This article was published with support from the Solution Journalism Network's H.E.A.L. Fellowship and the Institute for Journalism and Natural Resources.
A year ago, Hurricane Helene poured into the Blue Ridge Mountains, washing out roads, pummeling hillsides, and carrying entire homes downstream. Western North Carolina, known for its sweeping ridges and valleys, became a basin filled with seemingly endless rain. By the time the skies cleared, 14 inches of rain had fallen; in the end, at least 250 people died, making Helene the deadliest storm in the contiguous United States since Hurricane Katrina.
Eleven months later, as I drove across North Carolina, the imprint of disaster was still everywhere. Traffic slowed to a crawl on a highway outside of Asheville as crews worked to repair roads. Orange cones lined the narrow mountain passes where mudslides had swallowed the shoulder. An entire lake, Lure, had been drained of all water but was full of wooden homes that had fallen in during the storm. The region was still deep in the process of recovery.
The word "recovery" comes from the Latin recuperare, or "to take back." But as I spoke with more than two dozen organizers, young people, and their families, it was clear: No one was reclaiming the lives they had before. Instead, they were inventing practical solutions for the future, forged from their own experience on the frontlines. In the long weeks after the storm, organizers cooked meals for hundreds over open-air fires, distributed thousands of water bottles, and rescued people in remote areas. I wanted to know: What might the rest of us learn from their recovery, and how could it prepare us for the next disaster?
Among the groups to offer aid was Youth Outright, a small LGBTQ+ youth center in Asheville that has become a template for how to adapt to the climate crisis and escalating attacks on queer and trans youth. In the days after Helene, while FEMA assistance was excruciatingly disorganized and slow, Youth Outright became a hub of aid. But the group's primary tool was not collecting stockpiles of water or donations of clothing — it was cash.
In 2023, the year before Helene, Youth Outright launched the Direct Youth Payment Program (DYPP). The premise was simple yet urgent: Every four months, eligible queer and trans youth in western North Carolina could receive $200 in cash to spend however they chose. The state legislature had passed a sweeping slate of anti-LGBTQ+ laws that forced teachers to out students to their parents, banned gender-affirming care for minors, and barred trans youth from competing in sports until college. Together, these measures drove LGBTQ+ youth deeper into a housing and mental health crisis. In North Carolina alone, youth homelessness has risen 26% in the past three years, and 41% of LGBTQ+ youth in the state have seriously considered suicide.
Youth Outright’s co-directors — Beck Martens, London Newton, and Emma Anderson — set out to design a program that could address the homelessness crisis while affirming young people’s autonomy. They drew inspiration from Point Source Youth, a nonprofit whose research shows that direct cash transfers significantly reduce the risk of homelessness. “We know that [direct cash transfers] are the number one support for preventing youth homelessness,” Martens tells me. So, with a small grant, the team began building a pool of funds that queer and trans youth could apply to directly. Since then, Youth Outright has distributed more than $10,000 across 10 counties.
When Hurricane Helene struck, the financial precarity of young people only deepened. Scientists often call climate change a "threat multiplier," intensifying the social and economic vulnerabilities already in place. Within days, as families remained stranded in flooded homes, Youth Outright received more than a hundred applications from children as young as 11 asking for groceries, water filters, and medications with prices that had spiked. Because the organization already knew many of these young people through its regular programs, applications could be approved in days rather than weeks.
The collision of Helene with the anti-LGBTQ+ laws of 2023 laid bare what activists now call the “twin storms.” On one side are climate disasters, fueled by leaders who refuse to invest in climate adaptive infrastructure or renewable energy; on the other side are political assaults aimed directly at queer and trans people’s mental and physical well-being. Together, these forces erode young people’s agency, leaving them exposed and unprotected.
For the leaders of Youth Outright, this is precisely where cash becomes transformative. When lawmakers and disasters take choice away, cash gives it back. “[Queer and trans youth] are constantly told, ‘We don’t trust your decisions — and if you make them, we’ll deny your agency to live them out,’” said Dr. Stacia West, cofounder of the Center for Guaranteed Income Research at the University of Pennsylvania. “Cash sends the opposite message: We trust you, we honor your agency, and we believe in your ability to make choices about your own life.”
