- “NCORR resulted since both Hurricanes Matthew and Florence, and those are two disasters, and quite frankly, the third disaster that this state has experienced is in NCORR itself,” North Carolina State Auditor Dave Boliek told legislators at the General Assembly’s Joint Legislative Commission on Governmental Operations hearing in Greenville on Thursday.
North Carolina State Auditor Dave Boliek shed new light on the issues surrounding the North Carolina Office of Recovery and Resiliency (NCORR) Homeowner Recovery Program with a new report released on Wednesday, calling it a “logistical nightmare.”
“NCORR resulted since both Hurricanes Matthew and Florence, and those are two disasters, and quite frankly, the third disaster that this state has experienced is in NCORR itself,” he told legislators at the General Assembly’s Joint Legislative Commission on Governmental Operations hearing in Greenville on Thursday.
The agency was created in 2018 by former Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper to assist in the rebuilding process following Hurricanes Matthew in 2016 and Florence in 2018, specifically to help homeowners repair or replace their homes.
Multiple hearings held by the General Assembly’s Joint Legislative Commission on Governmental Operations over the past several years have highlighted the financial mismanagement and failures of the agency. Boliek’s report and press conference on Wednesday, as well as Thursday’s hearing, were no different.
He told reporters on Wednesday and legislators on Thursday that, although there was no criminal fraud, NCORR had spent more than a billion dollars of taxpayer money, which included $709 million from the federal Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) and $297 million from state appropriations.
Nearly $785 million was paid to vendors without any reconciliation or oversight.
Other findings revealed that applicants had to undergo eight separate steps to complete the application process as part of the ReBuild (NC) or Homeowner Recovery Program (HRP)
“Each step took an average of a minimum of 100 days, and then the grant determination, so the eligibility determination took an average of 936 days or 2.5 years,” the state auditor said. “Some families remained in temporary housing for as long as 1,400 days on average. NCORR did not start construction on eligible projects, and the way we talked about it in our office is that they didn’t start swinging hammers until approximately four years after homeowners were deemed eligible. That’s how bad it was. And quite frankly, the people of North Carolina deserve better.”
As of April 2025, HRP received 11,654 applications and completed 3,522 projects.
NC Rep. Karl Gillespie, R-Macon, said Thursday that there are still 328 families in the program, and 74 of those homes will most likely not be completed by the end of the year, despite a promise earlier in the year from NCORR Director Pryor Gibson. The audit found the state spent nearly $75 million on temporary housing — an average of $230,000 per household.
“We could have built a house for the temporary housing that we spent on, as they stay in the Courtyard or some other hotel, and it’s really infuriating to consider how poorly this was managed,” said state Sen. Buck Newton, R-Wilson, during Wednesday’s press conference.
Boliek brought in some experienced accountants who reviewed the situation and stated that it was the worst government program they’d ever seen.
“The inability to be able to print out or even produce a relevant and a reliable data source of a financial statement or a financial position, you just couldn’t do it within NCORR,” he said.
Boliek also brought in Craig Fugate, former director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and Florida Emergency Management, who said that NCORR “spent a tremendous amount of time on process, when their job was swinging hammers” and that they needed to prioritize measurable results over procedural compliance.
In September 2022, former director of NCORR Laura Hogshead said that federal government red tape was holding up in the process. But Sen. Brent Jackson, R- Sampson, said he spoke with representatives from HORNE, who was the original project manager for the program, and said it was clear that NCORR’s program design choices could have been the problem and how NCORR ignored recommendations on how to streamline the program.
Boliek said there was a real lack of metrics and key performance indicators in the contracts, pointing to five boxes filled with documents that NCORR had previously used.
“This right here is certainly part of the problem… This right here is a bureaucratic malaise that we’ve got to solve moving forward,” he said, later adding that NCORR had taken over the governing process in 2022.
WHAT WENT WRONG
There were four key findings in what went wrong with NCORR, according to the report:
- Poor budgeting practices
- Poor data quality
- Insufficient budget controls & monitoring
- Inadequate oversight of vendors
Regarding poor budgeting, NCORR had financial commitments that exceeded its available funds. They didn’t have a comprehensive needs assessment and did not know the full cost of recovery until after the application period closed. As a result, they ended up in the hole at a cost of over $300 million, resulting in a request for emergency funding from the General Assembly.
They also used three different software systems, including Salesforce, for which they paid $25.4 million. Boliek said this is approximately the entire annual appropriation for his office.
The program, which was also mentioned in the Poor Data Quality finding, is effective, but it is not being utilized in an efficient manner, he said. For example, over 11,000 applications were processed through Salesforce for HRP. Of those, over 3,400 were marked as complete in the system, but only 771 had an end date for the project.
In the third finding, NCORR lacked ongoing budget monitoring and operated reactively, making spending decisions based on available funds rather than comprehensive needs or performance targets, which were significant factors contributing to the budget shortfall.
Finally, in the fourth finding, NCORR relied heavily on vendors to assist in the administration of HRP, including case management, construction management, and inspections. Lack of oversight led to increased program costs, and vendor contracts did not require specific performance monitoring or link payment to results. As a result, NCORR did not consistently monitor vendor performance or hold vendors accountable for contract compliance.
RECOMMENDATIONS
Auditors had long-term recommendations, including establishing a partnership for disaster recovery with the Council of State, the Department of Public Safety, and the General Assembly. They also recommended establishing a budget plan and a robust contract management procedures, as well as implementing effective data management systems. Also, in the short term, to improve program accountability and ensure compliance with HUD requirements during the closeout phase, the report said NCORR should align its processes and decision-making with the HUD Action Plans.
Boliek noted that recovery is so important because places like the Town of Speed in Edgecombe County, which was hit by Hurricane Floyd in 1999, never recovered and is nearing dissolution.
Gibson would testify at Thursday’s hearing that as of October, 92% of projects have been completed, 9% are in construction, and 2% are awaiting the start of construction. He said he expects nearly all remaining projects to be in construction by the end of the year, and they hope to be finished well before the October 2026 legislative deadline.
