This summer I attended a 3-day series on homelessness, sponsored by the City of Asheville’s Community and Economic Development department and presented by Debbie Alford, a Homeless Strategy Specialist. I’d recommend it to any person who wants to know more and do more about the homeless crisis that has significantly impacted our community over the past few years.
Most people know that housing in Asheville is a problem but assume that homelessness is ultimately the result of someone’s personal obstacles or choices — related to their history of poverty, addiction, incarceration, mental illness, physical disability, or lack of family support. While those issues are definitely at play for many people and make it harder for them to stabilize their lives, some facts about homelessness are pretty simple:
The root cause of homelessness is a lack of affordable housing. That goes hand-in-hand with rapid gentrification, which has forced more and more Asheville residents out of their homes.
The majority of people experiencing homelessness in Asheville are from Asheville and WNC. This is something that we are doing to our own community.
Homelessness is one of the greatest threats to students and families in all of our programs — Adult Literacy, Youth Literacy, and ESOL.
In Adult Literacy alone, last year ¼ to ⅓ of students in the program lived part of the year without stable housing. Most of the time, those students ended up in a local homeless shelter. Sometimes they were able to “double-up,” which means squeezing two families into a space that is built for one. Some students felt lucky to end up in the hospital, which gave them access to food and shelter for a short amount of time. Other students ended up on the street.
A few months ago, I ran into a student and her husband in an abandoned parking lot. They had just gotten evicted. It was the weekend and the shelters were all full. They had nowhere else to go. This is a student who works a full-time low-wage job then takes the bus across the city to tutor twice a week. She is not the problem. The systems that keep her in poverty, make it impossible for her to afford housing, and penalize her for becoming homeless are the problem.
In many cities, including Asheville, the homeless crisis is made worse when people are fined or arrested for living in encampments or on the street. People experiencing homelessness throughout the country are increasingly subject to violence because they have been cut off from the rest of the community and dehumanized on a daily basis.
It is a long road to fix the systemic issues that are the root cause of homelessness, but there is one simple thing that all of us can do right now: Choose to treat every person with dignity. It is hard for many people to deal with their own discomfort, sadness, guilt, confusion, or frustration when they end up a few feet away from someone who is clearly in pain and barely surviving. I don’t always know what to say or do in those situations myself. But the best way to begin to bridge the gap is to look at them, listen to them, be kind to them, help them if you can, and support the organizations that are working to get more people into safe and affordable housing. This is a good place to start:
Learn more about homelessness in our community and join the collaborative response
- Participate in the Homelessness Learning Series provided by the City’s Homeless Strategy Division. This 3-part series provides a foundational overview of the issue and its complexities, how we’re responding as a community, and ways you can take action.
- Visit the Homeless Strategy Division to learn more about homelessness in Asheville.
- Most importantly, join the Asheville-Buncombe Continuum of Care. The Continuum of Care (CoC) is a membership body of stakeholders like you working together to develop and oversee homeless initiatives in Asheville and Buncombe County. Over 300 CoC Members have elected a leadership board of directors and are serving on committees and work groups to develop and continually improve a community-wide system of care to help people return to housing and stability.
Watch this video on the root causes of homelessness:
We had another fantastic edition of Authors for Literacy, our signature fundraising event. It was a pleasure to host New York Times bestselling author 
Special thanks to our adult learners Fernanda (ESOL) and Karima (Adult Literacy), who, accompanied by their incredible tutors, moved us to tears with their courageous, inspiring, funny testimonials.
Thank you! Here is our staff; w
