Homelessness remains stubbornly high in Asheville, with the most recent official count showing the city had 739 people experiencing homelessness as of January 2024, up from 573, in 2023. The change is a 29 percent increase year over year.
The number of people without shelter rose from 171 to 219, or 28 percent, but that increase mainly resulted from a more accurate, detailed counting process, the city said.
The city of Asheville released the annual “Point-In-Time” count information Thursday, and officials noted the new methodology resulted in a more thorough, accurate count of homeless people. The new methodology determined that 520 people were in shelter or transitional housing and 219 people were without shelter.
The new method added a day-after count, targeted campsite outreach from professionals, and added service locations frequented by unsheltered people. “The expanded count identified 102 additional people who would not have been counted using prior years’ methodology,” according to the city’s news release.
In an apples-to-apples comparison (using the previous methodology), the overall homeless count rose from 573 last year to 637 this year. Also using that previous methodology, the total of unsheltered people actually dropped from 171 to 117, partly because of the opening of Homeward Bound’s Compass Point permanent shelter on Tunnel Road, which provides permanent housing to 85 people.
By both methodologies, people listed as living in shelters or transitional housing rose from 402 in 2023 to 520 in 2024. While the two methodologies create some confusion, it’s clear that homelessness continues to rise in Asheville and Buncombe County.
Asheville Mayor Esther Manheimer said the results, and the increases in some categories, are not surprising.
“I think this is an ongoing crisis,” Manheimer said Friday. “I think that as long as we continue to have an affordable housing crisis, we’re going to continue to be challenged with this issue.”
Manheimer said the increase in the number of people who are sheltered is an improvement, and the establishment of the Continuum of Care planning body should help with further steps toward improvement. The COC, which has more than 300 stakeholders, now spearheads the homelessness response in the Asheville-Buncombe community. It met for the first time in February and elected a new board Thursday.
Asked if the city was failing at stemming the tide of homelessness, Manheimer said, “I wouldn’t say that we’re necessarily failing.” Manheimer is now the city’s liaison to the COC.
In 2021, the city entered into a plan to buy the Ramada Inn hotel in east Asheville, hoping to convert the building into a permanent lower-barrier shelter. A nonprofit operated the facility for a time, but it generated complaints from business and residential neighbors about inappropriate behavior and unsanitary conditions.
The city balked at the nearly $10 million price tag to buy and upfit the property, deciding to shift the purchase contract to Shangri-La, a private California company that contracted with another company to do the conversion. But that never happened.
Last December, “Shangri-La’s lender, Stormfield Capital, proceeded with foreclosure and now controls the property,” according to a city news release on the matter.
Manheimer said the city and county, and the new COC are “ticking away at implementing the recommendations from the National Alliance to End Homelessness. That organization offered hundreds of recommendations last year to improve the homelessness situation here.
“But we are not done with that to-do list,” Manheimer said, “And that to-do list includes things like a low-barrier shelter, for example, but also services like diversion, which is where you interface with folks and figure out, ‘Do you have family we could reunite you with? Do you have a place you can go that you just need some help making that connection?’”
A better coordinated entry program for homeless people is also needed, Manheimer said, as “it is still a confusing world out there to navigate in terms of the most effective way of getting yourself housed again.”
Homeless services director: Count isn’t surprising
Alanna Kinsella, homeless services director at Homeward Bound WNC, which operates Compass Point and the AHOPE day shelter, said the new count did not surprise her.
“It says exactly what’s going on — we have a housing crisis,” Kinsella said, noting that she’s been working in the homelessness field for 11 years. “I’m not surprised to see it, because I’m seeing more and more people that are having a hard time with income and the high rent rates. I was happy to see that the numbers are actually representing what’s happening in Asheville.”
Kinsella said significant numbers of homeless people likely were missed in previous counts, and the report does show that considerably more homeless people have shelter. She praised the Salvation Army for stepping up its efforts on lower-barrier housing.
But like Manheimer, Kinsella this all comes back to housing, or the lack of it in this area, coupled with extremely high rents and home prices.
