WNC telephone townhall update

On Wednesday, Feb. 5, Western North Carolinians joined together in solidarity to voice their stories and express their needs and priorities for Helene recovery. We heard from speakers from across the affected areas, including from Buncombe, Haywood, Mecklenburg, McDowell, Surry, and Transylvania counties.

One of the most glaring themes was the stark disconnect between the needs of Western North Carolinians and state legislative action to date.

Several speakers emphasized the dire need for rental assistance. With workers out of work and the state’s broken unemployment insurance system, Western North Carolinians are increasingly unable to pay their rent, and an eviction crisis continues to unfold.

Since November, Western North Carolinians have demanded that Chief Justice Newby and former Governor Cooper implement an eviction moratorium and lawmakers provide rental assistance. Yet the call for an eviction moratorium has gone ignored, and lawmakers have offered little money for rental assistance.  

Across the three bills that lawmakers have passed that include some disaster relief (HB 149, SB 743, and SB 382), lawmakers have provided a mere $1 million dollars for rental assistance. That is enough to cover the fair market rental price for a 2-bedroom in Asheville for just 330 families for a mere 2 months. Those 2 months have now come and gone, while evictions numbers continue to grow.

Rev. Dr. Marcia Mount Shoop of Grace Covenant Presbyterian Church spoke during the town hall and explained that her church has provided $4 million in rental assistance from private donations and local grants—four times as much as the state of North Carolina. She noted that they signed $184,000 in rental assistance checks in a single day, with over 70 percent of those receiving the checks already in some phase of eviction. But without additional funds, they can’t continue to provide this support that keeps people housed.

“On a large scale, this is just one example of how the workforce is really retraumatized month after month – and the way a lot of systems aren’t set up to support and take care of the workforce,” Shoop said.

Renny Todisco, a chef in Asheville for the past 16 years, spoke about how this difficult environment is likely to force him to leave the city that he loves so much. Anytime that someone is displaced from their home is a tragedy, but mass displacement will only compound the dire economic circumstances in the region and make recovery even more difficult.

“I don’t want to leave Asheville. I feel like my hand is being forced, and I don’t know where this help is going to come from,” Todisco said.

For the most vulnerable, like those who are previously incarcerated or recovering from addiction, homelessness is the likely outcome, as noted by Micah Hayes, an army veteran and fair chance employment advocate.

None of this is inevitable. State lawmakers can and should provide their constituents with relief. One positive development this week is that the disaster recovery bill that state legislators are currently considering, HB 47, was amended on Tuesday, Feb. 11, to include $10 million for rental assistance after originally including none.