Asheville – Asheville City Council approved a list of recipients for Strategic Partnership grants. Recipients were OpenDoors, Umoja, The Arc, Black Wall Street, Read to Succeed, and Getting Back to the Basics. Awards targeted nonprofits working to close the achievement gap by working with children from “low- to moderate-income households.” They were selected from among 23 applicants and will receive a combined total of $356,209. This exceeds council’s budgeted $335,000, but staff assured that the difference will come from $242,000 in unspent revenues from past years.
Half a dozen people, including executive officers from the local chapter of the YWCA, asked council to spend more on disadvantaged youth. Joanna Knowles of the YW asked council to put the rest of the $242,000 to work this year, “as our youth cannot wait.”
Paul Howell started out speaking of a different gift from the city to a nonprofit. He was glad they were going to give their building on Hunt Hill to Keynon Lake’s KL Training Solutions. He was, however, disappointed that the city did nothing to renovate the building.
So he looked into the Strategic Partnership grant program. He knew of a lot of grassroots programs helping minority children that could use those grants. Unfortunately, the only place he knew about that mentioned the grants was the city’s website. He compared the city’s advertising to holding a barbecue and not inviting anybody. Giving Lake a building in need of renovation, he said, was comparable to dropping a coin in an empty can without it making a sound. “Y’all ain’t done nothin’ yet.”
Councilwoman Sage Turner was sympathetic and concluded council just had to find more money. Councilwoman Kim Roney elaborated. “I know there are deep needs in our community and many opportunities to collaborate and to bolster partnership instead of perpetuating the scarcity narrative. We find money for the things that are important to us, and our youth are important to us, right? So, what I hear is us asking for us to show up in a real way, and that can look like allocating the rest of the funds that we have now and finding the rest of the money for next year.”
In Other Matters –
Council also approved disbursements from the Housing Trust Fund. Presenter Sasha Vrtunski said staff had recommended funding four of five proposals. Combined, these would create 239 units of affordable housing with $4,387,850 in loans.
One project, Redwood Commons, near the East Asheville Aldi, was unremarkable except that it was being built on a brownfield. Another, Fairhaven on Sweeten Creek Road, had already been reviewed by council. In addition to the HTF loan it was requesting, its developers were applying for a Land Use Incentive Grant from the city.
The third major project was proposed by the Housing Authority of the City of Asheville (HACA). Known as Reimagining Deaverview, it will be built on vacant land within the Deaverview housing development. HACA requested payment in the form of a grant, but city staff preferred a loan, even if it were at 0% with deferred payments, because, among other things, “it keeps us at the table.” Defending HACA, Councilwoman Sandra Kilgore explained that collateralizable assets add more to creditworthiness than liabilities. Mayor Esther Manheimer said she was torn between having funds in a revolving loan available to other developers and supporting HACA, which supplies housing vouchers to other developers.
The other two proposals considered were from the same developer. One, Stewart Street Cottages, was approved. The other, Oak Hill Cottages, was for city-owned land, so staff thought procedures should be followed to permit the construction through a request for proposals (RFP) process. It was noted that the infill tract had geotechnical issues and the last two plans for developing it had fallen through.
Roney kept her commitment to inquire about what the developers were going to do about renewable energy. Vrtunski replied, “I don’t have a practice of always asking these folks that, but I did let them know.” She added that all developers were in the council chambers to field questions. Manheimer pointed out that the council had already asked that question of the three large developers, so the developer of the other two was called to the stand.
Barry Bailik has already built 100 homes in the Asheville area. He is the owner of Compact Cottages, which constructs prefabricated, green, tiny homes. Waste from the recent construction of twelve homes filled only one dumpster. He only uses LP Smartside products with metal roofing and mini-split HVAC units. Fenestration is designed to provide optimum energy efficiency. Bailik explained that when a home’s utility bills total only about $60 per month, it is hard to recover installation costs for solar.
Council unanimously approved three loans and one grant. The Oak Hill parcel will be opened to an RFP process.