The City of Asheville on Tuesday released its draft proposal for spending $225 million in federal Hurricane Helene disaster recovery funds, with a trio of public input sessions scheduled for later this month before the plan heads to City Council for approval in April.
The funding comes from the Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) program, which is run by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). The full proposal can be found online here.
James Shelton leads the community development division within the city’s Community and Economic Development Department. In an interview Tuesday with Blue Ridge Public Radio and the Asheville Citizen-Times, he said the city’s proposal divides the funds into three main categories.
“What you’ll see in our plan is a very sizable allocation toward infrastructure — $130 million out of 225 — and then $50 million for economic revitalization and $29 million for housing,” he said.
That amounts to about 58% of the funds going toward infrastructure, 22% toward economic revitalization and 13% toward housing. A total of 6% will go toward administration and planning, and 1% will go toward a category called Housing and Economic Security Support Services, which is geared toward increasing access to housing and workforce development services.
Each category contains a broad array of sub-categories. Infrastructure, for instance, includes investments in the city’s water infrastructure, greenways and roads. Housing includes the construction and rehabilitation of multi-family housing units as well as funding for the state’s single-family housing reconstruction program.
And economic revitalization includes support for Asheville’s flooded commercial districts, a workforce development program and a small-business support program.
The state of North Carolina will also receive federal funding to assist the region in recovery. The state plans to spend the majority of its $1.4 billion in federal disaster recovery funds on housing. But Asheville, which is receiving a separate, smaller pot of money, faces different needs, Shelton said.
“The unmet needs assessment that we did for the City of Asheville indicated that our storm had a serious and critical impact on our housing stock. It also had a much larger impact on our infrastructure and on our … economic situation,” he said.
The release of the plan comes after a month of public meetings where residents provided feedback. Shelton said the result is a “community-informed plan” for Asheville’s long-term recovery.
“Our hope is that this plan reflects what our community has expressed and has experienced as a result of Helene,” he said. “But it’s also a reflection of the long road that we have ahead of us.”
While there’s still plenty of uncertainty surrounding federal funding under the new Trump administration, Shelton said HUD staff recently assured city officials they will do everything they can to get the money flowing.
The city will hear responses to the plan from community members. Residents can weigh in online here until April 3 or at one of three different listening sessions later this month. Each of the sessions will focus on a different part of the proposal:
- Wednesday, March 19: Harrah’s Cherokee Center Asheville, Banquet Hall, 6-8 p.m. This session will focus on housing.
- Monday, March 24: Radical Hotel, Golden Hour Restaurant, 10 a.m. – 12 p.m. This session will focus on economic revitalization.
- Wednesday, March 26: A-B Tech, Ferguson Auditorium, 10 a.m. – 12 p.m. This session will focus on infrastructure.
The city is encouraging members of the public to register online so that they will receive a notice in case a session is canceled due to inclement weather.
After receiving public input, city staff will prepare a final version of the proposal and present it to City Council on April 8. If City Council approves, the plan will be submitted to HUD no later than April 21.
Shelton said he did not have an exact date for when the city can expect to receive the funds, but that staff are hopeful they will be able to use the funds by this fall. HUD gives grantees a timeline of six years to use the funds, with the opportunity to extend if needed.
“I certainly share in the desire to want to move as quickly as possible, and I know that any delay has serious impacts for our community,” Shelton said. “So, we’re moving as quickly as we can. We have to build up our staffing capacity here at the city. That’s one of the big concerns that we’ve had since the beginning of this.”
