Letter: Housing ‘policy’: Make it up as you go along

Posted on by Letters
Graphic by Lori Deaton

[Regarding “Asheville City Council Ousts Chair, Vice Chair of Housing Authority Board,” Feb. 13, Xpress:]

Asheville City Council’s plan(s) for new housing are a mess. There is no guiding principle. It is made up as each new project/idea comes before them to be voted on.

Take the 767 New Haw Creek Road development along Haw Creek. This is on no urban corridor. There is no bus route. There are no stores to walk to. Yet townhomes were approved.

The city voted through a plan whose access was via a piece of adjacent property in an adjoining neighborhood. Does the Council care? No, the current “policy” is make it up as you go along and beggar the consequences.

The Council should identify the areas along urban corridors suitable for development and then find developers to develop. Instead, they let the developers run them around by the nose. As soon as the phrase affordable housing is uttered, it gets approved.

Flag lots and cottage lots will do nothing to change the housing stock. It is just more confusion dressed as leadership.

— John Appleby
Asheville

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3 thoughts on “Letter: Housing ‘policy’: Make it up as you go along”

  1. K

    I appreciate that we’re finally hearing from some intelligent citizens about housing and the way small minds so often turn to mush whenever they hear the word ‘affordable’. The so-called NIMBYs have been right to push back against bad projects so many times.

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  2. Mark R.

    Spot on comments. 767 Haw Creek was an extremely poor decision by Council. And part of the development will flood in the future.

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  3. Enlightened Enigma

    Remember the problem IS, there is NO leadership in Asheville. Zero, none, nada. Decades of democrackkk NON leadership destroys !!!

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