DOWN TOWN, AN ASHEVILLE WATCHDOG SERIES
Down Town, Part 12: Affordable Housing Solves Homelessness. Asheville Has a Problem
It all comes down to housing. A safe, affordable place to live is both the primary solution to ending homelessness and the key to preventing it, according to two of the country’s leading experts. In the final installment of Down Town, our Asheville Watchdog reporters examine the lack of affordable housing in Asheville, and whether efforts to address it are enough. We talk with those experts, Gregg Colburn and Sam Tsemberis, on the causes and solutions to homelessness. Tsemberis, a psychologist, was a street outreach worker in New York City when he determined that the traditional response to lifting people…
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Opinion: Should the Mountaineer ‘hillbilly’ sign go? Or is it part of Asheville’s history now?
My first thought when a reader told me the Mountaineer Inn had been sold for $6.1 million was very deep: “Huh?” Six point one million American dollars? Seems like a lot of cheddar for a motel that dates to 1939 and has, shall we say, seen its better days. Hey, the total appraised value for the motel and two acres of land is $2,863,000, according to Buncombe County tax records. My second thought was, “Well, that’s got to be a teardown, and another boxy new hotel for Asheville. I wonder if the giant hillbilly sign will finally go on the…
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