According to the state, Hurricane Matthew caused some $4.8 billion in damage, affecting 98,000 homes and nearly 20,000 businesses. So far, according to the governor’s office, the federal government has committed $1.2 billion toward the recovery, but the state has asked for more. Early this year, Gov. Roy Cooper requested $900 million in additional federal funds, citing hundreds of millions of dollars in unmet housing and infrastructure needs, but his office said only $38 million had been granted so far.

And, with costs related to Harvey and other disasters expected to rise, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has frozen the funding of many projects related to last year’s storm.

“We still have more of a need of dollars than we are receiving,” said Joe Stanton, the assistant director of North Carolina Emergency Management.

Ms. Kennedy in Lumberton said, “We’ve been fighting this for 11 months, wanting to get our houses repaired and elevated.”

It is not unusual for disaster recovery to take years. But the hurricane’s impact has been felt most acutely in poor towns and low-income neighborhoods that had few resources to spare before the storm hit.

“It consumed the most concentrated population of low-income people in our county, and one of the poorest in the nation,” said Mac Legerton, a minister and community activist in Robeson County, which includes Lumberton. “Not only did the flood exacerbate the challenges, it also strained the community’s assets.”

Here in Fair Bluff, a town that never fully recovered from the decline of tobacco farming, last year’s floods scoured Main Street of most of its businesses, leaving former community pillars like the Ellis Meares and Son hardware store closed.

Mayor Billy Hammond, who decided to leave up American flags in the empty downtown to try to brighten things up, said that about 300 of the town’s nearly 900 residents had been displaced and that 34 homeowners wanted the government to buy and then demolish their homes.