Abandoned houses still sit eerily next to the overflowing man-made creek responsible for flooding an entire neighborhood. Shards of discarded carpet, mud-caked family mementos, and cleaning supplies litter carports and driveways throughout the back half of the Valley Circle neighborhood. A peek inside one house, protected by a “No Trespassing” sign, reveals a structure that has been gutted almost all the way up to the ceiling.

Now nearly three months after what the U.S. Geological Survey calls a “once in 500 years flood,” city, county, state, and federal officials are finalizing a plan to help the 45 families who are still displaced.

Officials are calling the plan a buy-out. Casey Coleman, Carrollton’s city manager, said the basic idea is to use FEMA funds to buy homes and property from homeowners located in high-risk flood plains, then bulldoze the area and turn it into green space.

“Now FEMA has the final say, but according to the guidelines as we understand them and the criteria that we followed, we calculate it to be 16 houses that qualify for the buy-out program,” said Coleman. “They’ll have to be demolished, and that space will be turned back into a natural area that couldn’t be built on again.”

Coleman recognizes that some residents are getting impatient with the amount of time it takes disaster assistance money to work its way from federal, state, and local levels down to the people who need it.

“I know that these displaced people are upset, but I’m going to assure them that we’re doing everything we can,” said Coleman. “We got in there early and got started early, and we’re going through the process, it’s just a long process.”

Tim Padgett, director of the Carroll County Emergency Management Agency, has been keeping tabs on the progress of the buy-out program.

“What will happen is a good chunk of this disaster relief money will go to the buy-out program that will go to structures that have been repetitively flooded,” said Padgett.

Charles Griffin, the city’s planning and zoning administrator, has worked with an architect to assess the viability of damaged homes.

“We’ve evaluated those homes that are in the flood plain, and there are 18 that we had looked at by a structural engineer that were deemed irreparable,” said Griffin.

Displaced residents are excited about the buy-out proposal. The Valley Circle population is nearly unanimous in its support for the plan, which they feel is their only way out of the flood plain.

Sylvester O’Neal, whose mother lived in one of the hardest hit houses, visits the neighborhood occasionally to keep an eye on things.

“When someone’s house is paid for and they lost everything, there’s not much they can do,” said O’Neal. “Most people are banking on the fact that FEMA is going to buy out the subdivision.”

O’Neal, who is a contractor, said that the neighborhood shouldn’t even have been built in the first place.

“I used to play in the [nearby] projects, and we weren’t allowed to go down here because it was a swamp,” said O’Neal. “A lot of the problem is there’s not enough drainage.”

While nearly everyone is supporting the buy-out, they aren’t looking to move away from the city, according to O’Neal.

“Most of these people are rooted around this area, I’ve known a lot of these people all my life,” he said. “I think most people would like to stay around the city.”

Brenda Johnson, who had flood insurance, wants the city to buy out the entire neighborhood, not just a few selected houses.

“If they only buy out the houses out across the road, the neighborhood is going to be all torn up,” said Johnson.

She said that she’s seen the new flood map, and her house is in the flood zone.

“If they move those houses, then there’ll be nothing left to slow down the water next flood,” she said. “I feel like if they move all of us out they can make it a park or something. I hope they move all of us out of here.”

Valley Circle isn’t the only disaster area waiting on FEMA funds. Officials have applied for funds to repair the flood-damaged dam at Lake Carroll, but are stuck in a regulatory catch-22, according to Tim Grizzard, Carrollton’s assistant city manager. City officials have received enough money to repair the dam, but federal officials won’t allow any work on the dam to proceed unless the dam is replaced, a much more costly solution.

“The kink in the situation with Lake Carroll is that it’s a category one dam, which means that any work has to be approved with the Environmental Protection Division,” said Grizzard. “They want the dam replaced and brought up to category one standards.”

Meanwhile, work is going forward on the reconstruction of two Villa Rica homes by Carrollton Baptist Association volunteers. The CBA, led by the Rev. Dan Dockery, cleaned and gutted affected houses throughout the month of October, and prepared meals for displaced families.

“We are in the process of putting two homes in Villa Rica back together,” said Dockery.

The hundreds of CBA volunteers, who cleaned and disinfected 14 homes, worked in conjunction with Padgett to identify areas in need of assistance.

“One home which was a split level, their downstairs got flooded, we ripped the Sheetrock up about 4 feet from the floor,” said Dockery. “The walls have been mudded back, the walls have been painted, and the doors and trim have been put up.”

Dockery said he is open to the idea of doing more to help, but is waiting on approval from FEMA.

“We don’t know how much involvement we could have, simply because we’re waiting to see what we are allowed to do,” said Dockery. “Everything has to go through FEMA.”