SC is buying out more than 200 repeatedly flooded homes. Here’s how the effort has gone.

Flooded streets in Columbia in 2015 after a hurricane offshore dumped 2 feet of rain across South Carolina, later prompting the state's and cities' first buyouts of repeatedly flooded homes. (Provided by Gills Creek Watershed Association)

The white oak Terri Straka planted as a sapling is all that still stands in her former yard in Socastee. Earlier this summer, demolition crews erased her home of more than three decades from the landscape on low-lying banks of the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway.

Seeing the tree serves as a reminder and brings on a mixture of feelings, she said, sadness and a sense of loss but also pride and hope for the future.

Straka’s is one of a dozen homes, so far, in her former coastal Horry County community torn down with federal aid and left to return to natural green space in recent years.

The work continues as a state-run program is in various stages of buying nearly 200 repeatedly flooded homes across six South Carolina communities. The effort comes in the wake of four hurricane-related disasters over four years.

The buyouts are part of a growing state and national push to aid residents living in floodplains who want to move out but may not have the financial resources to abandon their homes.

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Meanwhile, Tropical Storm Debby last week dumped upwards of 20 inches of rain in three days in some coastal South Carolina communities. The Edisto River near Givhans Ferry in the Lowcountry crested at its third highest level in a century .

Water flowing downstream continues to swell rivers in the Pee Dee.

Plus, meteorologists are forecasting the Intracoastal won’t reach its peak until early next week, according to the National Weather Service, bringing the potential for flooding of some five dozen homes and buildings in and around Straka’s old neighborhood.

Helping or hurting?

Straka said she frequently goes back to Socastee’s Rosewood neighborhood to see her sister and parents, who still live there. But two years ago, thanks to financial help from a buyout, she was able to move to a home 2 miles away on higher ground.

She praises the work done by the South Carolina Office of Resilience, which so far has closed on purchases of about 60 homes in Socastee and started the first demolitions earlier this year.

It’s still working on reaching deals with 130 other homeowners, largely in the towns of Nichols, Bennettsville, and around Hartsville and Darlington in Darlington County, as well as a small number in Cheraw and parts of Dillon County along the Little Pee Dee River.

Some cities and counties, including Columbia, Charleston, and Richland and Lexington Counties have operated their own buyout programs, each aiding roughly 20 or more residents.

More and more, communities across the country are turning to these buyouts as a way to prevent injury and death of residents trapped by floodwaters, as well as future costly property damages due to flooding.

The properties must remain undeveloped, providing a permanent solution to a previously repetitive circle of destruction. The natural space left behind also, ideally, opens up more land to absorb rain and runoff from future storms.

The funding comes from a maze of federal grants, largely from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which focuses its efforts on helping low-to-moderate-income households, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

South Carolina has upwards of $200 million in HUD funding at its disposal for a combination of buyouts, stormwater improvements and run-off related conservation efforts. Eight counties in the state also have tapped FEMA funding, which requires a 25% match from state or local governments, to aid in the purchase of 227 flooded homes since 2015, according to the state Emergency Management Division.

Nationally, FEMA has spent roughly $4 billion buying out about 50,000 flood-damaged homes since 1989, according to a study of FEMA’s data.

However, buyouts as a strategy can be controversial.

Governments worry about taking on responsibility for the property, according to Pew Charitable Trusts. Without full neighborhood participation, they can lead to blight or break up communities. And some criticize the program for not always being equitable or not reaching the communities with the greatest financial need.

Straka has seen it in Socastee, where corporations bought up properties in her former neighborhood not sold to the government, turning them into rentals where tenants aren’t eligible for the same flood protections offered to owners.

And around Columbia, several abandoned properties have changed hands multiple times, inflating the price beyond what Richland County can offer for a buyout.

Bailey Slice Parker, who heads up the Gills Creek Watershed Association, said the properties have become a dumping ground.

Beyond those issues, for homeowners, it can be a long wait. On average, federal buyouts can take two to five years, according to FEMA, though 80% are approved in less than two years.

Many in South Carolina are still waiting.

‘Something dramatic was happening’

The spate of disasters that prompted South Carolina communities to turn to buyouts started in 2015 with Hurricane Joaquin, which never made landfall but sat off the coast aiming a fire hose of moisture. Up to 2 feet of rain fell across large swaths of the state, leading to a catastrophic, so-called “thousand-year” flood.

