Asheville, North Carolina, is looking to cut its unsheltered homeless population and crack down on panhandling amid a decline in tourism.
In a meeting Thursday, the Homeless Initiative Advisory Committee unanimously recommended plans to allocate $1.75 million to expand homeless shelter beds, as unsheltered homelessness has increased in the city.
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The HIAC is a joint committee of the Asheville City Council and Buncombe County Commission charged with researching, creating, and recommending policies, including how to spend federal resources, to combat the area's homelessness crisis.
While a May report shows overall homelessness in the area dropped by 10% from 2022, the number is still 5% higher than pre-coronavirus levels. The homeless population outside of shelters also dropped by 26% from 2022, but remains at 163% of pre-pandemic levels.
According to the Asheville Citizen-Times, the plans come after a January report from the National Alliance to End Homelessness that made recommendations to cut the area's homeless population by half and restructure the joint commission, which is the governing body of the Asheville-Buncombe Continuum of Care — a federal framework to build local commissions aimed at handling homelessness.
The Alliance called for 95 new beds in the area, consisting of 60 single-adult beds for low-barrier shelters, meaning the requirements for access are minimal, 25 beds for shelters with on-site mental health and substance abuse professionals, and 10 beds for families with children. Thursday's HIAC recommendation would cover 61% of the proposal.
Sites being reviewed for the increased beds include church collaboratives, the Salvation Army, and other local shelter models.
Asheville's homeless strategy division manager Emily Ball called the vote a "first wave" of efforts the HIAC will take, and Buncombe County Commissioner Jasmine Beach-Ferrara said it was "a very big step forward."
Beach-Ferrara told the Citizen-Times that the low-barrier shelter model would be the key to lowering homelessness in the area, adding, "If we rushed into creating a shelter as quickly as we could, we would not just miss opportunities for that more impactful model, but we would probably get it wrong."
The proposals come as the Asheville City Council is also looking to crack down on panhandling, a move many see as an attempt to pad the city's lucrative tourism dollars.
Asheville is heavily reliant on tourism to sustain its local economy, with the industry generating $2.6 billion in spending and $3.9 billion in total economic impact in 2021, sustaining nearly 27,000 jobs, according to a report for the Explore Asheville Convention and Visitors Bureau.
Tourism officials say that money has declined by 11% in recent months, ABC 13 reported.
City officials are looking to update local panhandling laws that have not been touched in 20 years, according to Councilwoman Maggie Ullman.
"We need as a community to discuss what we think about panhandling," she said, according to ABC 13 News. "You’re going to have people say never do it, it’s bad for the panhandler, it’s giving handouts, and you’re going to have people who say they’re human, I have some spare change I want to give. On city council, we’re opening it up to have that conversation."
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Proposals include creating a 10-foot minimum barrier for panhandlers as well as a law prohibiting drivers from giving money to them, which the city of Charleston, South Carolina, has implemented.
The city council will consider proposals in August.