Summary: Buncombe County’s Helene Recovery Plan, which includes projects within the City of Asheville, is missing anti-displacement strategies, inclusive community engagement plans, and data collection that would measure (and ensure) equity outcomes. We propose a remedy below to all three of these omissions.

The Facts: On Tuesday, November 18, the Buncombe County Commission voted to approve its Helene Recovery Plan; the Asheville City Council also voted that day to approve the portion of that plan that is specific to the City.

The Helene Recovery Plan is a comprehensive roadmap for long-term recovery following Hurricane Helene, designed to help the City and County prioritize, coordinate, and fund recovery work across housing, infrastructure, resilience, and community well-being. The plan identifies 31 County projects organized under themes such as housing and property protection, infrastructure stabilization and repair, food security, community resilience, and flood mitigation, along with additional eligible City of Asheville mitigation projects approved under the City’s 2022 Hazard Mitigation Plan. It emphasizes developing a unified strategy that supports residents, stabilizes critical systems, restores essential services, and reduces risk from future disasters.

You can read the plan here. (It still says “draft” but was approved.)

Our Assessment: We continue to have several concerns about this plan, and think it should be revised. Even though the 31 projects described have large, long-term implications for community stability, resilience, and fairness in recovery, the plan:

• Does not safeguard residents from displacement,
• Does not include an engagement approach that reaches those most impacted and/or most vulnerable to negative impacts, and
• Does not measure equity outcomes.

Anti-Displacement & Equitable Development: Neither Buncombe County nor the City of Asheville’s sections of the Helene Recovery Plan include protections to prevent involuntary displacement, even though many proposed projects—such as flood mitigation, property protection programs, infrastructure upgrades, and stormwater improvements—affect neighborhoods where low-income residents and households of color are more vulnerable to being pushed out.

• Buncombe County: Countywide projects involving buyouts, property protection, infrastructure rebuilds, and resilience investments could raise property values or pressure vulnerable homeowners and renters to leave, especially in rural mobile home communities and flood-prone areas.
• Asheville: The City’s stormwater, landslide, and infrastructure projects occur in dense neighborhoods, some with histories of urban renewal and redevelopment pressure. Without explicit safeguards, recovery investments could unintentionally accelerate gentrification or displacement in historically Black neighborhoods or low-income areas.

Culturally Relevant Community Engagement: The plan outlines dozens of major projects but does not describe how residents—especially marginalized and multilingual communities—will be meaningfully engaged during planning, design, or implementation. This risks excluding these communities from shaping recovery decisions that affect them.

• Buncombe County: Many County projects (housing, flood mitigation, food resilience) directly affect diverse and rural communities, but the plan contains no structures for outreach in Spanish, no engagement strategy for BIPOC neighborhoods, and no commitments to compensate or elevate resident voices.
• Asheville: The City section includes no engagement commitments despite recovery work occurring in neighborhoods with sizable Black, Latine, and immigrant populations. Culturally responsive engagement is essential for building trust and ensuring recovery solutions actually meet local needs.

Equity Metrics for Tracking Recovery Impact: The plan includes an extensive list of projects but no metrics for measuring whether recovery is equitably distributed (i.e. who benefits and who is left out). Without race, income, and geography-specific tracking, inequities in recovery access and outcomes could be expected to grow over time.

• Buncombe County: With 31 County projects across housing, infrastructure, food access, and flood mitigation, the County needs metrics to ensure that historically marginalized communities have fair access to recovery funds and risk-reduction projects.
• Asheville: The City’s capital-intensive projects (stormwater, landslides, roads) could produce widely different benefits across neighborhoods. Without metrics, the City cannot evaluate whether vulnerable communities receive equal protections or whether higher-income areas inadvertently receive disproportionate recovery investment.
  

Our Proposal: To ensure that recovery and mitigation efforts benefit all residents—especially those historically most impacted by disasters—the Helene Recovery Plan should be amended to include the following equity commitments for both Buncombe County and the City of Asheville:

1. Anti-Displacement & Equitable Development Protections: Major County and City projects involving housing, property mitigation, and infrastructure repairs risk unintentionally accelerating displacement, especially in Black, Latine, immigrant, and low-income neighborhoods. The plan should explicitly include:
   • A “no involuntary displacement” standard for all recovery projects.
   • Right-to-return guarantees, relocation assistance, and protections for renters and manufactured home residents.
   • Equity criteria for project siting that prioritize historically disinvested communities.
2. Culturally Relevant, Community-Rooted Engagement: The current plan lacks an engagement strategy tailored to marginalized and multilingual communities. To ensure meaningful participation, the plan should require:
   • Engagement methods designed for Black, Latine, immigrant, and rural communities, including translation, interpretation, childcare, transportation, and stipends.
   • Partnerships with trusted community institutions (e.g., Black churches, Latine service providers, neighborhood associations).
   • Engagement at all stages—project design, grant applications, and implementation.
3. Equity Metrics for Tracking and Accountability: The plan lists many recovery projects but includes no mechanism to measure equitable access to resources or benefits. The plan should establish:
   • Race, income, and geography-disaggregated metrics for tracking who receives assistance and which neighborhoods benefit from infrastructure and mitigation improvements.
   • Annual public reporting to evaluate whether recovery resources reduce or widen disparities that exist among residents based on race, income, and geography.
   • A transparent prioritization framework that elevates frontline and historically marginalized communities.

Together, these amendments would help ensure that recovery from Helene strengthens community resilience without deepening existing inequities so that both Buncombe County and the City of Asheville rebuild in ways that are just, inclusive, and accountable.

The Ask: We invited you to join us in calling on Asheville and Buncombe County leaders to make these important amendments to the Helene Recovery Plan.

Report Back

Total GAP Supporter Actions Taken: 23

Recipients and Responses:
Asheville City Leadership

• City Manager Debra Campbell: No response
• Mayor Esther Manheimer: No response
• Vice Mayor Antanette Mosley: No response
• City Council Member Bo Hess: No response
• City Council Member Kim Roney: No response
• City Council Member Maggie Ullman: No response
• City Council Member Sage Turner: No response
• City Council Member Sheneika Smith: No response

Buncombe County Commission

• County Manager Avril Pinder: No response
• County Commission Chair Amanda Edwards: No response
• County Commissioner Al Whitesides: No response
• County Commissioner Drew Ball: No response
• County Commissioner Jennifer Horton: No response
• County Commissioner Martin Moore: No response
• County Commissioner Parker Sloane: No response
• County Commissioner Terri Wells: No response