After a disaster, much of the damage is obvious: downed power lines, flooded houses, washed-out roads. These damages make the news and are prioritized for repairs. But the cameras don’t capture the long-term damage: the slow drain on a household’s finances for months, sometimes years, as they struggle to recover.

The financial toll of disasters is widely felt but thinly documented. To better understand the arc of financial recovery after disasters, we surveyed 23 families who experienced significant financial loss after Hurricane Helene and followed up to interview 20 in depth. These families lost housing, jobs, and transportation because of the storm, with delays in insurance payments and gaps in assistance forcing many to deplete their savings and rely on credit. As one survivor put it, “Every time I thought, ‘okay, I’m done, I don’t have to take any more out of [my savings],’ something would come up.”

These first-person accounts illustrate the reality of postdisaster financial recovery and point to concrete opportunities for policymakers, disaster recovery organizations, financial institutions, and philanthropic organizations to align the timing and effectiveness of postdisaster programs with actual household financial needs.

Key Takeaways About Households Affected by Hurricane Helene

  • Financial stress snowballed over time. Households depleted savings and faced prolonged repair, housing, utility, food, and transportation expenses.
  • Assistance was often hard to access, arrived too late, or did not match household needs. Survivors navigated paperwork, documentation, digital barriers, and unclear rules to apply for uncertain or inadequate support.
  • Households filled gaps with savings, credit, loans, or informal support. As a result, survivors sometimes faced deepening debt or worse credit.
  • Fixed incomes made recovery costs harder to absorb. Older adults and people with disabilities were less able to take on debt, earn additional income, or cover unexpected repair and housing costs.
  • Financial stress compounded emotional strain. Delays, unresolved repairs, and questions about assistance kept many survivors under sustained stress.

Read the full article about households struggling to recover financially after Hurricane Helene by Eleanor Pratt, Andrew Rumbach, Chandler Ian Wilkins, Thea Garon, and Anna Doñate at Urban Institute.