Asheville's plans to address lack of affordable housing

This report is one in an occasional series on Asheville's shortage of affordable housing.

When it comes to the city's affordable housing crisis, City Councilman Chris Pelly says he sees no need for a hard sell.

No matter that some neighborhoods might look much different, that lots would be spaced closer together, or that taxpayers and businesses would be expected to contribute to the cause even more so than they do today.

"Once people recognize that we all have a hand to play in making housing affordable for everyone, the majority will come to the right conclusions," said Pelly, who sits on Asheville's Housing and Community Development Committee.

Members of that committee on Tuesday approved an ambitious set of plans and goals to provide within the next seven years 2,800 low-cost places to live.

One would relax density restrictions to make room for more apartments. Another would require or allow developers to build 20 percent of all projects into affordable units for rent or sale to households earning 80 percent or less of median income.

A longer-term goal is to increase a fund that pays for affordable housing to equal 1 cent per $100 of assessed value of all property in Asheville. If achieved today, that sum would equal $1.1 million.

Yet, even if the 2,800 new units were built, they would address only half the need that exists now — never mind what the situation might be in 2022.

Though Asheville's affordable housing advocates insist the battle is not already lost, those such as Robin Merrell, an attorney at Asheville's Pigsah Legal Services who specializes in affordable and public housing, say the city has known the gravity of the situation for almost a decade — but did too little.

"I wrote a plan in for the city in 2008 and talked about the exact same things," Merrell said. "How many times do we have to say here's the problem and here are some potential solutions?"

Pisgah Legal Services is a nonprofit organization that advocates for lower-income people in Western North Carolina.

Merrell said Asheville leaders used the Great Recession as an excuse to take no action because development ceased. What they could have done instead, she said, was use that pause as an opportunity to change policy.

"The City Council is guilty of trying to please everybody," Merrell said. "Density is going to have to be increased in every zoning district in Asheville — doubled or more. When neighborhoods say they don't want development, the City Council needs to have the courage to say, too bad, we need to have (affordable) housing."

There's a reason Merrell has such a strong opinion, she said.

"People who need affordable housing matter. But they're the same people who get treated over and over like they don't matter."

And persuading Asheville's neighborhoods to accept more apartment construction is not going to be an uncomplicated process without opposition, said Barber Melton, 74, an Asheville native who's been an affordable-housing and a neighborhood advocate for decades.

"If we wanted it denser, we would've moved somewhere else by now, like New York or Charleston," said Melton, who is a member of the advisory board that wrote the affordable-housing recommendations that Pelly and his colleagues discussed Tuesday.

"In the majority of neighborhoods, there's going to be some pushback," said Melton, who co-founded the Coalition of Asheville Neighborhoods 28 years ago.

Out of reach

The severity of Asheville's affordable-housing crisis is hard to overstate, say those such as Councilman Gordon Smith, the city's point person on the issue among its elected leaders.

A 1 percent rental vacancy rate exists throughout the region that comprises Buncombe, Henderson, Madison and Transylvania counties.

Bowen National Research, a real-estate market consulting firm, discovered median rents for market-rate apartments ranged from $832 to $3,300 and $583 to $1,187 for tax-credit units. The firm released its findings in January.

The Ohio-based firm conducted the study between October and December. City officials paid Bowen $29,750 for the report.

Asheville uses federal affordable-housing guidelines to establish its rent parameters.

Those guidelines dictate, for example, that a single person living in a studio apartment should pay no more than $725 a month in rent and $60 in utilities. And, a family of four living in a three-bedroom apartment should pay no more than $1,003 in rent and $117 in utilities.

Those prices still are out of reach for many, such as Cynthia Hunter, 52, who has been homeless for seven years and lives on monthly, government-provided disability checks and food-stamp disbursements.

Hunter qualifies for public housing, which helps people who make even less money than those who qualify for affordable housing.

But the challenges facing people in the Asheville region who need both types of residences converge. For instance, resources to support programs are scarce and not enough units exist to house those looking for a home.

Hunter "has been doing all the right things but still remains on a waiting list," Merrell said.

A years old drug conviction has impeded Hunter from getting off the wait list, she said.

Surviving day to day consists of budgeting her monthly $488.90 disability check and $96 food-stamp allotment while she bounces from temporary sleeping sites that include family members' homes and tents and cars.

"I'm just tired," Hunter said, before grief overcame her and sobs replaced her voice. "I just want to lie down and relax.

Recent data indicates that the number of people in positions comparable to Hunter's is on the rise.

Buncombe County in January experienced its first increase in chronic homelessness in seven years, according to data released by Asheville city officials earlier this month.

An annual survey led by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development found 74 people to be experiencing chronic homelessness that month, a 57 percent increase over last year.

The chronically homeless are people with disabling conditions who are without a home for more than a year or those who experience four episodes of homelessness in three years.

With newcomers driving the region's population growth, homelessness could worsen.

Bowen analysts project a population of 450,307 by 2020 for the four counties it surveyed.

U.S. Census Bureau data released last month for the four counties that comprise the federal government's definition of the Asheville metro region — Buncombe, Haywood, Henderson and Madison — show the population already close to that total as of July: 442,316.

That also could mean more people like Linda Brown arriving in the Asheville area.

She has lived in "affordable housing" for five years. She has a job and collects Social Security.

