BeLoved Village
Donation protected
Special thanks to Warren Wilson College for donating your time and expertise during fall break!!!
Please check out our Facebook page and website for updates!!
WLOS Village Story
We believe it takes village to raise a Village! We need your help! Every dollar is making a big change!
Imagine...
Imagine a place that truly feels like home. A place where you feel safe in every way. A place where you can breathe.
Imagine a place that is building community—people helping each other, people growing food together, people sharing rides with each other, people sharing resources together.
What if people were a part of housing themselves and the housing solution was the dignity of a home with a yard, trees, a front porch, and good neighbors?
What if people were housed into community?
What if the residents were given leadership and were earning equity?
What if this way of creating housing was creatively targeting gaps in our affordable housing system?
The Project:
The BeLoved Village is a new community-based solution to the housing crisis. We are building deeply affordable housing (at 30% Area Median Income) that is community-oriented, sustainable, and creates equity for the Village residents!
What:
12 permanent homes that are 440 square feet, 1 bedroom, full kitchen, full bath, living room, storage area, and front porch
The Village seeks to be a model of community-funded and built housing village. This Village is a pilot that we hope to replicate that is a targeted solution to the current gap we see in terms of the housing crisis here.
Village residents will build equity in their homes and will organize and lead the community themselves.
Who:
We are seeking to join neighbors (making $750-1,000 a month in income) in developing a community village so that they can “put down roots” in the place they love and can begin to truly call it home. This will directly impact their health and the health of our community.
Many local people are are struggling to afford home.
People living on disability income, social security income, or making minimum wage struggle to find housing that they can afford. Elders can no longer grow older in the community that they call home. People of color and low wage workers are being gentrified out of the community they love. People with disabilities are too often consigned to the streets - homeless because they cannot afford housing.
Community members will organize themselves through regular residents meetings that will include learning and practicing wellness and resiliency.
A Holistic Solution:
* Housing
*Community
*Safety
* Income/Equity
*Adjacent to public transportation
*Access to jobs
*Healthy Food
*Neighbor & Community Support
*Environmental Quality
The project is located:
● In the City limits
● On a City bus route less than ¼ mile from a bus stop
● On a major thoroughfare that is close to jobs
● Space onsite for a community garden and community gathering areas
● Village model will allow residents to create a natural support system
The Problem:
Asheville and Buncombe County's affordable housing crisis is worsening. 2018 saw a 50% increase in the chronic homeless population in Buncombe County. Asheville's rents have been ranked highest in NC and evictions are up as community members struggle to make ends meet.
Asheville is currently second in the nation for gentrification.
(Realtor.com The U.S. Cities That Are Gentrifying the Fastest—You’ll Never Guess No. 1 by Yuqing Pan, Jan. 23, 2017)
According to presentations made at the recent Asheville/Buncombe Housing Summit:
● In Buncombe County, at the bottom, most households making less than $20,000 per year spend more than 50 percent of their income on housing, which is...troubling.
● Just under 7,500 households in Buncombe County make 30 percent or less of the area’s median income. Of that number, 22 percent are households of color and 95 percent live without affordable housing.
Mountain Xpress: Summit acts as primer on area’s housing problems October 2, 2017 by David Floyd
The Solution: YOU!
The village is a community funded and built project for local people to be able to afford to live in the community, for elders on fixed incomes to stay in their homes, for workers who cannot afford to live here, or people currently homeless.
We are a solution to the housing crisis in our community!
Please give generously & SHARE!
**Project History**
The project originated out of a circle hosted by BeLoved Asheville of people being impacted by the
housing crisis in our community called Homeless Voice. We faced the death of our community member Janet Jones. Janet froze to death on the first cold night in Asheville in October 2016 and was listed as Jane Doe 356 for 5 days until she was identified by our community. Our community made up of people impacted by the housing crisis turned to each other and said, "what are we going to do?" Together, we dreamed of building homes that were deeply affordable. After a year of research, we launched a short video to tell the whole community about our dream. 17 days later, our wonderful faith community partner, Land of the Sky United Church of Christ with the blessing of the Presbytery of Western North Carolina offered us 1 acre of land in East Asheville to begin turning this dream into reality!
The BeLoved Village will use mostly volunteer labor of future residents and community supporters under the supervision of experts. We are grateful to our professionals who are working pro Bono to see this Village and model come to life including:
Chris Day - civil engineer at Civil Design Concepts (CDC), site development and permits
Jamie and Rob Brady - Blackrock Survey, land survey
Clay Heck - Low Impact Grading, site grading
Aaron and Caulder Wilson, Wilson Architects, architectural drawings
McKenzie Dillingham, General Contractor, building coordination
Thomas Wolfe, Lobo Builders, General Contractor, building coordination
Timeline:
Utilizing volunteer groups, we are finishing hand clearing the land in prep for site development.
We have completed all the planning phase with approved site plans and architectural drawings and have permits in hand as of October 7, 2019!
We will begin building our model home in the Village the week of October 14, 2019 and need the community's support to help us raise the full cost of the Village. We want to begin building the rest of the Village by New Year's!
About BeLoved Asheville:
BeLoved Asheville is an intersectional community deeply rooted in love and justice. Our mission is to cultivate a transformational way of life rooted in creativity, community, and equity. We have been doing
work in Asheville and throughout the nation for 10 years. We bring together people from all walks of
life to transform our community for good. We are focused in the areas of home, health, and opportunity
for all. Our projects include the first homeless Street Medic Team in the nation, free Farmers Markets
]]and Community Gardens for Elders, a Kids Justice League, a free Art Studio, Latinx cultural organizing
and sanctuary, and the welcome/full inclusion of LGBTQ people.
If your business, affiliated group, or faith community would like to become a sponsor, please email us at [email redacted]. We have a program for company and group sponsorship that lets you be about and share the good that you wish to do in the community.
Building material suppliers and those with professional skills may also become a Village sponsor through in-kind donations of materials needed or skills needed to raise the Village.
We can't do this work without your support and we know that with the power of the community, we can make the first BeLoved Village come to life and continue to make more dreams come true!
Organizer
BeLoved Asheville
Organizer
Asheville, NC