Summary: The City of Asheville voted to increase the number of Housing Authority Commissioners from seven to eleven.

The Facts: There is a proposal on the January 14th, 2025 City Council consent agenda to increase the number of appointed Commissioners to the Asheville Housing Authority from its current number of seven to a total of eleven. From the staff report: “Increasing the membership of the commission will enhance the capacity of the Authority to perform its duty of providing safe and sanitary dwelling accommodations for persons of low income.”

Documents: Staff report

Our Assessment: Although little rationale has been offered for this shift, we think it sounds like a good idea. The Housing Authority needs more leadership in order to perform its mission, and having more Commissioners seems to offer an opportunity for better service to residents.

Things to do: We invite you to email the Asheville City Council and staff leadership and encourage them to approve this expansion of the Asheville Housing Authority. You can use our template to address this issue (it’s above, under the rental assistance concern).

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.

Template text:

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

CC: or BCC: info@gapavl.org

Subject: Will rental assistance program have a racial equity lens?

Dear Asheville City Council and City Manager,

I am writing to address two issues on your January 14th agenda.

The first is a proposed expansion of the Asheville Housing Authority from seven to eleven Commissioners, which sounds like a step in the right direction. I encourage you to approve it.

The second is a proposal to allocate CDBG funding to the County’s rental assistance program, which is much needed. I have one concern: do you know if the County is tracking racial demographic data for this program? The inconsistency of racial data collection was one of the primary issues raised in last year’s Cease The Harm audit, and the County has not yet shared a plan for addressing that issue. Have you received assurances, in turning over City money to the County for this important purpose, that racial data is being collected so that racial equity can be assessed? Thank you for your leadership.

Sincerely,

Report Back

The Asheville City Council approved the increase in seats unanimously.