Summary: The Asheville City Council will consider whether to approve an amended deed restriction for the former Ramada Inn property to add supportive housing units, as well as some revisions in the use of American Rescue Plan Act funding for this project and others aimed at addressing homelessness.

The Facts: The City Council is being asked to approve an amended plan for the Ramada Inn property on River Ford Parkway: the original plan called for a hundred units of permanent supportive housing, while the new plan calls for fifty such units and fifty affordable housing units, priced at 50% of Area Median Income or below. Friendship for Affordable Housing, an affordable housing developer, is under contract to purchase the property from Stormfield Capital. Closing is set for October 1, 2024 with occupancy projected for December 2025. 

In addition, staff are proposing that the $500,000 in American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funding, which would have paid for those additional fifty units, be reallocated to other homelessness and supportive service projects, with specific project recommendations to come from the Asheville-Buncombe Continuum of Care.

The City Council will discuss and vote on both the plan and the funding reallocation at their September 24th meeting. 

Source: Staff Report, Presentation

Our Assessment: Our region has a well-documented deficiency of housing that is deeply affordable enough to meet the needs of Black and Latine community members. This new plan, that offers both permanent supportive housing and affordable housing at 50% or less of AMI, seems like a step in the right direction. We think the City Council should vote to approve it.

Things to do: We invite you to email the members of the Asheville City Council and encourage them to approve this plan for a mix of supportive and affordable housing in the former Ramada Inn property. You can use our email template below (which covers this issue as well as one that follows) to send them a message about this issue.

Email Template: You can send an email to the Asheville City Council by filling out the form below. Our email tool will send an individually addressed email to the recipients, and enable us to track how many emails were sent overall in the campaign. If you prefer to write your own email, you can copy and paste (and adapt) our template text – we ask that you send us a copy (cc: or bcc:, your choice) at info@gapavl.org so we can better track how many emails were sent.

To: AshevilleNCCouncil@ashevillenc.gov

CC: or BCC: info@gapavl.org

Subject: New plan for Ramada Inn property

Dear Members of City Council,

You will be discussing the Ramada Inn at your meeting on September 24th, and I wanted to reach out to encourage you to approve the new plan that combines permanent supportive housing with affordable housing. Both are important, and this new plan looks like a promising step for our City.

Thanks for your leadership,

Report Back

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