Reflecting on the Hurricane Helene relief effort with Leigh Brown

Real estate agents are no strangers to going out of their way to help their local communities. According to the National Association of Realtors’ (NAR) Community Aid and Real Estate (CARE) Report published in May, nearly 70% of all NAR members reported that they volunteered at least eight hours a month in 2023.

Leigh Brown, the broker-owner of North Carolina-based One Community Real Estate, is one such Realtor with a penchant for volunteering. When Hurricane Helene hit the state in late September, she sprang into action as she always does.

“We get a big hurricane event every few years and I, like many other Realtors and brokers, have a little 15-foot moving truck for clients to use. And with every other storm we’ve had, I would set my truck up and spread the word to the community to come fill the truck with things for the hurricane victims,” Brown said.

“So, the storm hit and we did the usual thing. But when it first hit, none of us knew the breadth of how big this all was, how deep the trouble was going to be and just the intensity of it.”

As the storm began to move out and Brown got in touch with Realtor colleagues and friends in other parts of the state, she said it quickly became apparent that this storm was different. One agent she was in touch with also happened to be the mayor of a small mountain town, whose residents had been left with no water because their pump stations had gone down.

“That was when I started coordinating. Instead of getting cases of water, getting pallets of water,” Brown said.

What started with a client’s trailer filled with pallets of water quickly grew to Patriot Relief, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization founded by Brown.

“It got big quickly because word got out that the storm had just had such an impact on immediate human needs,” Brown said. “So, we went from a 15-foot truck on Saturday to a semitruck on Sunday, which was donated by a local business.”

Brown leveraged her network to organize donations and resources for those in need and also to also find out what victims in different parts of the state needed.

“It just kind of snowballed. I didn’t even really grasp what was going on, but people just turned out, and it was the coolest thing I have ever been part of, just being there right from the beginning,” Brown said.

According to Brown, she was collecting and distributing items to different areas based on what local agents and brokers were telling her their communities needed.

“Nobody understands a local community like a Realtor,” Brown said. “I think that is one of the most underappreciated parts of Realtor life. We don’t just sell houses — we know which churches are where, which volunteer fire departments are where, and who we can call on to make things happen.”

As the weeks have passed, the needs of hurricane victims have evolved from basics like water and diapers, to building materials and propane tanks for people to heat their homes.

“The supplies needed really vary because there are people in so many different phases — you have people who just need flooring but otherwise are OK, and then you have people who have to go down to the footings and do a whole new house with a whole new permit,” Brown said.

“When people ask me what they can bring in for supplies, I just tell them, if they can bring me a truckload of drywall, I can put them to work right away.”

To meet some of the rebuilding needs, Brown and Patriot Relief have been working with local contractors to help victims rebuild or execute the necessary repairs on their homes.

“Our local contractors are of course the first place we want to send our dollars, but one of the contractors we are supporting is now booked out through May of next year. He would love some more hands on his crew, but like so many others, he is having trouble hiring,” Brown said. “I’ve also had a roofer from Atlanta reach out to me and we are going to work with him to do some roofs here.”

In addition, Brown and her army of volunteers are also looking for ways to solve victims’ financial struggles.

“We are talking to people who are living in family houses and they still have not received any relief from FEMA. They are being turned down by their insurance and they don’t know what to do because their mortgage payments are coming due, so we are working with them to try and figure out how to help them,” Brown said.

Looking back on the past few months, Brown is still amazed by the level of support and humanity she has witnessed in the community.

“It is hard and everything has changed,” Brown said. “It has been so dramatic and devastating, but I’m also grateful because of all the people that have risen up to help North Carolina. And they have come from every state — the truckloads of donations and the people from all over the place who have shown up to volunteer on our build sites or other projects.”

She said the experience has also served as a great reminder of the importance of the work Realtors do.

“Just the way people feel about their land and their house, I don’t know that we in real estate grasp that deeply enough — how much people care about where they live,” Brown said. “Maybe it’s because in the cities, people change houses so quickly, but in the mountains, we meet people who are in generational homes.

“I talked to people today who are having to tear down the house their great grandma built — and there goes all the memories of Thanksgiving and Christmas and family reunions, but also the smells and the feelings and the voices you still hear when you go into the house. I just wish every Realtor would slow down enough to understand the true impact of housing.”

Despite all that she and her team of volunteers have accomplished so far, Brown says she is not done yet. This core group includes real estate professionals Starr Franklin, Renee Royall, Terri Preutti, Carala Rose, Cindy Hanson, Chris Puckett, Dawn While, Alice Venter and Austin Lineberry.

“It is not going to be over for a couple of years, so I can’t let my foot off the gas,” she said. “I’ve gotten into it this far and I can’t let my people go.”