Learning and Expanding our Knowledge of the Housing Crisis

In early June, Thrive’s Team was invited to attend a presentation with scholar, Stephen Menendian of the Othering and Belonging Institute UC Berkeley on his publication, “Deconstructing the Housing Crisis.” Children First/Communities in Schools Success Equation Housing Team hosted the event as an extension of its work with analyzing local housing policy and better understanding the roles different organizations play in addressing the housing crisis components. Community leaders, housing advocates, and local government representatives were all in attendance. Stephen Menendian unpacked his article and discussed the need to look at the housing crisis as three distinct issues requiring different and distinct solutions. He asked participants to consider how understanding the complexity of affordable housing, housing affordability, and unsheltered homelessness is necessary to generate potential solutions and impactful policies. How is this important to Asheville? Asheville has all three of the issues Menendian identified, and they are all having a significant impact on all aspects of our community.

In alignment with what Menendian identified as the crisis of affordable housing, Thrive’s work with the city is helping to shape tools and policy that support our neighbors to make housing more equitable and affordable.  To this end, Asheville’s Affordable Housing Advisory Committee (AHAC) invited the Thrive Team to present our work with the Buncombe Rental Assistance Collaborative. This program combines data collection and direct service which helps inform and shape policy in our city and county governments.

Thrive's Team team provided recommendations that will assist the city in continuing this work and expand the impact through policy and funding opportunities going forward. The City of Asheville and Buncombe County are two of our primary funders and supporters of Thrive and Buncombe Rental Assistance Collaborative work.  The invitation to present our work to AHAC was significant because the committee leadership asked our team to make policy recommendations that will increase the long-term sustainability of our work. 

This opportunity supported what our organization strives to do; not only to do meaningful programmatic work, but also to impact policy and the future of our community.  We were given a full hour for our presentation, which was almost half of the entire meeting.  The time allotted is indicative that AHAC understands the significance of Thrive's work and mission.

Please take some time to watch this presentation, and if you know of other community leaders that would be interested in learning more about our housing work and our Buncombe Rental Assistance Collaborative program, please share it.