Median household income in Buncombe County was $66,531 in 2022, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The median sale price for a single-family home in Asheville is $418,250, according to Zillow. That’s a ratio of 6.29, compared to the U.S. average of 5.6 in 2022, according to Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies.
The fair market rent for the Asheville metro area for fiscal year 2024 stands at $1,428 for an efficiency, $1,496 for a one-bedroom apartment, and $1,680 for a two-bedroom, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Just five years ago, those rents stood at $794 for an efficiency, $799 for a one-bedroom, and $993 for a two-bedroom.
This year, the local nonprofit Just Economics WNC put the living wage in Buncombe County at $22.10. Just Economics says the living wage is the minimum amount a worker must earn to afford his or her basic necessities, without public or private assistance.
“And most people are not making that,” Kinsella said. “In order to afford a one-bedroom unit you have to be making that sort of income. Well, what happens to folks surviving on Social Security and Disability? They’re pulling in $900 (a month). They can’t pay $1,700 (a month in rent).”
Manheimer said she will travel to Washington, D.C., on Monday and Tuesday, along with mayors from 40 other cities, to meet with White House and congressional officials to discuss homelessness.
Here in Asheville, she was pleased to see the number of people in the count who were sheltered rise.
“And that’s because we have more beds, we have funded more beds, and that’s been critical as well,” Manheimer said. “But you know, obviously, it’s not abating. And I think until we figure out how to meaningfully address the housing crisis, we’re going to continue to see this.”
Manheimer noted that Asheville has a large concentration of homeless veterans that other communities likely don’t have, in part because Asheville is home to the Charles George VA Medical Center.
Tim McElyea is the director of homeless services at Asheville-Buncombe Community Christian Ministry, a coalition of over 300 local churches. Among other programs, ABCCM operates the Veterans Restoration Quarters homeless shelter, which has 250 beds, and Transformation Village, a 100-bed shelter for women and children.
McElyea acknowledged the homeless count did increase.
“Did it increase? Yes,” McElyea said. “In reality, is it probably a huge, greater increase than what was out there anyway? Probably not.”
More volunteers participated in the survey, and more counts were done during the day when people are active, McElyea said. Also, a “Code Purple” was called the day of the count, meaning all shelters opened as if it was a cold weather emergency, which made it easier to count people.
Homelessness remains a problem, McElyea said, but more shelter capacity is coming, which is key considering the area’s lack of affordable housing. ABCCM has an ongoing capital campaign to bring more housing for those experiencing homelessness.
“We’re building a 96-unit apartment complex at the Veterans Restoration Quarters that’s going to be veteran-centric, so that will certainly add a lot of inventory to what we have here in our community,” McElyea said. This move will open up 96 shelter beds at VRQ.
Nationwide, the city noted in its release, homelessness increased by 12 percent, based on point-in-time counts.
[Editor’s note: This story was updated at 4:35 pm Friday, April 26, to include comment from Tim McElyea, the director of homeless services at Asheville-Buncombe Community Christian Ministry.]
Asheville Watchdog is a nonprofit news team producing stories that matter to Asheville and Buncombe County. John Boyle has been covering Asheville and surrounding communities since the 20th century. You can reach him at (828) 337-0941, or via email at jboyle@avlwatchdog.org. The Watchdog’s reporting is made possible by donations from the community. To show your support for this vital public service please visit avlwatchdog.org/donate.
The more we fund, the more we need. Ad infinitum. How’s that going to work?
Homeless rates are highest only where the cost of living is high. It is not drugs, it is not mental health, it is not wages. It is the affordable housing crisis. I hope we are calling it that by now.
Interesting. The cost of living is high in heavily marketed tourist towns. Part of the solution should be encouraging (some of the) people to live in less expensive places with more available housing.
This isn’t fair to people who have lived here all along or for a very long time. Don’t run off the locals for the tourists….oh wait….that’s already happened.
Unfortunately, you are incorrect. The only reason that we have so many homeless is because of our city council is catering to them they have advertised on billboards and with the media for years saying Asheville we want to keep weird and we accept all.
I do think wages play a part.
Incorrect. A high majority in Asheville are homeless with mental health and drug addiction being the extenuating circumstance. They can’t get or hold jobs therefore can’t make an income for housing.
