With rising rents and a growing population, local leaders are using every tool they have to encourage more affordable developments, including the City of Asheville Land’s Use Incentive Grant program. City Council members say the program designed to encourage developers to offer affordable housing is good in theory, but in practice it might be shutting out minority families, perpetuating decades of racial discrimination in housing.
Members will vote on whether to temporarily ban LUIG grants for microhousing projects — those with individual housing units smaller than a studio apartment, or about 400 square feet — until the city can develop new standards for the category.
This new funding, to be voted on by City Council during the regular meeting of Tuesday, Feb. 14, would come on top of more than $1.4 million the city has already budgeted for bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure along the I-26 corridor.
With a unanimous vote during their Nov. 15 meeting, Asheville City Council members approved their fourth land use incentive grant of 2022. The award to South Carolina-based Orange Capital Advisors LLC brings the city’s spending on the affordable housing program this year to nearly $5.4 million.
Currently, Asheville prohibits the replacement of any manufactured home by another after its spot has been vacant for 180 days. City planners want to ease that rule and others to “stop the slow attrition of affordable housing units that are desperately needed in our community.”
Asheville City Council unanimously approved two different approaches to support developments aimed at increasing affordable housing.
The development to be considered for the grant, located at 221 Long Shoals Road in South Asheville, will contain 186 apartments across three four- to five-story buildings.
Better known as LUIG, the initiative aims to entice developers to include affordable units in their projects by offering property tax rebates. Asheville City Council is next slated to consider such a grant Tuesday, July 26, for a 186-unit development on Long Shoals Road.
According to planning documents submitted with the city, the units will be no larger than 250 square feet.
The plan would reduce the section of the avenue between Midland Road and W.T. Weaver Boulevard from its current four-lane, two-way configuration to one lane in each direction, along with a center turn lane and bicycle lanes.
Trees and trash proved contentious topics as members of Asheville City Council considered two Land Use Incentive Grants for affordable housing projects during a May 26 virtual meeting.
During their meeting of Tuesday, March 10, Asheville City Council members will consider a $473,000 contract for emergency repairs at the North Fork Water Plant, the largest of the city’s three water treatment plants.
“Unless you are using the city and county tools and financing from either the city’s housing trust fund, the county’s affordable housing fund or some kind of funds from a taxpayer project,” real estate developer Kirk Booth told around 40 people at the Council of Independent Business Owners’ Dec. 6 breakfast meeting, “it’s not going to happen.”
The Land Use Incentive Grant point maximum will increase from 140 to 200, with every 10 points worth a rebate of one year of city property taxes above a property’s pre-development total. But developers will also face stricter conditions when applying for LUIG money: The minimum period for which a project must guarantee affordable housing will increase from 15 to 20 years.
At Asheville City Council’s upcoming regular meeting on Tuesday, Sept. 11, officials will consider a resolution updating council strategic priorities for the 2018-19 fiscal year.
On Tuesday, Oct. 25, Asheville City Council will consider new rules that would limit acoustic performances in two of the city’s most popular busking areas, the sidewalk on Haywood Street in front of Woolworth Walk and the Flat Iron at Battery Park Avenue and Wall Street. Also: a grant to support affordable housing development on Simpson Street and a change to the city’s signage ordinance.
On Sept. 27, Asheville City Council will consider downtown development review standards, a zoning request from the Greater Works Church of God, a zoning amendment limiting the height of buildings in the navigable airspace of the Asheville Regional Airport and a resolution in support of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe.
