Asheville-Buncombe Continuum of Care

The Asheville-Buncombe Continuum of Care (CoC) is the collaborative planning body responsible for developing and overseeing a comprehensive and well-coordinated system of effective services designed to prevent and quickly resolve occurrences of homelessness in Asheville and Buncombe County. The CoC has four components:

A membership body of individuals and organizations with an interest in understanding homelessness and taking action together to address it. There are currently over 500 members of the Asheville-Buncombe CoC.
A board elected by the membership body, from the membership body, to set strategy, priorities, and performance metrics. The CoC board brings together leaders of partner systems of care with fiscal and program authority. The first board of the CoC was elected on April 25, 2024 at a meeting of the full membership.
Committees and work groups of members, appointed by the board, and given clear scopes of work, duties, deliverables, and time frames. Much of the substantive work of the CoC happens in committees.
A Lead Agency designated by the membership body to provide strategic and administrative support to the CoC. The City of Asheville’s Homeless Strategy Division serves as the CoC Lead Agency. The CoC is not an initiative of the City of Asheville, but is community-based work with staff support from the Homeless Strategy Division.

Become a Member of the CoC

Anyone with an interest in understanding homelessness and taking action to address it can become a member of the CoC! Members can be individuals or organizations and staff of member organizations are encouraged to become individual members. CoC members who have completed orientation are eligible to serve on the board, committees, and work groups.

Click here to complete the membership form.

You will receive an email confirming receipt of your membership form. Please email homelessstrategy@ashevillenc.gov or call (828) 747-8168 if you would like a paper copy of these forms to be mailed to you.

Funding Opportunities

FY2025 CoC Program Competition Notice of Funding Opportunity

The US Department of Housing and Urban Development issued the FY2025 Continuum of Care (CoC) Program Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) on November 13, 2025. The Asheville-Buncombe Continuum of Care is eligible to apply for a maximum amount of $2,378,226 by January 14, 2026.

CoCs are eligible to apply for CoC Program funds by submitting the Consolidated Application, which includes a Priority Listing of individual agency projects and a CoC Application detailing collaborative homelessness response across the CoC.

CoC Member Organizations interested in submitting a project application must read the NOFO in its entirety and attend a mandatory virtual technical assistance session with Lead Agency staff. Sessions will take place:

Letters of Intent to apply are required and are due on December 3, 2025 at 12:00 p.m. Project applications are due December 12, 2025 at 12:00 p.m. Please direct questions to Lead Agency staff at homelessstrategy@ashevillenc.gov.

Click here to view all CoC Program Competition materials.

Click here to submit a required Letter of Intent to Apply – CoC Program Competition.

Request for Application: Collaborative Street Outreach in West Asheville

The Asheville-Buncombe Continuum of Care is inviting CoC Member Organizations to submit applications to meet the Board-identified goal to provide collaborative street outreach in West Asheville. Eligible applicants are 501(c)3 organizations and governmental entities and must apply as a collaborative. The CoC’s Funding Committee will review all submissions and make recommendations to the CoC Board for consideration.

Collaboratives must submit a Letter of Intent to apply by December 3, 2025 at 12 p.m. identifying participating agencies, roles, and projected funding request. Please direct all questions to homelessstrategy@ashevillenc.gov.

Click here to view the full Request for Application.

Click here to submit a required Letter of Intent to Apply – Collaborative Street Outreach.

Code Purple and Winter Shelter

Code Purple and Winter Shelter provide emergency overflow shelter beds with fewer requirements than in typical programming. Winter Shelter is available nightly during the winter season, and Code Purple shelter is activated in response to extreme weather or emergency situations.

The Code Purple and Winter Shelter season begins November 1, 2025. Winter Shelter is available through March 31, 2026, and Code Purple will continue to be available when called through April 30, 2026.

View specific details and access the Code Purple and Winter Shelter manual by clicking here.

El Manual de Código Morado y Refugio de Invierno está disponible en Español.

Upcoming Events

Called Virtual Board Meeting | December 3, 2025 | 5:00 – 6:00 p.m.

The US Department of Housing and Urban Development issued the FY2025 Continuum of Care (CoC) Program Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) on November 13, 2025. This funding opportunity has some significant changes from year’s past, so the Board is convening a called meeting to provide direction to the Funding Committee about CoC priorities and strategy. These Board decisions will help to shape the scorecard used by the Funding Committee to develop their recommendation for the Priority Listing. CoCs are eligible to apply for CoC Program funds by submitting the Consolidated Application, which includes a Priority Listing of individual agency projects and a CoC Application detailing collaborative homelessness response across the CoC.

