Last night, Asheville City Council approved a 149-unit residential development, the developer having increased the number of affordable housing units from seven to fourteen. So, Councilman Gordon Smith wanted to try his luck on the next agenda item. Speaking on behalf of the project, Harry Pilos said he didn’t want to negotiate. The problem was mathematical. He then told Smith he would be willing to sit down with his accountants and calculate the subsidies required to keep a certain number of units affordable by HUD standards for ten years, and then hand the city the bill to pass on to the taxpayers.
Hearing a third proposal, Smith wanted to postpone the completion of an abandoned project in West Asheville until the developer could work out some affordable housing options. At that, Mayor Terry Bellamy launched into a lecture. She explained the imposition of conditions so extraneous that the developer sent nobody to the meeting with data on them sent a message to developers that building in Asheville continues to be a wild ride. In the end, all but Smith voted for the project, and council decided that, following the elections, they would explore ways to hard-code explicit affordable housing requirements into city ordinances.
