She needed a $200 repair after Hurricane Helene. FEMA offered to pay thousands for a hotel, instead.

CHARLOTTE — A Charlotte woman’s window cracked during Hurricane Helene. It was a small crack and only cost $200 to fix.

Susan Lewis can’t believe that instead of covering the $200 tab, FEMA offered to put her and three others up in a SouthPark hotel for a month.

“I kept rereading it thinking what am I missing here?” Lewis told Channel 9′s Joe Bruno. “This makes no sense.”

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The damaged window was in her Forest Ridge Condo. Since FEMA is offering Mecklenburg County residents assistance after Helene, she applied for funding to fix it. She says FEMA denied the claim and told her to submit it to her home insurance. She ended up having to pay $200 for the repair out of her own pocket because she has a $1,000 insurance deductible.

“I’m living on Social Security,” she said. “I’m, you know, a 74-year-old woman and all these little extra expenses really add up.”

While FEMA wouldn’t fix the window, she says the agency offered her something else: a month stay for up to 4 people in a hotel. One of the hotels is the SouthPark Marriott. The average rate is nearly $200 dollars a night.

The hotel even told her she could get two rooms if she needed space for four. Instead of paying $200 for the window repair, she says FEMA offered to spend thousands on a hotel she didn’t need.

“It makes me so sad to think maybe they’re denying people with legitimate claims who super need them,” she said. “I mean, when I’m hearing the people are living in tents and they’re freezing, I’m thinking they could use a hotel room and it just breaks my heart how mismanaged this is.”

Susan did not take FEMA up on the hotel offer but she says she did try to call the agency to sort this all out. It was unsuccessful.

“I said twice when I called, would you please go off your script and I know you’re a reasonable person,” she said. “I said, just listen to me. And they just kept reading off the script.”

SPECIAL SECTION >> Hurricane Helene stories

A spokesperson for FEMA declined to comment specifically on Lewis’ case. They said out of an abundance of caution and out of concern for survivors’ safety, money for hotel rooms was approved for a majority of registrations due to the large scale and unknown impact of the disaster to roads, bridges, utilities, and other infrastructure.

FEMA says insurance is the first step in disaster recovery and by law, FEMA cannot duplicate benefits for losses covered by insurance.

(VIDEO: FEMA provides temporary housing units for storm victims)