Matt Lacefield surveys the wreckage of his home in Johnson after a flooding event on July 11, 2023. Courtesy photo This story by Aaron Calvin was first published in News Citizen on Dec. 4, 2025. Nearly two and a half years ago, Mandy Lacefield and her husband, Matt, woke in the night as dark water seeped into their home in Johnson. Lacefield and Matt, trapped in their home on River Road West overlooking the confluence of the Lamoille and Gihon rivers, had to be evacuated the night the river broke its banks on July 11, 2023, devastating Johnson with one of the worst flooding events to hit the town in nearly a century. In the aftermath, there was the cleanup, the dragging out of all their worldly belongings, now soaked with sewer sludge and refuse. At the same time, they had to meet tight deadlines to submit vital documents to the Federal Emergency Management Agency if they wanted any assistance from the federal government. While the American Red Cross workers who showed up in the aftermath provided unquestioning support, Lacefield noted, FEMA gave them a checklist and a timeline. Lacefield and her husband scrambled to locate birth certificates and social security cards in the sodden wreckage. Even after the deluge and destruction, Lacefield, who grew up in town, wanted to keep her home. After scraping and saving, she and Matt had moved into the home in the village in 2019 and spent the first few years renovating its interior, unchanged since it was built in the 1970s. While they waited to hear from FEMA, they were effectively made homeless. Flood insurance only covered the remaining mortgage on the home. FEMA couldn’t assist them in finding temporary housing because Lacefield refused to part with her pets, which she had owned for over a decade. After promising to park a temporary mobile home at her father’s property on Ober Hill Road on the north end of town, the agency canceled those plans after weeks of wrangling over what Lacefield said were minor septic capacity issues on the property. She wasn’t alone. The agency had initially promised to set up 20 such homes in Montpelier but ended up backing out by the end of 2023 and providing the town with monetary compensation instead, according to VTDigger. She ended up acquiring a camper trailer, whose owner had originally listed it for $5,000 but instead donated it to Lacefield after learning she had been displaced by the flood. Waiting on the trailer home promised by FEMA, she did not weatherize the makeshift home and spent a frigid winter in the camper. A year after she was first displaced, Lacefield said she was informed by FEMA that the agency would not assist in restoring the home to its former state, and would only provide monetary assistance for elevating the home or through a property buyout, a process which would compensate Lacefield and make town owner of the land. Two years after Mandy Lacefield and her husband, Matt, were evacuated as the river destroyed their home, Lacefield finally received an offer on her property. Despite her home being appraised by FEMA at a pre-flood value of $240,000, she was offered just a fraction, about $40,000. Courtesy photo Both of Lacefield’s neighbors on River Road West have also pursued buyouts, as has the owner of the former Sterling Market on the far side of the river, through a separate federal program. Federally aided home elevation is just as arduous, if not more, than the property buyout process, and appealed to Lacefield even less, so she went with the latter option. Two years after she and her husband were evacuated as the river destroyed their home, Lacefield finally received an offer on her property. Despite FEMA appraising the property at a pre-flood value of $240,000, Lacefield was offered just a fraction of that — about $40,000. She said the agency justified the low appraisal based on the home’s flood insurance, which made the bank that held the mortgage whole but went no further. READ MORE “I feel like the mortgage company got their money, the town’s getting our property, and we’re getting sh-t,” Lacefield said. Lacefield is set to close on the buyout process later this month. Earlier this year, her dad died, providing a bitter solution to her search for viable shelter — his Ober Hill home. Despite nearing the finish line of a process that was supposed to help her move on from the worst moment of her life, she said it feels like it’s still happening, and FEMA’s slow process and meager assistance at the end of the wait has offered little consolation. “It still feels like a living nightmare, and it’s never ending, and I want to wake up from it,” Lacefield said. Getting closure In the aftermath of the July 2023 flood, and faced with the prospect of increasingly severe and frequent floods as the climate in Vermont warms, the state, in an effort to shift the settlement patterns in towns along once-commercially crucial rivers, pledged to provide a portion of its federal COVID-19 recovery funds to help FEMA fund property buyouts. Lacefield is one of 17 residential property owners in Johnson who have pursued buyouts. Just five of those have concluded the process or are scheduled to conclude it soon, according to Sarah Henshaw, a coordinator with the Lamoille Area Recovery Network, a group founded in the aftermath of the flood of July 2023 — and funded by the United Way of Lamoille County — to assist people affected by the disaster. It’s a similar picture elsewhere in Lamoille County. Johnson leads Lamoille County with 17 buyout requests, more than twice the amount of second-place Wolcott. Chart via News Citizen Of the eight owners of single-family homes in Wolcott who pursued a buyout — five of which were funded by the state instead of FEMA — only one has not concluded the process. In Cambridge, just one of the seven buyout properties, including three multi-family buildings accounting for 10 units, has reached its conclusion. Morristown and Elmore each have one buyout property, both still in limbo. For some who have reached the conclusion of the property buyout process, Henshaw said, it hasn’t brought solace or left them financially better off. In one case, FEMA offered less than the mortgage holder says is due, saddling the former property owner with debt. Another is having to seek legal remedy after a flood insurance provider mandated by the property’s mortgage holder paid out less than previously promised. One property went into foreclosure by the time the buyout process was concluded, as the former owners could not afford to keep up mortgage payments on both a habitable residence and their destroyed home. Other complicating factors have further slowed FEMA’s progress. A home was initially misclassified by the state and federal inspectors delayed the process by six months, according to Henshaw. The agency’s assistance program for renters, which aids tenants who would be displaced by the buyout of a multi-family property, is also complicating and slowing those buyout cases. In October, Grist, a climate-change focused nonprofit news site, reported that Vermont Emergency Management was put under increased scrutiny from FEMA after overspending millions in federal funding on an expensive consultant company after flooding in the Northeast Kingdom in 2024. Despite this, spokesperson Mark Bosma said a state program that provides support for displaced renters will continue in 2026. “We have a group of people in our community that were very good, solid, middle-class people, contributing members of our community, that now have financial problems,” Henshaw said. Read the story on VTDigger here: In Lamoille County, property buyout process offers little solace for some flood survivors. ...read more read less