By A.J. Kaufman, Managing Editor
Just before marking the historic storm’s one-year anniversary, the ETSU College of Business and Technology held a community forum focused on rebuilding and revitalization in the wake of Hurricane Helene.
Titled: “Hope After Helene: Financing Disaster Recovery,” the three-hour program explored how the Appalachian Highlands came together to recover from the storm’s destructive impact, highlighting the partnerships, financial strategies and community resilience that fueled our ongoing recovery.
Speakers included local leaders, financial experts, professors and organizations involved in disaster relief and economic restoration. They focused on lost jobs, productivity and how industries can continue to rebuild with hard work and assistance from public and private entities.
Long-time ETSU Economics Professor John Smith opened the half-dozen 20-minute presentations by focusing on the economic impact of the storms, particularly effects that occur when the level of economic activity within a special region like ours changes.
“The storm has greater impacts than just the individual businesses that were destroyed,” Smith explained. “And we try to model this using economic impact assessments and economic impact models.”
Smith noted that approximately 300 homes across East Tennessee were destroyed during Hurricane Helene, with 700 additional damaged.
Kate Amaral, non-governmental partnerships manager at TEMA, spoke about thresholds that need to be met, in terms of financial relief — at both the county and state levels — before the federal government gets involved. She explained that many endeavors are locally executed, and state supported, and with recovery efforts, the poverty cycle for a family can be broken. Amaral also boasted about the abundance of philanthropic assistance available via the East Tennessee Foundation.
People Inc. President and CEO Bryan Phipps also addressed the audience about how his non-profit organization can offer disaster assistance.
“We are typically able to offer terms and conditions that you can’t go to your local bank and access,” he said.
People Inc. covers eight states with the vast majority of their work via private sources being done in Tennessee, Virginia and Kentucky. He says tax credits are often key to receiving funding.
“If left to their own devices, most institutional investors will not invest in many of the communities that People Incorporated works in,” Phipps explained. “We work in very small rural communities, and many of you know that the return on those investments is not as great as what may be obtained in more urbanized or more well-developed areas. So, the government came up with a way to incentivize private investment into local communities. And we do that by obtaining tax credits that we can sell to investors that allow us to raise capital to then invest into low-income communities…It is a wonderful thing. It is a way to leverage private investment, and a way to make those dollars go further.”
Other speakers included BrightBridge Capital Loan Packager and Compliance Specialist Hunter Whiting; Director of Commercial Real Estate for Pathway Lending Tracey Mitchell; and Lead Public Affairs Specialist for SBAs Tauheedah Mateen.
ETSU Professor of Practice Kevin Kilgore moderated the event.
These discussions and presentations aimed to unveil innovative solutions for financing recovery efforts, supporting affected communities and preparing for future challenges. More than 100 attendees — who ran the gamut from local citizens and collegians to business leaders, bankers and government officials — not only said they gained insights but also connected with resources to enable the Tri-Cities and beyond to build a stronger overall region.
