CIBO hears homelessness update from two of Asheville's largest shelter providers

ASHEVILLE - Two of the city's largest shelter providers weighed in on homelessness solutions at an April 5 meeting of the conservative Council of Independent Business Owners.

“Homelessness has captured our imagination and attention for a good while now,” said Scott Rogers, executive director of ABCCM, a nonprofit homeless services provider with a focus on veterans, women and children. Both ABCCM and Western Carolina Rescue Ministries, whose president Micheal Woods also spoke on the CIBO panel, are faith-based organizations.

With three shelters, each serving different populations — Veterans Restoration Quarters, Transformation Village and Costello House — ABCCM's beds range from transitional and permanent supportive housing to emergency shelter.

"We use whatever model works best for the individual," Rogers told the Citizen Times after the meeting. "We do a very comprehensive assessment, and then we're able to match the model of service that best fits them."

Several of its programs are slated for expansion, including a project that would add a 64 unit, or 128 beds, transitional housing building for women and mothers on its West Asheville Transformation Village campus. Of those beds, 64 would be reserved specifically for women in recovery from substance use disorder.

Buncombe County commissioners approved an application for a $1 million grant from the N.C. Commerce Recovery Housing Program April 2 to support the project.

Asheville is in the midst of an ongoing homelessness crisis, exacerbated by the pandemic and climbing housing costs, and while overall numbers trended down last 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.

"We've got to come together as a community and support those programs that have the competency ... which means they have a program that is effectively helping people have a pathway into community, second they've got to have capacity," Rogers said of solutions for homelessness. He said city and county leaders must be asked to identify how much money they are ready to put into the solution.

The issue is 'solvable'

Woods agreed that "our homeless issue in Buncombe County is solvable. I believe it."

"I think that some of the efforts and policies that have been put forth is exacerbating the problem," he said. Woods has objected to the Housing First model, what he calls a "failed policy." He called low barrier shelter efforts a "Band-Aid," likening it to an "open borders policy."

Instead, he would see people first enter programs before cycling through housing.

Housing First is an approach to ending homelessness that prioritizes quickly and successfully connecting people to permanent housing without preconditions and barriers to entry. The practice is supported by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development as well as the National Alliance to End Homelessness, which recommended training on the practice as part of its January 2023 report to the city and Buncombe County. It also called for increased shelter capacity, specifically immediate and low-barrier options.

It's an answer to what many subject matters experts call the true cause of homelessness: lack of housing.

Research by Gregg Colburn, author of "Homelessness is a Housing Problem," found only housing-related factors, including median rent and rental vacancy rates, correlated with regional rates of homelessness.

What now?

Also on the CIBO informational panel was Rick Freeman, a member of the Homeless Initiative Advisory Committee, which currently serves as the CoC's governing board. He took a broad view of the situation with an update on the system structure itself.

The city is in the process of transitioning its homelessness response, a systemwide restructuring that will move the Asheville and Buncombe Continuum of Care out from under the city and county and create a new governance model.

This was a top recommendation of the Alliance report, first presented to Asheville City Council and Buncombe County commissioners in January 2023.

A CoC is a self-governing, local planning body that works to build and oversee a coordinated response to homelessness. It's a framework overseen by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and is also necessary to become eligible for certain federal dollars.

On Feb. 29 the new membership body formally adopted a charter, which outlined the new governance structure. An April 25 vote will establish a new board, a subset of the full CoC membership. It will consist of 17 designated seats.

Freeman said the transition will result in a more representative governance, with two community seats, as well as a seat for a member of the business community.

"Those three seats bring a perspective to future planning that needs to be heard from inside," he said. "We have to build relationships between business, community, public safety, medical care, behavioral health care and the great providers that are already doing an excellent job. We have to work together in order to make improvements that you all are going to see ... I think that model works."

Freeman is president of the Coalition of Asheville Neighborhoods.

He got involved with the homelessness response after opposing a low-barrier shelter planned for the East Asheville Ramada Inn property. When those plans didn't materialize, he also lobbied against efforts to transform it into permanent supportive housing, citing a lack of transparency.

Setting the table

"Key actions for the new Continuum of Care will be understanding the data we do and don't have, expanding the breadth and depth of data collection to best inform collective decisions, and setting strategy together with targeted interventions for all populations," Emily Ball, the city's homeless strategy division manager, told the Citizen Times April 5.

"The CoC should be laser focused on understanding what works and expanding it. People who are homeless are just like people who are housed in that they have diverse situations and needs, but the commonality is that they all need care."

She was optimistic that the new CoC will "create the table" for everyone to come together.

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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: CIBO: The state of Asheville homelessness from 2 shelter providers