Asheville City Council deliberated a proposal to put the “voluntary” extortions developers pay to the city as fees in lieu of affordable housing into the Affordable Housing Trust Fund. Dr. Carl Mumpower pointed out that the Affordable Housing Working Group, the authors of the proposal, consisted entirely of persons “with a vested interest in affordable housing.” He called the plan “socialist,” and he pointed out that developers do not give the city large sums and affordable housing units because they are good and charitable. They do it because they want council to approve their projects. He related again the arduous task developers have of deciphering lengthy codes that are sometimes contradictory, and then having to guess the arbitrary, political mindset of council.
Holly Jones objected, saying she had never made an arbitrary decision in five years of service on council. Brownie Newman objected that one member on the board belonged to the Community Foundation, the named beneficiary of a percentage of first-time sales prices for condos in the soon-to-be-constructed Ellington skyscraper. That person, said Newman, would prefer to see the funds go directly toward affordable housing. Whereas Mumpower maintained that the conditional use permitting process was set up to allow the city to bend its rules to accommodate sensible and innocuous plans that didn’t jibe with zoning restrictions; Jones said they also provided developers a way to contribute to strategic goals of city council that they supported.
It seemed the recent decision of a developer to donate a percentage of proceeds from his proposed project to the Eblen Foundation to pay for fuel oil for needy families just didn’t live up to Asheville’s strategic goal of providing new affordable (subsidized) housing units. Bill Russell didn’t think it appropriate for council to tell persons trying to be charitable, “Bring it to us here and we’ll do what we want.”
Newman assured his peers that supporting this plan would be totally noncommittal and nonbinding. It was presented as a “partial policy.” Note: The policy online was updated. Revised copies were distributed at city council’s work session. The update applies the policy only to conditional use permits and conditional zonings, rather than every development.
