In a guest column in the Asheville Citizen-Times, Asheville City Councilman Gordon Smith writes about how the City is working to address affordable housing:
The lack of affordable housing in Asheville is truly a community crisis. While Asheville City Council is taking unprecedented steps to address it, we need more community partners to help provide affordable housing. So step up if you can help. Speak up if you have an idea.
The citizens of Asheville have said this community values opportunity and effort. Unfortunately, our housing market doesn’t currently reflect those values.
As we’ve seen in our recent Housing Needs Assessment, Asheville’s rental housing market has almost no available affordable housing. This means many working people have no reasonable options for living and raising families in the city where they work.
This is a crisis that impacts the character and the future of our community, and we must respond as such. Asheville City Council is working hard to ensure people who work a full-time job in Asheville can afford to live in Asheville. We need your support of our evidence-based, multi-pronged initiatives. We also need your ideas for new partnerships, resources and policies that will complement these comprehensive initiatives.
Read the entire column here.