What it's like to be homeless in Asheville, as described by those who are living it

ASHEVILLE - Before he found respite at a temporary shelter in the basement of a West Asheville church, Joe Rob said he didn't have a way forward.

At 55, Rob has been homeless off and on since he was 32. Sometimes a stint on the street lasts months, others a year. Before the Winter Safe Shelter effort, housed in the dim basement of West Asheville Presbyterian Church, he was living in a storage unit, sneaking in and out for the first couple weeks, until a neighbor reported him, and he was told to leave.

“I had no idea what I would do before I came here. I had no time to dream, I was just hopeless," Rob said. “This place gave me the time to plan what my next step might be.”

Time is winding down at the shelter, which opened Dec. 21 and will likely close at the end of March, but it's a reprieve that has "saved my life," he said, different than any other shelter or program experiences he's had before.

“Here, they met people where they are at," Rob said. “This is more like a family. People really, genuinely care.”

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What is Winter Safe Shelter?

The church is currently home to a 10-bed shelter, an effort to expand winter shelter beds in a community straining for options. It's too common a story, said shelter coordinator Gene Ettison, as increasing housing costs and lack of transitional housing beds land people in unsheltered homelessness with no easy way out.

The shelter is part of an effort by a newly-formed group, Winter Safe Shelter, formerly Asheville Ecumenical Winter Shelter. The group is a partnership between Trinity United Methodist Church on Haywood Road, Grace Episcopal Church and Grace Covenant Presbyterian Church, both on Merrimon Avenue, and Counterflow LLC.

Rather than serving only as a Code Purple site, which is emergency shelter triggered when temperatures drop below 32 degrees, Winter Safe Shelter is open every night from mid-December to March 31.

“If you think about everybody’s story, it all boils down to inequities within finance. The finance is not matching the cost of living," Ettison said. Notably, Asheville holds the highest rents in the state, and a recent report found that in 2022, the average rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Asheville was $1,319.3.

According to a 2020 regional housing needs assessment, 46.1% of renter households in Buncombe County are cost burdened, meaning they pay more than 30% of income toward housing, with 19.4% severely cost burdened, paying over 50%.

Related:Asheville, Buncombe living wage shoots up to $20.10; minimum to afford 1 bedroom apt.

On March 1, Just Economics of WNC announced Asheville's new living wage: $20.10. It's a 14% jump from last year's rate of $17.70 an hour.

“A person that made a living wage a month ago, doesn’t make a living wage now," Ettison said. In addition to his work with the winter shelter, Ettison is a community health worker with United Way of Rutherford County.

As funding efforts fell short in early March, the shelter feared it would have to close days earlier than planned. But March 13, Mike Reardon, associate rector with Grace Episcopal Church, said they've managed to raise the money. For now.

But the goal grew larger than winter shelter, with dreams of opening year-round. At about $800 a night to run — with paid staff, space rental, food and services — Nancy Dixon Walton, pastor at Trinity, said the hope is to keep going beyond March 31. The question is: can they get the money? And, even more urgently: What comes next for residents if they don't?

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The stigma of homelessness

Mattresses were set up on the far side of the basement, on the other a kitchen space and table. On a pull-down projector screen, Disney's 1995 animated movie "Pocahontas" was playing to a rapt audience.

Rob gestured at the woman watching. Another guest there, he said "she keeps this place clean," walking up and down Haywood Road picking up bags, litter and needles.

"She does that. No one knows," he said. "She feels it's a part of her home."

Joining Rob in a loose circle of folding chairs was Keyon Carter, 51, and Kelsey Hoover, 30.

“Like the vacuum, dam, president. Whatever floats your boat," Hoover said. Newly experiencing homelessness, she said she's only been in Asheville about two months, all but a few days spent on the streets. Since she got to West Asheville Presbyterian, she's been sleeping easier — reading pages of Shel Silverstein's "Where the Sidewalk Ends" or her Bible by lamplight. It's a stark contrast from waking up at the slightest noise, unable to fall asleep until she's sure both hands are touching her gear and pack.

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While Rob said he's been at the shelter since it opened, Carter has been here for about two months, Hoover for a week.

Rob and Carter have both been in Asheville for seven years. Rob said he grew up here, but when he came back on this most recent stint, a changing city meant he couldn't find family or a place to go.

