For years, Asheville, North Carolina, marketed itself as a mountain escape recognized for breweries, boutique motels and Blue Ridge views.
However residents and critics say a unique actuality has taken form within the wake of Hurricane Helene: panhandling at intersections, public intoxication, encampments and an unsafe downtown.
Carl Mumpower, a non-public apply scientific psychologist, lifelong Asheville resident and former Metropolis Council member who served from 2001 till 2009, mentioned the town’s present challenges stem from choices remodeled many years.
“Asheville started its efforts to handle homelessness at least three many years in the past. This effort accelerated within the early a part of this century with the primary ‘Ten Yr Plan to Finish Homelessness,’” Mumpower informed Fox Information Digital.
“That plan was in poor health suggested however handed with a super-majority. On the time, I urged to the council that any plan that eliminated private accountability from the serving to equation was doomed to fail.”
Mumpower mentioned the town has continued down the identical path ever since.
“That plan and subsequent plans have failed with equal enthusiasm. Homelessness, drug abuse, and associated crimes have elevated relentlessly underneath the watch of native homelessness specialists and a governing physique that’s dominated by liberal Democrats and people with an much more excessive view to the left. That lack of stability — the final conservative on the council was in 2009 — has led to a myopic repeat of errors.”
He additionally argued that metropolis leaders relied on concepts that weren’t grounded in sensible options.
“As regards homelessness, Asheville has a persisting historical past of pursuing fantasized interventions over extra life like, measurable and trackable options.”
The Asheville-Buncombe Continuum of Care, the native, government-supported coalition chargeable for coordinating federal homelessness planning and companies in Asheville and Buncombe County, mentioned homelessness within the area is at its highest degree on report in its newest depend.
Information from the group’s 2026 Level-in-Time survey discovered 824 folks experiencing homelessness, a 9.1% improve from 2025. That included 334 folks residing unsheltered, up 1.8% from the prior 12 months. Practically 500 others had been in shelters or transitional housing, an increase the Continuum of Care attributed partly to expanded emergency shelter and transitional housing capability.
These “fantasize interventions,” Mumpower mentioned, had been accompanied by the town’s pursuit of defunding the police division.
“The council’s political dismantling of the police division — leading to a 40% discount resulting from retirements and resignations — has had a dramatic impression on crime in Asheville,” he mentioned. “Most ‘smaller’ crimes are now not enforced or realistically tracked, and return on funding prices have skyrocketed. We have now officers who earned over $150,000 in time beyond regulation final 12 months resulting from manpower shortages. Enforcement just isn’t doable with out sufficient, motivated personnel.”
“The direct impression on residents is elevated and unenforced crime, direct publicity to intoxication and violent road behaviors, and burdensome taxes and costs to chase the recycled program pretenses.”
Mumpower mentioned many native residents have merely stopped going downtown.
“The one commonest phrase uttered by county and surrounding space residents is ‘I don’t go downtown anymore – it’s nasty, loopy, and scary,’” he mentioned.
He mentioned tourism additionally suffers when dysfunction turns into extra seen within the metropolis heart.
“Tourism is impacted, and people we entice are sometimes coming right here not as households, however as partiers in search of to hitch the fray.”
The difficulty has taken on added urgency within the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, which devastated components of western North Carolina in September 2024.
Michael Whatley, a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in North Carolina, mentioned the storm worsened hardship within the area and uncovered failures within the authorities response.
“The largest challenge set that we’ve been coping with, clearly, is the hurricane reduction approaching the heels of Hurricane Helene and the truth that the Biden administration and Roy Cooper, when he was governor, failed miserably to assist that scenario by way of following the hurricane,” Whatley informed Fox Information Digital.
Whatley mentioned that the administration’s clearance of reduction funds will help residents to get again on their toes.
“As a part of President Trump’s authorities response, $1.4B was made out there by HUD for housing reduction,” Whatley mentioned. “And there additionally has been during the last month or so lots of motion with FEMA by way of the catastrophe reduction that they’re offering to owners there.”
“We’re definitely not prepared to hold up a mission achieved signal by any stretch of the creativeness. However federal reduction that has been put into Western North Carolina is considerably greater than has ever been given into North Carolina on account of any storm by the federal authorities.”
In an announcement to Fox Information Digital, the Metropolis of Asheville mentioned that officers proceed to give attention to public security.
“This month we launched the Asheville Police Division’s Downtown Plan which is able to primarily double police patrols downtown – growing day and in a single day patrols and, in some circumstances, responding together with skilled psychological well being counselors. Our REST Staff program is an operational response to mitigate the consequences of homelessness,” the town mentioned. “It makes use of specifically skilled Asheville Fireplace Division workers to have interaction with involved residents and other people experiencing homelessness to problem-solve and join them to assets.”
A metropolis spokesperson additionally famous that officers expanded their panhandling ordinance and proceed working with neighborhood companions just like the Asheville Downtown Affiliation and its ADID program.
Fox Information Digital has reached out to Cooper’s marketing campaign, the Asheville’s mayor workplace and the police division for remark.