Dr. West pointed out that this kind of empowerment-through-spending is taken for granted among the wealthy, yet treated with suspicion when low-income women, queer people, and people of color are given cash to make their own decisions. “When a billionaire buys a wine cellar, we don't think of that as a frivolous purchase,” she said.
However, it is the frivolity of billionaires that is driving the climate crisis, not young people. According to Oxfam, the “luxury transport consumption” and investment emissions of the world’s 50 richest individuals exceed the total consumption emissions of the poorest 2%, or roughly 155 million people. Our society scrutinizes the choices of young people and denies them resources for clothes and food. At the same time, billionaires are given enormous tax breaks to destroy the planet.
In July, this double standard was again written into law. Congress passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, repealing billions in social safety-net programs for the poorest Americans while handing massive tax cuts to those making over $1 million a year. The same bill stripped $4.5 billion from FEMA funds earmarked for disaster preparedness and infrastructure — the very resources communities in western North Carolina are depending on to rebuild after Helene. Instead, that money was diverted to militarize the southern border, where climate refugees arrive after fleeing droughts and hurricanes in their own countries.
Despite the tired conservative rhetoric used to justify this bill — namely, that poor people exploit the social safety net — the vast majority of young people who receive direct cash transfers spend the money on food or savings. It’s no surprise, then, that participants in the Direct Youth Payment Program use their stipends for essentials.
Newton, who reviews every application, sees the same requests again and again: to escape apartments overtaken by black mold since Helene, to pay for prescription refills, and to buy groceries. Newton insists, though, that necessity should not be the only justification: “If a young person wants to be able to eat something when they want to eat something, that’s a right they should have,” but pleasure should not be reserved for the wealthiest few.
Newton makes a point of filling the center with whatever a young person might need, from their favorite snacks to noise-canceling headphones. The afternoon I visited, Youth Outright was hosting a makeup workshop and clothing swap. Palettes of colorful eye shadow sparkled throughout the room. After a tutorial from a local artist, teenagers sifted through a massive pile of sweater vests, floral dresses, and oversized T-shirts.
While others practiced makeup and selected new outfits, a young person named Kia — whose name I’ve changed here for safety reasons — sat next to me on the couch. They had come to Asheville from rural Georgia, where they were homeschooled by elderly parents who resented the care required for their mild cerebral palsy. When, as a teenager, Kia began to realize they were queer, their parents escalated to abuse. Eventually, an aunt and cousin intervened, quietly planning an escape. A week after their 18th birthday, Kia packed a single bag and fled to Asheville, which has a reputation as a queer haven. “I only had, literally, a small purse,” they tell me.
When Kia first came to Youth Outright, a few months after Helene, Newton urged them to apply for the Direct Youth Payment Program. Kia hesitated. Wasn’t the money meant for someone who needed it more? Wouldn’t they be taking it from someone else? Newton reassured them there was enough to go around and that accepting help was part of the exchange of mutuality that kept their community strong.
Kia's application was quickly approved, and the first $100 went to groceries. Then, for the first time, Kia walked into a TJ Maxx and chose clothes freely: floral dresses, flowing black skirts, a bright orange sweater. “That was something I had never experienced before,” they recall. “I felt like myself.”
Later that day, Kia and their cousin staged a photoshoot. In the pictures, they twirl and pose in their new clothes with a radiant smile, the camera barely able to contain their joy. As western North Carolina rebuilt its roads and power lines, Kia was rebuilding something less visible but just as vital: a strengthened sense of self.
No matter the circumstances, Youth Outright’s co-directors work to ensure young people have the resources they need to make choices about their own lives. They are developing a system to distribute cash offline, after Helene revealed how power outages can cut people off from support. They have also applied for a grant to provide larger payments over a longer period, with the hope of helping young people still reeling from the storm and anti-LGBTQ+ laws to find stability.
For me, Youth Outright's work is a reminder that true recovery cannot mean restoring what was broken; it means transforming the systems that caused the crisis, shifting decision-making power from the wealthiest few into the hands of all. It means empowering young people to reclaim their futures, whether by choosing clothes that reflect who they are or demanding a planet not smothered by greenhouse gases. And it means confronting the vast wealth gap that leaves some struggling to buy groceries while others fly on private jets. It means creating the conditions for people to build their own futures, one check at a time.