"This place for me is like a hug,” Carter said of the winter shelter. He was connected to the shelter through Ettison, Hoover through Haywood Street Congregation.

In Carter's time there, he said he's been able to strategize his next move — landing jobs and securing a longer-term shelter option at the Salvation Army, where he'll move on March 16.

More than time to get organized, he said shelter staff has connected him with organizations like the YWCA to take showers, go swimming or to the gym; offered the certainty of a warm meal daily; and kept him out of the elements at night.

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According to the 2022 data from a single night count, 637 people were experiencing homelessness in Buncombe County, up 21% from the year before. Of these, the unsheltered count doubled, from 116 to 232.

Hoover said even when services are available, they can be hard to access, drawing many people to downtown where there's a promise of some sanctuary.

The difficulty, she said, are things like “being able to get (bus) passes from only some places, sometimes, maybe."

While walking downtown, she notices the way people look at her.

"They get this stigma of 'We’re in the way,' and 'We’re here making this place dirty,' because that’s just as far as some people get," Hoover said. “It’s hard to destigmatize that, when it’s seen like that."

It's a point Carter and Rob also both brought up.

“Their perception is not a reality. All they see is homelessness," Carter said.

Rob said everyone on the street has a different background, different circumstance, but "somehow, something in their life displaced them."

“People seem to put everybody in the same box," he said. "(They think) everybody is on drugs, everybody is an alcoholic, everybody criminals. And it’s not the case. I’ve met people homeless all of my life, and people are homeless for different reasons.”

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'Better connected ... but still unsheltered'

As for what comes next, Rob said he still isn't certain, but he is better positioned to find somewhere else.

An artist, Rob has been utilizing an unused church classroom as an art space, several of his pieces hanging on the walls of the basement shelter. Trinity is hosting an art show to exhibit his work March 25.

Similarly, Hoover said she isn't certain where she will go if the shelter's doors close for the season. She's working on getting her ID, has some camping spots in mind if all else fails.

"I’ve kind of been doing this day by day,” she said. “That’s the hardest part, really. Is just finding a place to be."

Ettison said next steps are a "huge topic of conversation" between him and other coordinators. It's an issue made more difficult by long housing voucher waiting lists and lack of units. Even with financial assistance, people are priced out of transitional housing.

“I have no doubt a few of them will end up better connected, but still unsheltered," he said of the impending March 31 deadline. "They now have a stable revolving door of resources, but it still doesn’t put a permanent roof over their head.”

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“We have great staff. We have the energy and the will," Reardon said. The Winter Safe Shelter effort was encouraged by the January release of a 54-page report from the National Alliance to End Homelessness, a Washington, D.C.-based national nonprofit, whose report was contracted by the city in partnership with the county, its $73,000 price tag funded by Dogwood Health Trust.

Closing the gap

Efforts are underway to explore several of the Alliance's recommendations, with work groups led by the city and county's Homeless Initiative Advisory Committee.

Mayor Esther Manheimer, who sits on the shelter work group, noted at a council briefing March 9 that unless someone is a veteran or female victim of domestic violence, on nights where no Code Purple or winter shelter is available, "there is not immediate shelter available for you."

The report offers a roadmap to substantially reducing unsheltered homelessness in Asheville and Buncombe County. In its pages, it posits that 95 more shelter beds are needed, 10 of which should be serving families with children.

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And, Reardon noted, that's exactly what Winter Safe Shelter is doing: offering 10 beds targeting "intact families," as well as prioritizing unhoused LGBTQ people, and people of color.

These are the groups for whom large shelters may feel most unsafe, and other barriers to entry or criteria mean families are often divided.

“A lot of families will forego seeking shelter in order to keep their family intact,” Reardon said.

"So we thought, based on that report and that data that people spent a good chunk of money on, that we might be able to kind of harness that to make it a year-round effort," Reardon said. "And we tried."

Reardon said there is a "gulf between what the report espouses, and then the complications of actually making it happen on the ground.”

“If we are to carry out the kind of principles and the numbers that the report is asking for us to do, and which seemingly there is a lot of energy around,” he said, without funding, how do they close the gap?

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 help support this type of journalism with a subscription to the Citizen Times.

This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Homelessness in Asheville, as described by those living it