December Newsletter: Reasons for Hope

December 16, 2021

Welcome Winter!

As we move into the final weeks of 2021 - reflecting on the year behind us and anticipating the important work ahead in 2022 - we would like to ask for your help. You'll read below about our Landlord-Tenant Partnership and our innovative, low-cost strategy to help families experiencing poverty to move to high-opportunity neighborhoods. 42 families have already benefited from this strategy. We need more landlords to participate, so don't skip over that section - dig in, and consider making an investment in your community in a completely new way!

Also in this newsletter, you'll read about Thrive's new team members, read a recap of our most recent Ideas to Action Leadership Forum session, and have the opportunity to check out groundbreaking work to identify safe spaces for conversation and travel for millennials of color.

This holiday season, we are so grateful for your support and interest in our shared work. We can't wait to continue to learn, collaborate, and innovate with you to create an Asheville where everyone can Thrive.

We wish you a safe and restful holiday and a very happy New Year!

Innovation + Collaboration =
Access to Housing

Great news! Thrive's strategy, layering local funds with federal dollars, has moved 42 families to greater safety and opportunity, and retained more than $315,000 of federal funding that would have gone unused. We couldn't do this work without our partners, and without landlords who are stepping up to make a dent in the affordable housing crisis. We need your help to find the last four housing providers (landlords) to open doors for families.

A small investment goes a long way in the Landlord-Tenant Partnership. When landlords agree to accept Housing Choice Vouchers, not only are they having an immediate impact on a family living in public housing, they are also creating an opening within the public housing system for someone to be moved off the waitlist. We need your help to move 4 more families out of public housing and into affordable rentals in high opportunity neighborhoods in Asheville. To see if your property qualifies, fill out this form.

Participating landlords receive guidance through the process of enrollment, a $2,400 stipend to cover the costs of joining the program, and $10,000 indemnification per unit to offset the risks associated with renting to any tenant. Additionally, Housing Choice Vouchers are a direct deposit each month, which means reliability and consistency in collecting rent. 

This holiday season you can welcome a family home. If you or someone you know is a landlord in Asheville, please consider learning more about the program. Your small investment in this community means safe and secure housing for families who call Asheville home. 

Thrive has new energy behind affordable housing work.

Introducing Thrive Asheville’s newest team members:

Torre White, Landlord-Tenant Partnership Coach

Torre "Tor" White is a Asheville Native and the owner of Tor White, LLC. She has experienced a wide range of housing from growing up in public housing to homeownership and has experiential understanding of Asheville’s rapidly changing housing market. Torre has worked in collaboration with HUD and local housing authorities for over 5 years and has extensive knowledge of the Section 8 process, landlord rights, and tenant rights. Torre has worked as a mediator to landlords and tenants with communication barriers, created landlord events, created and taught classes for newly housed individuals, and more.

Sydney Monshaw, Program Director

Sydney moved to the mountains in 2017 to follow her interest in affordable housing. After several summer jobs and internships involving affordable home repair and supportive housing in other parts of the country, Sydney served two terms as an AmeriCorps member with Asheville Area Habitat for Humanity’s Home Repair Program. She continued to work at Habitat after her service as a member of both the Home Repair team and the Fund Development team, which deepened her understanding of and passion for this work. She is excited to continue this critical affordable housing work and more with Thrive Asheville.

Torre and Sydney will be working together to provide support to landlords and tenants participating in our Landlord-Tenant Partnership. They will also bring thought-leadership to tackling the bigger issues of inequity in affordable housing opportunities, and identify the next strategies that will add to our community toolbox.

Ideas to Action Sharpens Its Focus

At the second meeting of the Ideas to Action Leadership Forum on Sustainable Tourism on November 17, the cohort leaned into a discussion about one of our driving questions, "How do we ensure equity and inclusion in who we invite + who benefits from tourism?" 

Just Economics (JE) director Vicki Meath and Emma Hutchens, Living Wage Program Coordinator, provided the group with an overview of the JE Living Wage Certification program. "A Living Wage is the minimum amount that a worker must earn to afford their basic necessities, without public or private assistance,” according to the JE Fact Sheet. In Buncombe County, the living wage is currently $17.80/hr or $15.80/hr with employer-provided health insurance, an increase of $1.80/hr from 2020. Living wages have demonstrated benefits for both workers and businesses. In Western North Carolina, there are 12 hospitality businesses and 76 food and beverage businesses that are living wage certified. Learn more about the living wage and see the full directory of certified employers in WNC.

Wages are only half of the affordability equation. Recent data from the Asheville Area Chamber of Commerce confirmed that residents of Asheville are facing a higher cost of living than other areas of the state and southeast. According to the 2020 Cost of Living Index, Asheville residents pay more for housing, utilities, transportation, and healthcare than the national average. Additionally, Asheville was recently named in this article from NPR as one of the cities with the largest gap between wages and cost of living, making it one of the most difficult places to live regardless of education or employment. What opportunities exist to drive down other costs for workers so that wages stretch further?

Tourism sector business owners shared the challenges of being responsible corporate citizens in the pandemic economy. Business owners must balance the needs of workers with their desire to be environmentally responsible and efforts to utilize local suppliers while meeting the bottom line. Owners reflected that the rising costs facing the community are impacting businesses too. From the cost of renting commercial space to providing employees with health care, and increasing wages, businesses are facing tough choices.The cohort learned about Explore Asheville's efforts to engage and invite more diverse audiences as one of four strategic imperatives. Currently, 14% of overnight visitors to Asheville identify as Black or a race/ethnicity that is not white. This is slightly behind the national average of 19% of non-white visitors in the total U.S. Explore Asheville is employing storytelling and other marketing strategies with increased financial investment in media outlets that engage more people of color and the LGBTQ community. This includes expanded content focused on BIPOC and LGBTQ communities.  

In 2019, 15% of all jobs in Buncombe County were with businesses that provided a visitor experience (Buncombe County TDA: Fast Facts & FAQs). Based on national research, tourism sector jobs are highly diverse in who they employ, and inspire entrepreneurship. 17% of people who began their careers in tourism now own their own businesses. The Ideas to Action cohort of leaders intends to examine these national trends in employment and development as they take shape locally. 

The group expanded on a growing list of possible actions that could ensure greater inclusion and equity in local tourism. Suggestions that rose to the top included: 

• Incubation of tourism-related businesses with targeted supports for historically underserved groups and individuals

• Focused support for tourism-related businesses owned by BIPOC individuals

• A strengthened pipeline to hospitality sector roles that attract more BIPOC workers to high-paying jobs in the sector.

Actions that support all workers and have broad interest among cohort members include:

• Public-private cost-sharing models of childcare

• Expanded transit and worker-oriented transit

• Regenerative tourism programs

The third session of the Ideas to Action Leadership Forum will meet in late January and will focus on the second driving question: How can tourism preserve, protect and enhance local infrastructure, services, and the environment? The cohort will continue to expand their understanding of the challenges facing Asheville, solutions in other cities, and the ways that equity and inclusion can play a role in the way our community addresses tourism in the future. 

After traveling around the world and being a three time expat, Evita Robinson created the Nomadness Travel Tribe in 2011. Growing from a hundred people, to an international movement of thousands, Nomadness is a homage to the Green Book -- a community outlining safe spaces for conversation and travel for millennials of color. In this talk, Evita explores the historical context of African-American domestic travel in the US during Jim Crow, while bridging the gap to what is now seen as the 'black travel movement.'