Do you fall into the Asheville Housing Trap?
It doesn’t matter if you are a teacher, a nurse, or a service worker. It doesn’t matter if you make $30k or $80k. We are all stuck in the same impossible math: Chicago-sized rents on Asheville-sized wages.
For the last 15 years, City Council’s plan has been simple: let developers build luxury housing and pray that “the market” eventually saves us. But look around. All it did was push our neighbors out and jack up costs for thousands of families.
Everyone running for city council says they support affordable housing. But when you scratch the surface, their plan is just more of the same: handing out subsidies to developers and hoping they will solve a crisis they helped create.
I think it’s time for a different plan. We cannot build a future on a broken system. It’s time to fix the Foundation.
Here is how we do it: a 3-step plan to take our housing market back from the profiteers.
1. The Landlord: A Public Land Bank
Why is your rent so high? It starts with the land.
When a big landlord buys a million-dollar parcel to build apartments, they pass the cost of that land—and the property taxes—directly to you. You aren’t just paying for your apartment; you are paying for them to own the asset.
The Fix: We change who owns the land. The City uses a housing bond to buy property and holds it in a permanent Public Land Bank. Instead of handing cash subsidies to private developers, we keep the land as a public asset.
Then, we lease that land to a Foundation Housing Co-op for pennies a year. Because the City owns the land, the Co-op doesn’t have a six-figure land loan to pay back. That means you don’t pay for it in your rent.
Asheville has an asset on its books, instead of selling it off, it’s holding it in a trust to ensure our neighbors never get priced out of Asheville again.
- Estimated Savings for Affordable Housing: about $300/month.
2. The Developer: Foundation Co-ops
When you see a “Luxury Apartment” sign in Asheville, you are paying for two invisible things: Developer Fees and Investor Profits.
Developers charge huge fees to put a deal together, and their investors expect a 15% return on their money. That profit comes out of your pocket every single month.
If a new brewery opens down the street and the “market value” of your neighborhood goes up, they hike your rent… even if their costs didn’t change a dime. They profit from our community’s success while pricing you out of it.
The Fix: We remove the middleman and switch to cost-based housing.
The City helps form a non-profit to manage the construction of our Foundation Co-ops. We aren’t building “cheap” housing; we are building the exact same quality homes a developer would. But by removing the profit margin for wealthy investors, we slash the cost even further.
In a Co-op, rent isn’t formulated about how much profit you can make, it’s the cost of the mortgage plus the cost of routine maintenance plus a savings plan for long term maintenance.
You’re not paying a landlord’s mortgage, you’re not paying for their property taxes, you’re just paying for what it costs to live here.
Your housing costs won’t go up because a neighborhood gets popular. It’s the cost stability of owning without the massive down payment.
- Estimated Savings for Affordable Housing: ~$300/month.
3. The Bank: The Asheville Community Credit Union
Right now, a massive chunk of your rent isn’t paying for your roof—it’s paying for the bank’s interest rate.
When a developer borrows millions to build housing, they pay about 7% interest to private banks like Wells Fargo. That interest adds thousands of dollars to the monthly mortgage bill, which vanishes into shareholder profits. And guess who covers that cost? You do.
The Fix: We change the lender. We launch the Asheville Community Credit Union. No shareholders. No billionaires. Just us.
Because we are focused on housing, not stock prices, we can lend that same construction money at 4%. Dropping the rate slashes the building’s mortgage payment by nearly 30%. We keep that money here in Asheville, instead of sending it to Wall Street.
- Estimated Savings for Affordable Housing: ~$200/month.
The Result: Banking on Asheville
Let’s do the math. By cutting out the Landlord, the Developer, and the Bank, that $1,800 rent suddenly becomes $1,000. That is a number that working people can actually afford.
This isn’t magic. It is a policy choice regarding who profits from housing.
Right now, the Living Wage in Asheville is $24/hr. That is the bare minimum for a single person to afford standard market-rate housing in this city. If you make less than that, you are mathematically priced out.
But with the Foundation Co-op Plan, we can change the equation.
At $1,000 a month, the income you need to live comfortably (spending 30% of your paycheck on rent) drops to $19/hr.
We are effectively lowering the cost of living by nearly $5 an hour.
Suddenly, the “Missing Middle” can afford to come home instead of worrying about housing costs. First-year teachers, CNAs, and rookie firefighters . They don’t need a government subsidy or a voucher to live here… they just need a fair rent price.
The Dividend: Why This Matters to Homeowners.
Even if you own your home, this matters to you. Right now, your tax dollars are being wasted recruiting new teachers and first responders, only to watch them leave because they get priced out. Stabilized housing stops that churn. It builds a permanent Foundation for our workforce and keeps money flowing to our local small businesses.
We don’t need a developer’s permission to save our city. We just need neighbors who are ready to say, “I’m ready to make this work.”
None of this is impossible. Montgomery County, MD is already acting as a public developer. Burlington, VT has successfully used land banks and co-ops for 40 years. And Vancity proves that a community-owned bank can finance billions in affordable housing without Wall Street. The only thing missing in Asheville is the political courage to stop relying on the same broken playbook that put us in this crisis.
I’m running for city council to fight for each and every one of our neighbors in city hall, but I can’t do it alone.
I hope you’ll join me. Let’s bank on Asheville, together.