“ABCCM knows that people who are houseless or experiencing homelessness are smart, motivated and often courageous persons who want the skills that lead to careers,” the Rev. Scott Rogers, the nonprofit’s executive director, wrote in a statement to Xpress. “They want to earn enough income to rent or buy a home close to their work and school for their children.”
The vote on the proposed $9.75 million emergency shelter project was delayed so that members of Council have more time to review the proposal and understand community concerns.
While each of the speakers at the meeting commended city leaders for taking steps to help Asheville’s homeless residents, some who were also residents at nearby apartment complexes voiced concern about the proposed shelter’s location.
Highest on city staff’s list of potential funding priorities were affordable housing, public engagement, homelessness, public and mental health, small business recovery and workforce development.
Buncombe County experienced a 147% increase in overdose deaths between 2015 and 2017, the most recent period for which data is available from the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services. According to Emergency Services, Buncombe averages six-to-eight deaths monthly from probable overdoses.
“Just as mental, physical and socioeconomic conditions are not lifestyles, neither is homelessness; it is an outcome of those conditions.”
“We need to invest in ourselves — pay living wages, build or convert affordable housing, expand public transportation, house the homeless, focus spending on the people who live here.”
Newly formed Asheville nonprofit Accessing Needed Crisis and Critical Help Outreach and Resources is proposing a low-barrier, high-access shelter that would forego many of the usual rules for tenants. Start-up costs could reach $6.5 million, with annual operating costs of $3 million, and would initially be funded through Asheville’s approximately $26.1 million in federal coronavirus relief.
At 4.61 percent in 2016, North Carolina ranked 5th in the nation in its eviction rate, almost twice as high as the national eviction rate of 2.34 percent that year. Franklin resident Donna, and her partner, C., are two of the many Western North Carolina renters impacted by eviction.
Asheville has issued removal orders for camps at Martin Luther King Jr. Park, Aston Park, along Cherry and Hill streets and at Riverbend Park near the Walmart Supercenter on Bleachery Boulevard in East Asheville.
“[The funding is] intended to be a pandemic response; it’s not actually intended to end homelessness. It just is, happily, an opportunity for us to end homelessness, because that is also a response to the coronavirus,” says Emily Ball, homeless services lead for the city of Asheville.
“I, like you, worry about the sharp rise in homelessness, but urban gardens are not to blame in the least.”
“So, the paradoxical situation is that we pay taxes to allow destruction of humans’ property, means of surviving and dignity, while we voluntarily pay to improve those circumstances.”
“All land served by sewer lines is desperately needed for housing, both to end homelessness and to save fuel by reducing commuting distances.”
“I’m certain I can’t be the first to wonder why the St. Joe’s campus side of Mission Hospital couldn’t become a resource for housing hundreds of people just like that?!”
ASHEVILLE, N.C.
ASHEVILLE, N.C.
ASHEVILLE, N.C.
“We must recognize that as long as we prioritize more hotels, more restaurants, more new construction (none of which is wholly bad), we must also acknowledge the consequences of those priorities — the displacement of people on the margins — and find ways to sustainably address them.”
“The reason for this extraordinary housing retention rate is Homeward Bound doesn’t just put people in homes and forget about them; we provide ongoing support called case management.”