A basic principle in economics and life- if you want more of something you subsidize it, if you want less you tax it. Asheville is duplicating what larger cities have done, with predictably the same results.
All of Ashevilles fancy restaurants, breweries, and tourists should be ashamed of themselves.
“Homelessness remains stubbornly high in Asheville, with the most recent official count showing the city had 739 people experiencing homelessness as of January 2024…”
x
“The median sale price for a single-family home in Asheville is $418,250, according to Zillow.”
=
739 x $418,250 = $309,086,750.00
Just have Asheville’s rich citizens and Asheville’s greedy corporations pay their “fair share” of taxes and the $309,086,750.00 will be raised by next year. Problem solved, at least at the local level. Hopefully, after this 739 are in their houses, the hundreds of thousands of unvetted foreigners that the Biden administration is currently flying into our country will not hear that there are free houses available if they just can get Biden’s pilot to land their plane at AVL.
This is possibly the most uninformed comment I’ve ever seen here.
Amen.
Oh for god’s sake. Seriously?
Am not sure Esther and her minions understand that you’re supposed to shrink the homeless population – Not expand it. Low barriers to housing? No, not helpful. No guns + no drugs = free housing. Have to earn it. Poor Esther keeps putting out more bowls of milk and can’t understand why more stray cats show up.
“If you build it he [they] will come”. Do the statistics include the number of homeless who have recently moved here.
Feed the pigeons (or in this case, provide them housing) and MORE will come.
Stop feeding them and they will go someplace else.
Nobody has addressed the question of where all these people came from. We have an obligation to help our own first, but homelessness seems to increase in direct proportion to the services offered. It seems to me that we may be a magnet for folks outside Asheville and Buncombe County. We have folks who are genuinely down on their luck. We have a moral obligation to help them. We have the addicted and mentally ill, and they need help too, but local resources are limited. The state needs reconstruct the mental health system that was dismantled in the Nineties. And then, there may be a group ( and we don’t know for sure) who have migrated here to take advantage of our services. We need to identify them and send them back from where they came. This is a tough, complex problem, and we have been spinning our wheels for years over it. Perhaps the new CoC will provide the leadership to resolve it in an effective, humane way.
Well said Mike. I would love it if someone, anyone, would do an in depth story on who these people are, where they come from if not local, and if local, what exactly caused their homelessness. Is is housing? is it drugs? mental illness? Did you loose your housing before you started using? We can only begin to understand and help if we know the facts. If they are not from here, the city needs to let us know this. Transparency would help me at least see the whole picture of who the homeless are and why did they become homeless. Blanket statements about housing costs do not help us see the whole picture.
Mike, your point is spot on. The current point in time process is flawed and gives out tainted data that can easily be misconstrued. Future homeless point in time surveys should include some questions to determine when and from where the person came from. Question:
1. Are you originally from the Asheville area? If not,
2. What year did you come to the Asheville area?
3. How long have you been homeless in the Asheville area?
4. Where did you come from?
5. Why did you pick the Asheville area?
Asheville is eroding with cost of living , housing , homelessness, low wages, and a profit centric hospital but boy do we have some great breweries and new hotels on every corner.
Yep. Tourism is the most important thing in Asheville.
Hendersonville is really bad also. Landlords are kicking everyone out and turning their rentals into AirBNBs or travelling nurse rentals! A two bedroom near me is $2,300/month! The homeless are kicked to the curb and without group homes with mandatory drug testing many addicts relapse.
The Ecusta Trail already has tent cities growing up around it. You can’t get a job unless you have an address, are drug free and have teeth!!!
There’s so much money and so little compassion. But let’s keep putting in new planters on our useless Main St. Almost all of the restaurants are gone. It’s a dying town filled with $500k houses.
That and the ugly fountain that as I saw it this past winter either needs a good cleaning or painting. Or maybe just bulldoze the ugly thing.
The most inexpensive and high density form of housing is a park full of used RV’s with water/sewer/electric hookups. But for some reason housing that is (a) manufactured and (b) mobile is an absolute anathema to city council
Can we build it next to your house?
