Government Accountability Project of Asheville

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• Buncombe County is advancing budget, land use, and investment decisions without any anti-displacement analysis (new)
• Appeal deadline for property tax reappraisals is too early (resolved)

• The 50 Coxe Avenue affordable housing development should do more to prevent displacement (resolved)

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Buncombe County continues to make major policy, budget, and land-use decisions that shape who can afford to live here without any consistent effort to analyze or mitigate displacement. This week’s agenda is no exception. From the FY2027 budget to new public financing strategies and farmland preservation policies, the County is acting in ways that will influence housing stability across the community, yet has still not adopted an anti-displacement lens or framework.

This report highlights three key agenda items that illustrate the pattern: decisions affecting immediate funding priorities, future investment strategies, and long-term land use are all moving forward without any assessment of who may be pushed out as a result. Despite repeated requests, the County has yet to commit to even a basic displacement impact analysis—leaving critical decisions disconnected from their real-world consequences.

This omission is not an outlier, but the norm. In the past 5 months, we’ve lifted up 22 distinct policy decisions that the County was making without any assessment of who might be displaced as a result.

You can see a complete list of these missed opportunities here.

This GAP report also provides updates on two other issues:

• The 50 Coxe Avenue affordable housing development passed (which is good), but without some of the anti-displacement safeguards we recommended (which is unfortunate)
• The County ignored requests from multiple community groups, as well as many GAP supporters, to extend their deadline for property tax reappraisals.

Take action with us:
Here are all active email templates:

• Email the Buncombe County Commission about the need for an anti-displacement analysis to guide current decision-making.

Resources:

Click here to read our full proposed anti-displacement policy proposal.