ReBuild NC warned hurricane survivor he couldhave to repay all his benefits, as much as $250K

Vernon Harrell told them to look in the attic.

His family home in Kinston did not flood in Hurricane Matthew, but copious amounts of rain from the historic storm leaked through the roof.

Please look in the attic, Harrell told the first ReBuild NC program inspector.

Someone else does that, they replied, according to Harrell.

Another inspector later stopped by to assess the damage.

Please look in the attic.

Someone else does that.

Finally, after ReBuild NC and the contractor, then Persons Services, figured out an initial scope of work to be done on the house, someone looked in the attic.

Well, that changes everything, they said.

For three years, seven months and 26 days, Harrell has been living in motels – he’s on his fourth – at ReBuild NC’s expense, totaling tens of thousands of dollars in Temporary Relocation Assistance funds.

He’s racked up immense credit card debt, paying for take-out because until recently, his motel rooms lacked a kitchen. His beloved dog, Jacky, died. At his first motel, Harrell said drug dealers menaced him. At his third motel, a man was shot in the hallway. Harrell said he pressed a towel on the man’s chest to try to stop the bleeding until an ambulance arrived.

Harrell is disabled, and his health, both mental and physical, has deteriorated.

“I told ReBuild, ‘Please do not take me from my home until you’re ready to start on my house,’” Harrell said, as evening sunlight filtered through the window of his room at Candlewood Suites. “It’s my only safe place in the world.”

His home has deteriorated, too. It was supposed to be an inexpensive and quick rehab, a two-month turnaround.

But two months became one year, which turned into two, then three, and now going on four. Overall, even with a new roof that sags in places, Harrell’s small brick home is in worse shape it was after the hurricane hit. And what started as $13,000 repair job has ballooned to more than $100,000.

Harrell is well-known to ReBuild NC. He has sent letters and text messages and made phone calls. He has complained in emails and letters to anyone who would listen, including Director Laura Hogshead, stridently and often in all caps.

And for his outspokenness, Harrell said he’s paid the price.

Last spring, ReBuild NC Chief Recovery Officer Matt Arlyn sent an ominous email to Legal Aid of North Carolina, a nonprofit law firm that represents low-income people, including Harrell. In the email, which Harrell shared with Newsline, Arlyn alleged that Harrell “may have breached his contract as expressed in the Homeowner Grant Agreement,” although Arlyn did not elaborate.

Arlyn told Legal Aid that ReBuild NC had routed Harrell’s case to “an independent monitoring firm for a review.” And if the firm determined Harrell had breached his contract, Arlyn wrote, ReBuild NC “may be forced to recapture all funds paid on behalf of Mr. Harrell’s recovery effort ….”

In other words, Harrell would have to repay ReBuild NC all of the money spent so far to repair his home, plus the entirety of the motel expenses and costs of his mobile storage units. All told, that would likely exceed a quarter of a million dollars.

“I’m very low-income,” said Harrell, who subsists on Social Security disability payments and food stamps. “Do they understand what they’re doing to me? They’d be putting me on the street. I’d be homeless.”

Asked about Arlyn’s email, a ReBuild NC spokesperson told Newsline the agency does not comment on individual homeowner cases for privacy reasons.

But Arlyn’s email has a backstory.

For several months, Harrell’s Legal Aid attorneys had many — and lengthy — emails to ReBuild NC, detailing their complaints with Rescue Construction Solutions, Harrell’s contractor at the time. The attorneys, Sharon Bey-Christopher and Johnell Daye III, had also met several times with Jonathan Doerr, then chief general counsel for ReBuild NC. (Doerr is now Director of Recovery Initiatives and Strategy.)

Yet the issues remained unresolved.

On April 10, Legal Aid sent a Notice of Breach of Contract to the Raleigh office of Rescue Construction Solutions. The breach notice was sent by overnight priority mail, according to the document.

Benjamin Smith, attorney for Rescue, told Newsline the company never received the notice. And if Rescue had, Smith said, it was not Legal Aid’s prerogative to file it. Such a breach notice, according to Smith’s reading of the Homeowner-Contractor Rehabilitation Agreement, can only be filed by ReBuild NC or its construction manager — not a homeowner or their attorney. Instead, the homeowner is supposed to go through an informal or formal dispute process, depending on the gravity of the issue.

But even if Rescue didn’t receive the breach notice, emails show Legal Aid attorneys at the same time sent an electronic version of the document to Doerr.

In the breach notice, Legal Aid alleged that Rescue had not fulfilled the terms of the homeowner agreement. The company had allegedly failed to provide requested key documents, including insurance coverage, building permits, change orders, and daily progress reports about its work on Harrell’s home. Nor had they communicated with Harrell about interior work, such as cabinets and paint, also required under the agreement.

The Legal Aid attorneys threatened to report the case to the state contractor licensing board, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development “and other appropriate investigation agencies,” as well as “pursue legal remedies.”