I don’t know why everyone thinks that the root problem is lack of affordable housing. If you could somehow magically cut the cost of housing in half it would still be outside the means of most folks who are currently homeless because most are unemployable due to addiction, mental illness, criminal behavior, or quite often, a combination. Even if the cost of housing were the root cause of the problem, there’s virtually nothing that can be done about it. You can have an attractive, vibrant, economically successful place where people actually want to live, OR you can have cheap housing. Those two things rarely coexist. There’s also the harsh economic reality that the more you subsidize something, the more you get of it.
Anyone who has ever had an addict or conman in their family (or has been burned trying to help one) can tell you definitively that affordable housing isn’t the issue for a certain subset of the unhoused population. Many wind up in the streets because they’ve broken every promise they’ve ever made.
This is what happens to democrat controlled cities. They become cess pool cities.
Asheville is a city that promotes tourism over citizens’ priorities. Which has inflated real estate unreasonably.
Please list the Republican controlled cities that are genuinely not “cesspools”.
Does anyone know what Stormfield Capital plans to do with the Ramada? How much did the city lose on this deal?
I’d be interested to know the homeless rate in neighboring cities: Waynesville, Brevard, Hendersonville as well as Knoxville and Greenville. Has Asheville’s emerging homeless services industry become a magnet? As others noted, are we putting out milk for stray cats and feeding the pigeons?
Identify where these people are coming from — not how many are here on a given week. Once identified – help them leave. Let’s provide services to the probable 20% left from this area. It’s idiotic to suggest this has anything to do with rent increases or affordable housing. It’s obvious the majority of homeless are unable to sustain themselves. Rebuild our mental health system and stop defining affordable housing as the solution for homelessness.
Yet another tired Boyle narrative that this is the fault of tourism. Other tourist destinations are not experiencing the crisis in the same way we are as a city.
The cost of housing is not 100% to blame for homelessness. Mental health and addiction(which is a mental health issue) is partly to blame. The high access shelter could help but nobody wants it near them. These are the same people screaming they don’t want to see the homeless downtown. So, which is it? We either build the shelter or we see the homeless. We can’t bury our heads in the sand any longer.
The people in the city claim to be progressive until it impacts them and their daily lives. It is exhausting to keep going around in circles on the most pressing issues.
The homeless person holding the sign is eating my favorite brand of ice cream. Which I feel I can’t afford. Priorities I suppose.
Nothing ever gets any better for the residents in this out of control ‘city’. The sad part is all the liberal progressives won’t admit to the problems. AVL is controlled by evil.
I am heartbroken and a bit disgusted by the overall lack of compassion here. These are human beings we are talking about. Yes, some of those experiencing homelessness have problems with mental illness and/or addiction (which is a disease), but many just got priced out of their homes, or got kicked out when the owner decided to turn them into air b and b’s. The minimum wage in NC is $7.25/hr and servers is $2.13/hr. People around here love their restaurants and such, yet don’t want to pay those workers a living wage. A large percentage of jobs in this area don’t pay a living wage, even for those with degrees. Housing costs have doubled and wages haven’t. It’s not rocket science.
>No guns + no drugs = free housing.
That won’t do anything to reduce the number of homeless individuals. What it will do is increase the number who are sleeping on the streets (aka sleeping in business entryways, under overpasses, and in other public areas) instead of in shelters. And makes it that much harder for those who are homeless to get out of that situation while exacerbating the conditions that increase crime and public health threats due to people living without shelters and scare away tourists and other economic development. Not to mention increasing costs to taxpayers for things like ER visits, policing, trash and sanitation issues, and other community costs. And btw, on average about half of all unhoused folks are employed to some degree, and thus also taxpayers, and almost all were working and paying taxes for some number of years prior to becoming homeless. So they absolutely have a right to benefit from shelters and other supports our and their taxes pay for.
And the cherry on top of this **** sundae is that following your little equation literally means optimizing the unhoused individuals living out on the streets and other public areas to those with a persistent history of being armed, being violent, and having substance use issues.
So yeah…good plan. Love it. Can’t wait to see how that works out. /s
As I have suggested to Asheville City Council in the past, one affordable way to help with this homeless housing problem is to build a Managed Tent Camp on available city or county property.