggle to afford a mortgage with their income.

In places like Madison County, where the terrain is steep and incomes are below the state average, there might literally be nowhere else for people to go. The county has a far higher rate of homeownership without a mortgage than the rest of the state — 58 percent versus 39 percent for the state — and few homes had federal flood insurance.

Many residents will likely shoulder costly repairs to remain in familiar, tight-knit communities, said Robert Young, a professor at Western Carolina University, where he directs its Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines. That also means they will remain exposed to the next flood, he said.

“It’s all they know and finding some way to put things back is still going to be the best option for them, probably because they just don't have a lot of other options,” Young said.

Katy O'Donnell contributed to this report.