Charleston and the Midlands were among the hardest hit in flooding that killed 19 people and breached at least 45 dams. Creeks in the Capital City swelled to 11-foot-deep rivers running through neighborhoods and commercial corridors.

That storm is what prompted then-Gov. Nikki Haley to form the state Disaster Recovery Office. (In 2020, a law signed by Gov. Henry McMaster made the Office of Resilience a separate agency.)

Then came Hurricane Matthew in 2016 , with four flood-related deaths. That was followed by Tropical Storm Irma in 2017, which brought 9 inches of rain to the Lowcountry and a storm tide 4 feet above normal.

Next came Hurricane Florence in 2018, which led to nine deaths and more than $600 million in damages.

The storm set a path that continued into North Carolina and sent water pouring down the Little Pee Dee and Waccamaw rivers, inundating small towns such as Nichols , which sits near the confluence of the Lumber and Little Pee, and backing the Intracoastal up into homes in Socastee such as Straka’s.

Straka moved to the Rosewood neighborhood in Socastee with her now-former husband, who was an airman stationed at Myrtle Beach Air Force base before it closed in 1993 . She raised three children in the tight-knit community, which was mostly full of air base families and veterans.

Living by the water, Straka said she and her neighbors were used to water ponding in their yard over the years but no major home damage for decades. Her parents’ home, which sat closer to the landing, flooded in 2015 but hers did not.

Straka’s own troubles came in 2016, when flood water swamped her house. Luckily, she had flood insurance.

She refinanced and rebuilt, but it wasn’t over. She had not even been back in her home for a year before it flooded in 2018, when she lost everything yet again. The water kept coming more and more often, even just on rainy days outside of major storms events.

“It became very obvious something dramatic was happening,” Straka said.

Still, she hated the idea of leaving.

She loved watching over the neighborhood children and attending football games at the nearby high school. She loved the neighborhood picnics, the joint Independence Day celebrations, presents swapped at Christmas and turkeys shared on Thanksgiving.

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Straka first looked into elevating her home like her sister had — a costly measure. It didn’t work out though. Besides, she’d still be living in a floodplain, trapped when the water got too high.

Between a sea level that had risen 10 inches since the late 1950s, more frequent and intense hurricanes, and more runoff caused by rapid development to house a growing population along the Grand Strand, she came to the conclusion things were only going to get worse.

“I could not withstand it,” Straka said. “I could not rebuild any more.”

The process she met with in trying to get out was equally frustrating, between paperwork, delays and haggling for a fair price for her home.

“It was the red tape you had to get through,” Straka said. “Common people can’t do these things. You have to fight with everyone about everything.”

Straka is not one to back down. In 2020, she led a small protest in Horry County , joined by several others from the neighborhood.

Meanwhile, she was searching for a new place to live amid a hyper-competitive housing market in one of the fastest growing area’s of the country.

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Contractors hired to make offers on the homes in her old neighborhood were offering people as little as $70,000. She urged her neighbors to push for more. She eventually negotiated $220,000 for her own home, but still it was hard to find a new place to live at a comparable price.

It took two years and losing out on three properties that sold before Straka could get financing approved to find her current home. Her mortgage payment is much higher now, but working in hotel and rental property management in a popular tourism destination, she’s been able to make it work.

Straka also helped her parents move. They stayed in the Rosewood neighborhood but in a home away from where the floodwaters have reached to date.

Mixed results

Despite the fight it took to get where she is today, Straka said she would do it all again.

“I know no one wants to hear it, but the relocation program is key,” she said.

A survey of those who participated in Charleston’s buyout program of a West Ashley townhome community found similar sentiments, The Post and Courier previously reported.

Residents who responded to the survey said communication from the city started off well but deteriorated over time. They said there was no clear schedule and many were forced to tap into their savings while they waited years. More than half reported staying with family members or friends or renting month-to-month. Still, all said they’d make the same decision.

The feeling is different for Carmen Bowie, of Columbia, who also was displaced for three years while waiting on a buyout from the city of Columbia.

“If someone had told me the reality, I would have just walked away from my mortgage,” she said. “Every time I see flooding on the news, I just think, ‘Those people have no clue what they’re headed for.’ ”

Bowie felt Columbia’s program was poorly handled.

