The Trump administration has signed off on North Carolina’s plan to deploy $1.4 billion in CDBG disaster recovery money to help with the cleanup from Hurricane Helene.

Gov. Josh Stein announced the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s OK of the plan on Friday, less than a month after his aides had submitted it.

The approval capitalized on regulations issued in January during the Biden administration. The Trump team modified them in March, but its changes didn’t affect the state’s intentions for using the money.

Those include spending:

• $860.7 million of the grant is to repair or replace owner-occupied homes.
• $191.3 million for rental housing.
• $193.5 million for infrastructure.
• $111.1 million for economic revitalization.
• And $186.3 million for “mitigation” work.

State officials intend to use $130 million of the mitigation reserve to address “repetitive problems associated with access to housing via private roads and bridges.”

These are far more common in western North Carolina than elsewhere in the state. 

More than 7,000 of them suffered damage of some sort, and as many homes are otherwise inaccessible via public roads, the state “cannot implement an effective housing recovery program” in the west without addressing the issue, the plan says.