In a significant move to combat homelessness, Asheville and Buncombe County have been chosen as one of ten pilot locations for a groundbreaking national program, Right at Home. The initiative aims to provide substantial support to households at risk of losing their homes.
The local body overseeing this effort, the Asheville-Buncombe Continuum of Care, is set to receive at least $5 million to implement the program over three years. This funding is expected to assist at least 1,000 area households, according to Ben Williamson, head of the Continuum of Care’s Homelessness Prevention Work Group.
Williamson highlighted the program’s flexibility, noting, “So, it’s not just rent payments. This can be back payments. This can be childcare. It can be car repair. It can be other situations that can help with basic needs. These things all overlap, and they’re all critical. And they all contribute to someone staying in their home or not.”
Emily Ball, who manages Asheville’s Homeless Strategy Division, emphasized the importance of reducing the inflow into homelessness as a vital tactic. “This is certainly exciting,” Ball remarked. “This is absolutely what we want to be doing. The fewer people who become homeless, the more we’re able to decrease the overall number of people that are homeless. And then we can spread resources to people who are currently homeless and help them exit into housing.”
The core idea behind Right at Home is that it’s more cost-effective to provide aid to prevent homelessness than to support individuals once they are already without a home. The initiative is spearheaded by Destination: Home, a Silicon Valley-based nonprofit, which initially launched a similar program in Santa Clara County, California, in 2017 (source).
Asheville-Buncombe Continuum of Care
Researchers from the University of Notre Dame’s Wilson Sheehan Lab for Economic Opportunities are partnering with Destination: Home to assess the program’s success over the upcoming years. In 2023, these researchers discovered that individuals receiving temporary financial aid in Santa Clara County were significantly less likely to become homeless within a year.
Destination: Home CEO Jennifer Loving stated, “The single most obvious solution to homelessness is stopping it before it starts, yet our country continues to respond only after people fall into crisis.” She expressed a strong belief in the effectiveness of targeted prevention and the potential for this model to be successful nationwide (source).
Besides Asheville, the initiative includes other regions such as Alaska, Atlanta, Austin-Travis County, San Mateo County, Denver-Adams County, Miami-Dade County, and the state of Minnesota. Additional locations will be revealed later.
The national organization is scheduled to review the Asheville-Buncombe plan in June, with the program anticipated to kick off in September. This development aligns with the two-year anniversary of the Asheville-Buncombe Continuum of Care’s formation, an effort to enhance coordination in tackling homelessness (source).
Ball mentioned that the Continuum of Care’s membership soared from 228 to 608 in two years, reflecting strong local support. She noted that the Right at Home program valued the area’s robust local infrastructure and leadership, which were pivotal in selecting Asheville and Buncombe County for the pilot.
“I hope you leave here understanding that the only way that this happens is because of the Continuum of Care,” Ball said. “This is not a single-entity action that made this possible.”