The Board will meet virtually, Wednesday, December 3rd at 5:00 p.m. This meeting is open to the Membership and the Public. All Board members whose agencies have submitted a Letter of Intent to apply will be asked to recuse themselves from discussion and decision-making.

Click here to watch the virtual Board meeting live.

Click here to view the December 3, 2025 Board meeting materials.

Upcoming CoC Meetings

In-Person Joint Board and Membership Holiday Gathering | December 11, 2025 | 6:00 – 7:30 p.m. This year’s gathering will include a collection of items needed for the Point-in-Time Count and a chance for Members to support some of the planning that goes into this large data-collection event!

Please bring any of the following items with you for collection at the meeting:
- Reusable shopping bags – We heard your feedback! These will be used by volunteers to carry items to be handed out during the count.
- Socks, hats, and gloves – Adult sizes only, please! New socks and new or gently used hats and gloves are welcome.
- Hand/Foot warmers – Please be sure these are not expired.
- Powdered drink mix packets – Individual serving sizes, please! Examples: electrolyte packets, powdered lemonade, powdered iced tea.
- Soft snacks – Individually wrapped and pre-packaged, please! Examples: Pop-tarts, fig-newtons, nurtigrain bars, chewy granola bars.
- Flashlights, headlamps, and/or batteries – If possible, please put batteries in flashlights and headlamps.

All in-person meetings will take place at the Harrah’s Cherokee Center Banquet Hall (87 Haywood Road). Materials will be available three (3) days ahead of the meeting date.

Parking + Transportation for CoC Meetings

Parking for CoC meetings and events can be validated. Please plan to park at any of the city-owned parking garages and request a validation form when you arrive at the meeting. You will need to have a paper ticket from the garage or the ability to pay with a credit card. Transportation assistance is available in the form of transit tickets only, please reach out to homelessstrategy@ashevillenc.gov or call (828) 747-8168 to coordinate accessing these tickets. If you have questions or need additional assistance, please email homelessstrategy@ashevillenc.gov or call (828) 747-8168.

Attend New Member Orientation

Next orientation: Wednesday, December 10th at 12:00 p.m.

All new CoC members are required to attend a one-hour orientation in order to be eligible to vote during meetings of the full membership and serve on the Board, Committees, or Work Groups. Please click here to view upcoming orientation dates and register, or you can email homelessstrategy@ashevillenc.gov or call (828) 747-8168.

Save the Date: 2026 Point-in-Time Count

January 27 and 28, 2026

Mark your calendar for the 2026 Point-in-Time Count. The CoC will need volunteers to participate in administering surveys and preparing for the event. More information will be available in the coming weeks, but if you missed the Lunch + Learn, click here to watch the recording!

2025 CoC Meeting Schedule
Board Meetings		Membership Meetings
4:00 p.m. – alternating virtual and in-person		6:00 p.m.-7:30 p.m. – all in-person
December 11th, 2025	In-person	December 11th, 2025	Joint Holiday Gathering with Board

Take Action

Are you interested in serving on the CoC Board or a Committee?

*The Advocacy Committee cannot begin their important work until members are appointed – apply today!

Both Board and Committee applications are open on a rolling basis. Interested and qualified CoC Members can click the buttons below to view each application and learn more about available Board seats and Committee opportunities.

Open CoC Board Seats:

Business Community Representative
Community Member Representative
Local Non-Governmental Funder

CoC Committees:

Advocacy (new)
Community Relations
Funding
Nominating and Membership
System Performance
System Planning and Implementation

As a reminder: all CoC Members must complete a New Member Orientation in order to be eligible to serve on the CoC Board, Committees, or Work Groups.

Click here to complete the Board application.

Click here to complete the Committee application.

Stay Engaged

The Continuum of Care takes all of us! Your active participation helps the CoC grow and change in ways that will better serve our neighbors experiencing housing insecurity and the community as a whole. Use the Member Engagement Form or call the Member Engagement Voicemail at (828) 271-6161 to share reflections, ask questions, make suggestions, and indicate your interest in getting more involved with the work of the CoC. All information collected through this form and voicemail box will be channeled through the CoC Board. Lead Agency staff may also respond when appropriate.

Background

What is a Continuum of Care?