Three days later, on April 13, Arlyn notified Legal Aid of Harrell’s alleged breach of contract.

Although no one at ReBuild NC has explained the basis for Arlyn’s allegations, Harrell has his suspicions.

One day, he went back home to get his mail.

And as was flipping through the envelopes, two young men in a small, white, unmarked truck pulled into his driveway, Harrell said. They said they were subcontractors, working for Rescue Construction. However, there was no one else at the home, and when Harrell asked the whereabouts of their supervisor, the men replied that he was “right behind them,” Harrell said.

A supervisor must be onsite when other workers are present, according to Harrell’s homeowner agreement.

Harrell said he felt uneasy about the situation, but left to get gas and then returned to the house in hopes of meeting the supervisor.

The supervisor never showed, but when the two men saw Harrell had returned, they began talking on their cell phones, Harrell said.

“Then I got an angry call,” from a ReBuild NC employee, Harrell said. “‘Are you on property while a contractor is there?’ Someone said you’re on the property and disturbing them.’”

ReBuild NC does not allow homeowners to be onsite while construction workers are present.

Smith, an attorney representing Rescue, told Newsline the company “was forced to withdraw from completing construction on Mr. Harrell’s home due to his repeated disruptions at the homesite while Rescue’s personnel were attempting to work on the home.”

Harrell said Rescue never notified him that they had withdrawn from his project.

However, Harrell said a Rescue employee, Larry Davidson, had previously given him an “open invitation” to be at the house, and often asked him to visit to discuss the work. “If they were working in the house, I wouldn’t’ go in the house because I didn’t want to disturb them,” Harrell said.

“And somehow I was the problem,” Harrell went on. “This is retaliation.”

In his email to Legal Aid in which he threatened to recapture the funds, Arlyn claimed there were only three weeks’ worth of work left to be done on the house, which would have put Harrell home by mid-May.

However, emails dated nearly two months earlier, on Feb. 27, 2023, show that Adam Short, Lenoir County planning & inspections director, told Legal Aid that Rescue’s building permit had expired because it was inactive. “It is incumbent on the contractor to call for inspections, keeping these active,” Short wrote. “However, that has not been done.”

Nonetheless, an email dated the next day, Feb. 28, 2023, Kelsey Williams, ReBuild NC’s interim director of program delivery, wrote that Rescue was scheduled to begin working again on March 15 and would be finished by April 3.

In mid-September, Newsline visited the home with Harrell. The carport, which is attached to the house, has been gutted, but not repaired, and some of its beams are hanging precariously. Construction materials – 6-foot boards, scrap wood and dozens of nails – lurk among head-high stalks of horseweed in the yard.

Inside, kitchen cabinets were installed, but Harrell had no say-so in the type, as promised in his Homeowner Grant Agreement. The corners are misaligned on the door frames. And in a bedroom, there are two closets that should be identical. The right closet is 80 inches high. The left closet is 2 inches taller.

Little, if any of the finishing, painting, trim, flooring, bathroom and laundry room remodeling has been done.

The foundation, footings that Rescue repaired or built in early 2021 did pass inspection, according to Lenoir County permitting records.

Harrell shared a report with Newsline that had been provided by an independent licensed contractor unaffiliated with ReBuild NC. Legal Aid had hired the inspector to provide a preliminary assessment of the house. On June 19, the contractor met with Harrell and a Legal Aid attorney at the home.

“The contractor that is currently in charge of the project has done some work but still has a lot of work to complete the project,” the inspector wrote. “I have never seen a project like this with so much work left to be completed and no workmen present. I don’t understand what he is doing in the carport area. I think the work that has been done is not structurally sound and needs a Professional Structural Engineers design. It seems like he has given up on the project and no workmen were on site on Monday when I was there. … This job is out of control.”

Smith, the Rescue attorney, told Newsline the company “stands behind its workmanship and, to the extent you or any ‘third-party inspector’ claim that Rescue did not properly execute construction, we dispute any such allegation.”

Legal Aid attorneys had long asked for a different contractor to complete Harrell’s home. But ReBuild NC never granted the request. This fall, it finally happened. ReBuild NC assigned Harrell a new contractor, Fuller Center Disaster Rebuilders, his third. Harrell feels hopeful: Already, the contractor has asked him about paint, lighting, interior details, and regularly communicates with him “This is the complete opposite of the other contractors I’ve had,” Harrell said.

ReBuild NC never pursued Harrell to make him repay the disaster recovery funds. Nor has Legal Aid pursued its breach of contract against Rescue. Legally, there appears to be a détente.

Harrell could be home by the end of December – three years and 10 months after he moved out of his house.

But he acknowledges that he’s still bitter and angry.

“This experience has shaved years off my life. I’d rather have stayed in my house and let it fall in around me,” Harrell said. “These people at ReBuild have to be held accountable.”