She said contractors hired by the city gave false hope, making her believe the process would be quick and recommending she rent month-to-month rather than signing a year-long lease. Instead, she said she had to move nine times and racked up bills trying to cover her mortgage, flood insurance and rent all at once.

“I will be in debt the rest of my life,” the 59-year-old said, not sure when she’ll be able to afford to retire. “It was just a complete nightmare.”

When the floodwaters came in 2015, Bowie was stranded in her home for hours before neighbors could rescue her. It was the worst it had ever been, though not the first time her home had flooded.

Bowie said water that had backed up from the city’s drainage system first flooded her home in 2004. It was an expensive problem city officials told her they could not afford to fix, causing continuous issues until the 2015 disaster when she lost everything.

She had flood insurance, but it wasn’t enough to cover all of her expenses. If she wanted to stay, she also would have had to raise her home 6 feet, which she couldn’t afford.

When Bowie’s buyout was finally approved in 2018, she received $78,000, enough to pay off her mortgage but leaving her little for a new place. The amounts the city paid to other property owners, while meeting federal appraisal requirements, varied widely — with outliers as low as $6,300 and as high as $400,000, a city document shows.

The entire process

The state Office of Resilience, which is running the other buyout programs in the state, did not exist when Bowie and other Columbia residents were seeking help.

In its approach, the office has sought to better communicate with flood victims and help them through all steps of the process, assigning case managers who check in frequently, said Lillian Adderson, the agency’s disaster case management program director. Her team’s focus goes well beyond buyouts. They help with all kinds of aid, from moving assistance to repairs and beyond.

Adderson recalls working in a disaster recovery center in 2016, alongside officials from FEMA, when a woman came in hysterical to the point she could not fill out the paperwork required to receive aid.

“I remember going up to her, pulling her aside and holding her hands and telling her we’re going to be here to help you,” Adderson said.

That’s what the woman needed to hear. She was able to get through the paperwork rather than being sent away empty-handed. Since then, Adderson has made it a point to always have her team present in centers when a disaster is declared.

“They’re going to get frustrated. They’re going to get tired. They’re already upset,” Adderson said. “But we’re trying to be there through the entire process, and I think that’s the most important thing.”

Beyond responding to disaster, the Office of Resilience is charged with trying to prevent the worst of its effects.

With that in mind, the largest portion of federal resources — $100 million — are slated for major stormwater and drainage improvement projects, according to the agency’s latest report. Buyouts make up the second largest portion at $42 million of HUD-awarded mitigation funds.

The agency is seeing progress, said spokeswoman Hope Warren, developing a statewide plan and speaking with local governments about the importance of keeping flood risk in mind when regulating development, “to make sure we’re not continuing to put additional people in harm’s way.”

Still, need continues to outpace the dollars available.

That includes a pair of state-funded reserves to help with disaster recovery and prevention. The smaller is a $6 million low-interest, revolving loan fund that communities can tap into to help finance buyouts or drainage projects. The state has also set aside nearly $300 million since 2020 to help cover more immediate aid needs and cleanup costs following a natural disaster.

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In selecting which projects to fund, Warren said, the agency thinks about communities’ varying needs. Growing communities with more homes, development and concrete, face more issues with drainage. Smaller, shrinking communities don’t have the tax base to pay for necessary maintenance of aging systems, she said.

“We’re taking a really close look, really studying the issue, and not just trying to put a Band-Aid on things,” Warren said.

To Straka and other advocates, buyouts must continue to be part of the solution. She said she’d also like to see more help for those who can’t afford or don’t want to relocate.

She misses the Rosewood neighborhood but now she has a bigger lot, reminding her of where she grew up living in Amish Country until she was 15 years old. She’s growing fruit trees and muscadine grapes. She has chickens and makes her own soaps. And even though she doesn’t go in it much herself, she loves watching her grandkids swim in the pool that came with the house.

“It’s a different atmosphere,” she said. “But I feel safe. That’s the difference.”

Straka was there the day demolition started on her old home. It was hard to watch but she told herself, “I have to feel this; I have to go through it.”

And in some ways, she said, seeing the now-empty lot with its tall white oak is beautiful. She gave it back to nature, sacrificing the home she once made there in the hope the land will help hold back future waves.