The CoC is a formally structured planning body, not an incorporated organization like a standalone nonprofit or business, that allows our community to share responsibility, accountability and make decisions together. It is voluntary, participatory, and self-governing, and consolidates the efforts of nonprofits, governments, housing providers, landlords, funders, advocates, and experts to build a coordinated approach to addressing homelessness.

The CoC does not provide direct services (like rental assistance or shelter) to people in crisis, nor does it provide direct funding to service providers. Instead it is a way of convening people and organizations already taking action in those areas to facilitate collaboration, collect and review data that measures the service system’s effectiveness, and provide evidence-based recommendations to adjust the system when necessary. It is a federal framework to guide local communities in effective and collaborative homelessness response.

The CoC is solutions-oriented with a common goal to resolve the crisis of each person experiencing homelessness. Trust and transparency are critical to develop a collaborative and unified approach to respond to these crises efficiently and effectively.

In Asheville and Buncombe County, the Homeless Initiative Advisory Committee (HIAC) has traditionally served as the CoC Board. Based on recommendations from the National Alliance to End Homelessness about how to improve unsheltered homelessness in our community, HIAC initiated a process to create a new community-based membership body and elect a new CoC Board for more widespread participation and improved results.

The restructured CoC has recently been established and is governed by a charter adopted by its membership body on February 29, 2024. The charter outlines roles and responsibilities of the CoC membership, board, committees, and Lead Agency. It also details the spirit of the CoC’s collaborative work through agreed-upon Shared Values and Guiding Principles:

Value the voice of people with lived experience
Be bold
Create accountable and transparent governance structures
Build trust through unity, collaboration, and performance
Focus on housing solutions
Make decisions using data and evidence
Focus on our future
Promote a person-centered system to ensure individualized needs are met
Ensure that politics do not drive policies

What does homelessness look like in the CoC?

Each year the CoC conducts the Point-in-Time Count during the last 10 days of January. This year, the count took place on January 28th and 29th to get a “snapshot” of homelessness data in our community. The CoC saw 135 volunteers participate in survey administration over the two-day period, 60 of whom were CoC members. Teams canvassed 27 geographic areas across Buncombe County in addition to being stationed at various service locations to support survey collection. Local service providers also provided data for the night of the 28th to ensure as many people could be counted as possible.

Participation in the Point-in-Time Count is voluntary and the dataset is imperfect, but it can show trends over time that help inform the community’s overall strategy and collective response to homelessness. The 2025 count identified 755 people experiencing homelessness, including 116 who reported that their homelessness was a result of Tropical Storm Helene. Full results from the 2025 Point-in-Time Count were shared during the March 26, 2025 CoC Membership Meeting, and can be viewed here.

CoC Board and Membership

Asheville-Buncombe Continuum of Care Board

Elected April 25, 2024

CoC Board Officers
	Representative Seat	Candidate	Affiliation
Chair	Healthcare System	Melina Arrowood	Mission Hospital
Vice-Chair	Victim Service Provider	April Burgess-Johnson	Helpmate
Secretary	Shelter and Transitional Housing Provider	Christian Chambers	Safe Shelter

CoC Board
Representative Seat	Candidate	Affiliation
Subject Matter Expert with Lived Experience of Homelessness	Josh Morrow	Sunrise Community
Subject Matter Expert with Lived Experience of Homelessness	Karen Hayes-Roberts	Umoja
Behavioral Healthcare System	Celeste Ordiway	Vaya Health
Unsheltered Service Provider	Scott Rogers	ABCCM
Permanent Housing Provider	Jenny Moffatt	Homeward Bound
Public Safety	Captain Jonathan Brown	Asheville Police Department
Community Member	Marcia Mount Shoop	Grace Covenant Presbyterian Church
Supportive Provider Network	David Bartholomew	Pisgah Legal Services
Faith Community	Mary Brown	Church Street Collaborative/Central United Methodist Church
Appointed Seat	Appointee	Role
Asheville Housing Authority	Ella Santos (interim appointee)	Chief Operating Officer
Buncombe County Staff	Lacy Hoyle	Homelessness Program Manager
City of Asheville Staff	Debra Campbell	City Manager
Veterans Administration	Jerry Kivett-Kimbro	HUD-VASH Supervisor
Non-Voting Liaisons
Buncombe County Commissioner		Jennifer Horton
Asheville City Council Member		Mayor Esther Manheimer