From Staff Reports 

Asheville’s affordable housing crisis could shackle economic growth and the city’s ability to retain workers, community leaders said during an Aug. 24 meeting at downtown Asheville’s Renaissance Asheville Hotel.

 Public, private and nonprofit representatives came together to grapple with Asheville’s affordable housing crisis and to discuss potential solutions during Leadership Asheville’s “Finding Shelter: Asheville’s Housing Challenge” panel discussion.

The Asheville Summer Buzz Breakfast series program, organized by UNC Asheville, featured speakers from the Asheville Area Chamber of Commerce, the Asheville Area Habitat for Humanity, the Asheville Housing Authority, First Citizens Bank and Dewey Property Advisors.

While low-wage workers are vital to the smooth functioning of Asheville’s tourism economy, about one out of three of them are paying more than half their income on housing, panelist Andry Barnett, executive director of Asehville Area Habitat for Humanity, said, adding, “This is a huge, huge challenge for this community.”

One of Asheville’s fastest-growing population segments is Millenials (those born between 1980 and 1995) — and this could put the city at a major competitive disadvantage, as housing remains too expensive for many of them, said panelist Kit Cramer, president and chief executive officer of the Asheville Area Chamber of Commerce.

A big part of Asheville’s charm and attractionis its creative base, the artisans who call the city their home, but “without the ability to create that affordable place to live, we’ll lose that base, which, in turn, will kill what we call the ‘golden goose of Asheville,’” panelist Eddie Dewey, founder of Dewey Property Advisors, said.

Panelists’ solutions included scaling back on development ordinances, such as landscaping, that drive up costs, making better use of public subsidies and improving transportation, so that workers from outside of Buncombe County can maintain their employment.

Asheville leads the state in the number of people entering and leaving the city every day, partially due to a lack of affordable housing in the city, panelist Pat Carver, area executive for First Citizens Bank, said.

“When you have to spend ‘X” amount in gas to come up and down the mountain, that doesn’t help with the affordability,” Carver said. Any solution is going to require collaboration among private, public and nonprofit entities, he added.

Habitat for Humanity’s Barnett said his agency is exploring how it can expand its traditional model to include more high-density projects to have a bigger impact.

Meanwhile, the chamber is looking to provide tangible tools to help employers retain their workforces, Cramer said, suggesting that businesses help their employees save for housing similar to the way they help them build retirement accounts. 

Also, the community needs to be engaged and residents need to be aware of issues — and welcome change, Cramer added.

“Sometimes things are going to have to get more crowded before you are going to get an intersection redone,” she said, “but that doesn’t mean you stop a development which is going to provide housing in an area that desparately needs it.”

Proponents of affordable housing tend to be a silent majority, while the louder voices tend to be the ones shouting, “Not in my backyard,” Barnett said. “Become the ‘Yes, in my backyard’ folks.”

About 2,000 people are on the waiting list for subsidized housing in Asheville, panelist Gene Bell, chief executive officer of the city Housing Authority, said.

“It is very concerning to me that we have this many people that are disenfranchised in one of the greatest cities in the county,” Bell said.