Summary: The City of Asheville has allocated $135,000 in Community Development Block Grant funding to rental assistance; Buncombe County will administer.

The Facts (updated): Buncombe County accepted rental assistance applications through a lottery system. 5800 applications were received, and then the 800 folks that received aid (so far) were selected at random. The only eligibility criteria was an income at or below 80% Area Median Income (AMI). Demographic data on recipients was optional, and only collected from a small percentage of them.

Original Facts: At this week’s Buncombe County Commission meeting on Tuesday, May 20th, the Commissioners will vote on a new business item: “The City of Asheville has allotted $135,076 of additional CDBG funds from the Declared Disaster Recovery (DDRF) Grant to Buncombe County to provide rental assistance to residents of Asheville via the county’s Helene Recovery Housing Assistance Grant program, of which $13,508 can be used for administrative costs of the program.” You can read the full text of the budget amendment here, and see the presentation slides here.

Our Assessment (updated): We are troubled by this process. A random selection process can’t take into account relative economic needs. It seems likely that those with more resources to begin with were better positioned to apply for this aid than those with less, further skewing the results. Of course, there is no way to know because data wasn’t collected consistently. We think Buncombe County should reassess this process and commit to prioritizing those in the greatest need.

Original Assessment: We are glad to see more funding allocated for rental assistance in our region, which is desperately needed. However, we wonder what process the County will use to determine who receives these funds. The presentation says that the “fund would go toward rental assistance for City of Asheville households with incomes at 80% AMI or less.” We know that the 80% AMI (Area Median Income) threshold is mandated by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). What isn’t clear is whether those with incomes far below 80% AMI will be given top priority. Right now, 80% AMI for a family of four in Buncombe County is just under $75,000. In contrast, 50% of AMI is $46,750, and 30% of AMI for that family size is $31,200. There are renters in Buncombe County whose AMI falls in these lower ranges – Is the County’s program designed to prioritize those lower income families? While $135,000 is a significant amount of money, the need is greater, and we’d like to see those most in need moved to the front of the line.

The Ask: We invited you to join us in reaching out to Buncombe County leadership to encourage them to address several recovery-related equity issues. We met with County Commissioner Jennifer Horton and she is going to explore the issue and meet with us again. No action is required at this time.

Report Back

See report back for “Buncombe County needs to track demographic information as it navigates the recovery process” above.