Summary: The City of Asheville is eligible for $225 million from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

The Facts: The Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) program provides resources to communities impacted by a major disaster. From the City’s website: “These funds must be used to address unmet disaster-related needs, particularly in housing, economic revitalization, and infrastructure restoration.” 70% of this funding is supposed to directly impact “low and moderate income” people.

The final plan has been published and will be presented to (and voted on by) the Asheville City Council at their meeting this Tuesday, April 8th.

You can download the final plan here.

Our Assessment: We argued that it was critically important that this plan prioritize equity issues, with a special emphasis on racial equity. The City was deeply inequitable before the storm, and those problems have only been exacerbated since. A racially-just disaster “recovery” cannot simply seek to return our City to the pre-storm status quo, but must address the pre-existing (and now compounded) divides between different racial groups and economic classes.

With that in mind, we advocated for:

• More deeply affordable housing. The original plan called for $26 million in new affordable housing, and the City bumped that up to $28 million. They changed the language in the criteria for selecting projects to emphasize “deep affordability.”
• More small business support. The original plan called for $15 million in support of low to moderate income small business owners, and the City bumped that up to $17 million.
• Better input from marginalized folks on how these funds should be used. We wanted the City to commit to funding improvements in our community connectivity infrastructure, through deeper engagement approaches like canvassing and neighborhood-level organizing. They increased the planning budget by $1 million, and described this kind of “community organizing” as a possible use of those funds.

While the final plan didn’t include other things we advocated for, like rental assistance and more money for workforce development, we appreciate that the City heard us and incorporated some of our recommendations in the final plan.

Things to do: WWe invite you to join us in emailing City staff and the members of the Asheville City Council to thank them for adopting some of our recommendations into the final CDBG-DR plan. Our email template is below.

Email Template: You can send an email to Asheville staff members and 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 – please cc: or bcc: info@gapavl.org on your individualized email, so we can better track how many emails were sent. (If the form below doesn’t load properly for you, you can also fill it in here.)

To: jshelton2@ashevillenc.gov, AshevilleNCCouncil@ashevillenc.gov

CC: or BCC: info@gapavl.org

Subject: Thank you for prioritizing deeply affordable housing and more community engagement with CDBG-DR

Dear Asheville Community Development Division Manager Shelton and Members of City Council,

I’m writing to express appreciation for several revisions you made to the plan for using Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery funding. Our City desperately needs more deeply affordable housing, so I appreciate your increasing the overall allocation for housing by $2 million and your naming of deep affordability as a priority. Lower income small business owners also need additional support, so I appreciate the $2 million in increased funding for them. Finally, I appreciate your naming enhanced community connectivity as an important goal, and your increase of $1 million to the planning budget to fund deeper engagement approaches like canvassing and neighborhood-level organizing.

I will continue monitoring this process as we move from the broadly conceived plan to actual programs.

Thanks for your leadership,

(Your Name)

Report Back

GAP Supporters Taking Action: 39

Recipients and Responses:

Asheville City Council

• Mayor Esther Manheimer: No response
• Vice Mayor Antanette Mosley: No response
• City Council Member Bo Hess: Responded “Thank you.”
• City Council Member Kim Roney: Responded “Received with gratitude.”
• City Council Member Maggie Ullman: No response
• City Council Member Sage Turner: No response
• City Council Member Sheneika Smith: No response

Asheville City Staff

• Community Development Division: Responded: “Thank you for providing this feedback. In response to your comments, the City has added language within the selection criteria to prioritize contractors that address deep affordability within the Affordable Multi-Family Construction Program. Additionally, in response to your comment regarding our community, the City has added a planning activity in Section 4.2.2 that will allow for a strategic approach to foster connectivity and resilience. In regard to your comment about building within the floodplain, the City of Asheville will not invest any CDBG-DR funds into projects or activities that build new structures within the floodplains.”