Asheville, Buncombe homelessness board will pursue new, high-access shelter

ASHEVILLE - A new, high-access homeless shelter could be on the horizon for Asheville and Buncombe County following a unanimous recommendation to pursue plans from the committee charged with governance of the area's homeless services response.

At its July 27 meeting, the Homeless Initiative Advisory Committee also approved its leadership to seek up to $1.75 million in funding, which would allow them to create 58 new shelter beds by utilizing existing infrastructure, plus securing 30 more existing beds and 32 beds of Code Purple capacity.

The recommendations come in the wake of a January report from the National Alliance to End Homelessness, intended to reduce the number of unsheltered homelessness by half.

Asheville finds itself in the midst of an ongoing homelessness crisis, exacerbated by the pandemic and climbing housing costs, and while overall numbers trended down this year, unsheltered counts remain higher than pre-pandemic figures, with 171 people experiencing unsheltered homelessness in Buncombe County, according to the January 2023 point in time count, an annual single night tally.

That's down 26% from the year before, but 163% higher than before the pandemic.

Among the Alliance's recommendations was a call for 95 new beds — 60 beds for single adults in immediate and low-barrier shelter; 25 beds of enhanced shelter with mental health and substance use specialists onsite; and 10 beds serving families with children.

The July 27 proposal would get them 61% of the way there simply by funding capacity that already exists, and Chair David Nash said HIAC leadership would proceed to make recommendations for the up to $1.75 million in funding to city of Asheville, Buncombe County and Dogwood Health Trust.

'A very big step forward'

HIAC members approved the recommendations, which came from its shelter work group, one of the several work groups established in direct response to the Alliance's most pressing recommendations, in a unanimous vote July 27.

The groups have been active since February, said Emily Ball, the city's homeless strategy division manager, and "today's action represents the first deliverable that will move forward to the city and county," part of a "first wave" of work group efforts.

Though the shelter work group — comprised of Mayor Esther Manheimer, Buncombe County Commissioner Jasmine Beach-Ferrara, members of the community paramedics, homeless service providers, people with lived experience and more — have spent the last six months working to address urgent shelter needs in the community, conversations surrounding low-barrier, high-access shelter in Buncombe County have been ongoing for years.

Beach-Ferrara called the July vote "a very big step forward."

“For years we’ve been talking about this concept of a low-barrier shelter, and as we dove into that, what became abundantly clear is that we’ve got to do our very best to get it right,” Beach-Ferrara told the Citizen Times.

Beyond the theoretical, the work group has toured shelters and conducted in-depth interviews both locally and with best-practice high-access shelters across the country. They also issued a request for proposals to explore who could fill immediate shelter needs by utilizing existing infrastructure and capacity, which resulted in the funding plan to support 58 new shelter beds — 10 family, 45 single and three respite beds.

“If we rushed into creating a shelter as quickly as we could, we would not just miss opportunities for that more impactful model, but we would probably get it wrong," she said.

The city has been burned before. It canceled plans to convert East Asheville's Ramada Inn into a low-barrier homeless shelter in December 2021 after outcry from the hotel's neighbors and uncertainty from financial partners. Now, the Ramada is in the process of being converted into 113 units of permanent supportive housing.

But this effort, as Ball stressed, would be led by HIAC, and the board and work group will need to identify the mechanics of that effort in coming months. She anticipates that with this vote, a new phase of project planning will begin.

HIAC, a joint committee of Asheville City Council and Buncombe County Commission, is the governance board for the Asheville-Buncombe Continuum of Care, responsible for creating, implementing and evaluating policies and strategies and steering federal resource allocation to most effectively end area homelessness.

As the shelter work group pursues solutions, another work group, focused on "governance" is reexamining the structure of HIAC itself, while others examine coordinated entry and outreach and encampment response.

“I think there is a sense of momentum, there is a sense of strong community will and political will, and I think we are doing our very best to do this in a way that brings everyone together to the table, that is public and transparent, and it’s very honest about the realities," Beach-Ferrara said of the way forward.

“This isn’t a problem that has a single simple solution, but we do know a lot of things that help save lives, help people transform their lives, and help our community be safe for everyone, and ultimately help us invest our public dollars much more strategically and wisely than what is currently happening."

More: BeLoved takes Asheville's housing crisis into its own hands. What else is being done?

Where would new shelter beds come from?

After the Alliance report, many have aired skepticism around the recommendations. In the months since, the city kicked-off a Downtown Safety Initiative, as area business owners, employees and council members decry an "unsafe" downtown, a conversation that often circles back on the city's unhoused population.

Manheimer said she understands that regardless of ongoing efforts to address homelessness and other overlapping crises, she appreciates that people want to see tangible outcomes.

While she can attest to the work being done, "I think that until people really see a difference in the community, you know, seeing is believe, right? So I appreciate that is going to be the ultimate test for whether we have success or not.”

As she and other shelter work group members explored local shelters, and looked beyond Buncombe County to other models of service, they saw that while area shelters had capacity, they didn't have funding or staffing to get beds back online.

That's where the RFP came in: to nail down exactly what was needed to change that.

Proposals selected through the RFP:

• Safe Shelter, a collaboration between Trinity United Methodist Church, Grace Episcopal Church, Grace Covenant Presbyterian and Counterflow LLC, to provide 10 new family beds and 10 new individual beds for the 12 months beginning Oct. 1.

• Salvation Army, to provide supplemental funding to secure 30 existing shelter beds, create 35 new individual beds for the 12 months beginning Oct. 1, and create 32 beds for Code Purple.

• Selection of Haywood Street Respite Care to provide three new respite beds for the 12 months beginning Oct. 1.

All selections are subject to final budget negotiations.

HIAC will next meet Aug. 10.

Sarah Honosky is the city government reporter for the Asheville Citizen Times, part of the USA TODAY Network. News Tips? Email shonosky@citizentimes.com or message on Twitter at @slhonosky. Please support local, daily journalism with a subscription to the Citizen Times.

This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Asheville, Buncombe homelessness board will pursue high-access shelter