FEMA has announced that it will soon sign an agreement to transfer the Greensboro Influx Care Facility (ICF), previously operated by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), to FEMA for the ongoing recovery from Hurricane Helene.
“FEMA continues to lead a comprehensive, whole-of-government approach to assist communities impacted by Hurricane Helene,” according to a press release sent to Carolina Journal. “As part of our effort to ensure that every available resource is mobilized, FEMA will soon sign an agreement with the Department of Health and Human Services to transfer the Greensboro Facility in North Carolina, previously operated by HHS, to FEMA. The Greensboro facility will be another resource to ensure that FEMA has access to a wide array of assets and resources should they be needed for the recovery.”
While the government agency has yet to say what exactly the facility will be used for, many current and former North Carolina lawmakers, including Congressman Richard Hudson, R-NC-09, have called for it to be used to house displaced hurricane victims in Western North Carolina.
He and North Carolina US Sen. Thom Tillis led Republican members of North Carolina’s congressional delegation in a letter Saturday to the HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra and Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Administrator Deanne Criswell, urging the federal government to use the facility to house hurricane victims temporarily and/or as a staging area.
Hudson said Wednesday in a post on X that he was glad the Biden-Harris Administration finally listened and that the victims would be cared for.
Congresswoman Kathy Manning, D-NC06, said on Friday that the facility could be used to house victims, that the process was underway, and that HHS had been working on this “for several days now.”
She, too, posted on X that she was pleased with the efforts that have been made.
Former North Carolina Republican Congressman Mark Walker first made the suggestion last Thursday on X. He posted on X that he was glad progress is underway.
“Having been up there and seeing it first-hand, it’s gut-wrenching giving someone a gallon of water, and they’re acting like it’s Christmas Day,” Walker told the Carolina Journal. “It’s a powerful reminder of just how destitute western North Carolina is right now, so all of us, whether working with nonprofits or working as just members of society, let’s do everything we can to put North Carolinians first in this process.”
The site of the former American Hebrew Academy, the facility was proposed to house 800 unaccompanied migrant children from the southern border.
The facility, which was slated to become the federal government’s largest active housing facility for unaccompanied minors, was to be the interim home for children ages 13-17 until they could be united with family or sponsors.
The ICF was scheduled to open in August 2023, and then in March. In July, the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) said it would be scaling back to only upkeep on the facility.
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