But Brown, 67, a former Asheville High School history teacher and graduate of Barnard College, a school at Columbia University in New York, barely escapes being "rent burdened."

Rent-burdened tenants spend more than 30 percent of their income on rent, Merrell said.

Brown spends 29.3 percent of her income on rent. She pays $487 a month to live in a one-bedroom flat at The Griffin Apartments in downtown Asheville.

Partnership Property Management, based in Greensboro, operates the 50-unit complex, which sets maximum-income levels for all its tenants at The Griffin.

Mountain Housing Opportunities, an Asheville-based nonprofit organization that builds affordable housing, developed and owns the property.

Brown earns $600 a month from her job managing a senior-citizen apartment community in Asheville and $1,060 a month from Social Security.

She left teaching after years in the classroom to run her own business. In the early 2000s, Brown went to work for a company that wrote history education textbooks.

A combination of being laid off in 2010 and two bouts of breast cancer and surgeries has resulted in Brown's current financial situation, she said.

"One of the words all of us use who live here is 'grateful,'" Brown said of The Griffin. "This place saved us from disaster."

After learning that she almost fell into the debt-burdened category, Brown paused, then asked, "Don't all of us in Asheville live like that?"

Not all, but certainly too many, Asheville community leaders say.

According to the most recent data available from the Census, the median gross rent in the Asheville metro area was $774, while the median household income was $44,006. Those figures come from the 2009-13 American Community Survey five-year estimates.

Which is why "the broader paradigm shift that's occurring here is unprecedented in this city," Smith said.

"I can't emphasize enough that the city is doing more than it ever has and we're going to be hitting this nonstop," Smith said. "Affordable-housing solutions are going to be on the table for the next several months."

Smith cited a number of approaches the city council could make decisions on between now and autumn.

Beyond relaxing density restrictions and stepping up affordable housing funding, council members will consider a recommendation to eliminate apartment size limitations.

All regulations regarding housing could be reviewed and updated by council as early as fall, Smith said.

Zoning a big issue

Chris Estes, president and CEO of the National Housing Conference in Washington, D.C., said Asheville policymakers would do well to keep in mind they must plan for regional growth in "an intentional, long-term way. Otherwise, the cost of housing won't ever get where it needs to go:" lower.

The nonprofit conference seeks to "ensure safe, decent and affordable housing for all in America," according to its website.

Estes possesses intimate knowledge of the affordable-housing challenges facing Asheville and North Carolina.

Before assuming his position three years ago, he headed the North Carolina Housing Coalition in Raleigh for nine years. That nonprofit works to provide affordable housing to low and middle-income state residents. And Estes' mother lives in Waynesville.

One of the ways Estes said Asheville could provide more units at reasonable prices is to develop transit corridors to keep pace with the region's ever-rising population.

By making policies that increase density along those corridors, Asheville decision-makers also would be enhancing the value of the land located there.

"That's when you ask for the inclusionary requirement," Estes said, referring to the proposal that would mandate developers build affordable units within any apartment complexes they construct. "You say, we now have increased the value of that land because it's more built up. In exchange, we want you to build more affordable housing."

Confronting inevitable developer opposition in such a way makes the idea more tenable for developers, Estes said.

Perhaps the higher hurdle to that specific affordable-housing tool is the uncertainty that exists in North Carolina whether mandatory inclusionary zoning is legal.

State law does not explicitly allow municipalities that power. The resolution of a lawsuit in Davidson regarding the issue could help answer the question.

Councilmen Smith and Pelly support waiting for that lawsuit's outcome before pursuing any mandatory inclusionary zoning policy.

Pelly also said he prefers providing incentives to developers to build affordable housing, rather than forcing them to do it.

Others, such Merrell, however, argue Asheville should implement mandatory inclusionary zoning immediately. The urgency is that grave, she said.

C. Tyler Mulligan, professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Government, a lawyer and an expert in inclusionary zoning, said requiring developers to build affordable housing in their projects carries legal risk.

"Recent decisions by the North Carolina Court of Appeals have interpreted those powers rather narrowly, so it remains to be seen how a mandatory program would fare if challenged in court," Mulligan said.

Mulligan and Estes agreed that inclusionary zoning is simply one tool to create more affordable housing in a community.

"Research has shown that where inclusionary zoning has been implemented and has been effective in producing additional units of affordable housing, it has rarely been sufficient, on its own, to quench the demand for affordable housing," Mulligan said. "Other tools will likely be needed to complement any inclusionary zoning policy."

Estes said Asheville should think about affordable housing as "just a necessary part of planning within a tourist-based economy."

Other tools include requiring developers to pay a fee to the local housing trust fund in lieu of building affordable housing in their complexes, Estes said.

Another option would be to do what officials in Burlington, Vermont, did: Create a land trust so homes — be they for rent or ownership — are permanently affordable.

"People thought it was communism when we first started (back in the 1980s)," said Brenda Torpy, executive director of the Champlain Housing Trust. "But they love it now."

That land trust operates as a community-based nonprofit which owns land, apartments and residences for the purpose of providing housing that's affordable for low-income people. The land trust commits to keeping rents and sale prices below market so the costs never become prohibitive.

The trust Torpy runs has been successful at bringing in homeless people and within three years transforming them into homeowners, she said.

"It's really exciting. We're spreading the model," Torpy said. "We can say, 'Come in, we'll get you an apartment, and if you want, we'll help you become new homeowners.'"