Buncombe County doesn’t consistently track racial demographic data

Flagged 21 times in 2024. See tag “Racial Demographic Data” for more details.

Buncombe County doesn’t consistently track racial demographic data for its departments or programs, despite the fact that racial equity is described as a “foundational focus area” in its 2025 Strategic Plan and is regularly asserted as a core value. 

This negligence was named as a prominent “key harm” in the Cease The Harm Audit the County received earlier this year: “Insufficient data-driven practices to determine the level of African American participation in County and City opportunities. County and City departments inconsistently collect racial demographic data across their programs, services, pathways, and resources to comprehensively determine the quality of opportunity, knowledge-base, representation, and access to African Americans. The lack of racial demographics prevents a targeted understanding of service delivery and program effectiveness [emphasis added].”

In an audit with over a hundred recommendations, it’s significant that this challenge was elevated to such prominence. To put it simply: if Buncombe County is not tracking data on racial inequities in how their programs are performing, there is no way to assess whether they are making any progress on addressing those inequities.

We’ve flagged this issue in previous years (see last year’s end-of-year report for a summary of all the times we mentioned it in 2023 alone). GAP supporters reached out with hundreds of emails to County staff and the County Commission, but we are so far not aware of any movement toward a more consistent policy or practice on this issue.

We don’t have enough deeply affordable housing in our region

Flagged 8 times in 2024. See tag “affordable housing” for more details.

There is nowhere near enough affordable housing in our region, and deeply affordable housing, which we would define as below 50% of the Area Median Income (AMI), is in even shorter supply. Last year’s analysis by Thrive Asheville (which you can read in its entirety here) demonstrates that so-called “affordable housing” for those earning 80% of the Area Median Income (AMI) “actually (increases) the disparity of available homes to those most in need…”

Black and Latine families in our region have a median income that is below 50% of AMI. Their needs will not be addressed if new housing development only offers “affordable housing” for those making 80% of AMI. For that reason, we continued to advocate this year for both the City of Asheville and Buncombe County to give top priority to supporting developments that could really address the deep inequities in housing access in our region.

Both the City and County supported various affordable housing projects this year, some of which did indeed promise to include this level of affordability, although not at the scale needed. We encouraged the City of Asheville to draw a firmer line with private developers seeking zoning amendments, insisting that their projects offer more affordable housing, but most of the time they did not set that boundary.

Western North Carolina needs significant economic relief after Hurricane Helene

Flagged 5 times in 2024. See tags “eviction moratorium” and “rental assistance” for more details.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, our region is in the midst of a deep economic crisis that requires significant government intervention. We advocated for action by the City and County, but also broadened our usual scope to support efforts to secure needed aid from the State of North Carolina. Unfortunately, State Republicans passed a “relief bill” that actually offered almost no economic relief, but was instead a power grab in the waning days of their veto-proof majority.

The City of Asheville needs to invest more fully in business inclusion

Flagged 6 times in 2024. See tag “Asheville Business Inclusion Office” for more details.

In the Spring of 2024, we began pointing to the 2023 Disparity Study and its findings that Minority and Women Business Enterprises (MWBE) received disproportionately fewer contracts offered by the City of Asheville. The Disparity Study offered 41 recommendations for how to address these disparities. We were concerned that the current resources dedicated to the Asheville Business Inclusion (ABI) office, which has only one staff member, would be a barrier to implementing these recommendations.

Our team eventually met with Marcus Kirkman, the new Business Inclusion Manager, and Rachel Taylor, the Economic Development Division Manager. They offered us an in-depth overview of their Disparity Study implementation plan. (They also presented their plan to the Equity and Engagement Committee – you can review the slides here.)

We were impressed by many elements of the plan, and pleased that there will be publicly shared milestones and regular public reports on progress. We still have some of our original concerns – that timely and complete implementation of these recommendations will require more staff resources than the City is allocating. However, we were willing to extend some grace to Mr. Kirkman and Ms. Taylor as they begin to move forward with their plan and understand that they will need to determine what resources will be needed to carry out their plan. We are encouraged by their commitment and look forward to hearing their progress reports, which were supposed to begin this past Fall, but have been delayed because of the hurricane.

Debris dumping and sorting sites shouldn’t be set up near vulnerable neighborhoods

Flagged 4 times in 2024. See tag “hurricane helene relief” for more details. 

