In December, months after Hurricane Helene destroyed her neighborhood in rural Fletcher, North Carolina, Staci Hope was beginning to wonder whether she’d ever have a safe place to live again. “I lost everything, and I had no means to replace it,” she says.

Her manufactured home had been fully paid off before the disaster, and was her main form of financial security. The damage from Helene meant that the home needed to be fully rebuilt, and Hope, who’s on disability, couldn’t afford any of it.

The night of the storm, Hope and a friend fled to an empty house nearby that had belonged to her grandparents. But it hadn’t been in use and also needed a long list of repairs, from a new heater to a new roof. The Federal Emergency Management Agency gave her a $6,000 check for her own home, but rejected most of her claims, forcing her to begin a long appeals process. She says it felt like the rest of the world had moved on, noting, “We were forgotten.”

Then she got an unexpected call from a neighbor who’d heard about a new opportunity: She could borrow a........

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