In October, we were alarmed to hear that the City of Asheville had set up a debris sorting site in the Deaverview neighborhood, posing significant health and safety risks to that community. Along with other local groups and advocates, we were able to persuade the City to change course, and the site was closed. We then pressed for a commitment from the City that it would not locate these debris sites near other vulnerable neighborhoods, or reopen sites they were suggesting could be reopened. We wondered why local landowners, such as the Biltmore Company, which owns large areas of real estate removed from residential and school zones, weren’t being publicly pressed to donate or lease land for this purpose.

While we were gratified to have played a role in protecting Deaverview, we received no further communication from the City about their future plans, and so this issue will require further attention in the new year.

The Southside Community Farm is in less imminent danger of eviction

Flagged 4 times in 2024. See tag “Southside Community Farm” for more details. 

This past spring, the Housing Authority for the City of Asheville, under the leadership of then-president Monique Pierre, announced its intention to evict the Southside Community Farm from its current location next to the Arthur R. Edington Education and Career Center. The reasons stated for this change were questionable, and we stood in solidarity with the Farm and its supporters who were advocating to protect the farm. In the face of a wave of community resistance, the eviction was postponed. Then, following a series of unrelated poor decisions in the wake of Hurricane Helene, Ms. Pierre was fired this past fall. The interim president, Rhodney Norman, told BPR News that evicting the farm was  “not a priority.” This situation will need to be monitored in 2025, when new leadership for the Housing Authority is selected.

Cottage and Flag lot ordinances need to protect against further gentrification

Flagged 3 times in 2024. See tag “cottage and flag lot standards” for more details.

The Asheville City Council was presented in January and then again in August with proposed changes to the Unified Development Ordinance that would allow landowners to build more cottages and/or split their properties into flag lots. We agreed with City staff that these changes put vulnerable homeowners, especially those in legacy neighborhoods, at greater risk of detrimental increases in density and that more community engagement should be undertaken to ensure that these changes would be welcome in historically Black neighborhoods. The Asheville City Council will consider this issue again in February, 2025.

The Community Reparations Commission was given a much-needed extension

Flagged 6 times in 2024. See tag “Community Reparations Commission” for more details.

The Community Reparations Commission (CRC) has been working for three years to fulfill their formidable and critical task: a comprehensive plan for reparations from both the City and County to address centuries of harm to Black community members. They were given this charge after both the Asheville City Council and the Buncombe County Commission passed Reparations Resolutions in 2020. 

The process has had to endure multiple delays and roadblocks, all outside the hands of the CRC members, but the combination of these factors made it challenging for them to complete their work by the arbitrarily assigned deadline of Spring 2024. They asked for a year-long extension at the end of 2023 and were refused. With the work still not complete this past summer, they asked again – this time for a six-month extension. We were proud to stand with them at each of these moments, and gratified that they eventually were granted the needed extension.

As we head into the new year, it remains unclear when the CRC will be supported by staff to return to work and finish preparing their final recommendations and report. What’s even more unclear is whether the City and County will approve those recommendations and actually deliver meaningful reparations.

Flaws in the process of hiring for the “Boosting the Block” initiative were flagged and addressed

Flagged 4 times in 2024. See tag “The Block community” for more details.

The City of Asheville got a grant from the Mellon Foundation to reimagine and rebuild Pack Square and the surrounding areas. Part of that funding was for “engineering and construction to better connect The Block and enhance its cultural character (‘Boosting the Block’); and programming and education around more inclusive storytelling and history efforts in our community.” The first step in that project was to select an organization to represent The Block community and facilitate its engagement with the City. The selection process for the role was problematic – The Block community was supposed to have the majority of votes, but somehow the local firm they voted as their first choice wasn’t given the role.. After we raised concerns about this, the Asheville City Council took the unusual step of rejecting the staff-recommended firm, and advised them to restart the process. Block community members were torn about this outcome, because they were eager to get started, and so they agreed to an expedited process. Ultimately, the whole flawed process didn’t lead to a new outcome, but it did successfully  highlight and uncover how purportedly “community-led” decisions can go “off the rails.”

A proposed bike path impacting Black residents in Southside was withdrawn

Flagged 2 times in 2024. See more details here.

A local organization called AVL Unpaved brought a proposal to the Asheville Board of Education for an easement to facilitate the construction of a bike trail behind Asheville Middle School and Charles Street in the Southside neighborhood. The residents who live closest to the proposed path were opposed because of concerns about safety and gentrification. The developers insisted that it would be good for the community. We suggested that City officials give greater weight to the preferences and concerns of those most proximate to the proposed development, noting the historical tendency to supersede Black voices to do something supposedly in their interest. After tensions rose in a series of meetings, the proposal was withdrawn.