City Council approves the Community Development Block Grant – Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) Action Plan for submission to the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) during the April 8 City Council meeting.
The Action Plan is the first step in the process to access $225,010,000 allocated by HUD on January 16, 2025, following a December 2024 Congressional appropriation. The primary purpose of the CDBG-DR Action Plan is to estimate the City’s unmet needs from Tropical Storm Helene and to describe how the City intends to use CDBG-DR funding to address those needs.
“While this funding cannot address all the unmet needs in our community, it is a critical step toward our long-term recovery,” said Nikki Reid, Community and Economic Development Director.
As part of the Plan’s development, the City underwent a robust public engagement process to ensure that community input helped shape the Action Plan. Prior to publishing the Draft Action Plan, the City hosted six public input sessions in February and conducted a survey to identify community recovery priorities. Feedback received during this time helped shape the Draft Action Plan.
The Draft Action Plan was published on March 4th, which began a 30-day public comment period, allowing residents to give their feedback on the Plan via the CDBG-DR Engagement Hub, email, and mail. Additionally, the City hosted three public feedback sessions in March to explain the Draft Action Plan and receive public comments. These sessions included a review of the entire plan, but each had a key focus area on programs in the Action Plan: Housing, Economic Revitalization, and Infrastructure.
“This has been the most collaborative effort I have ever been involved with. From the help across divisions, departments, and recovery support groups within the City to our community who participated at every stage of this process,” said James Shelton, City of Asheville Community Development Division Manager.
Over 120 people attended the three sessions, and over 200 people commented online or via email. In total, the City received over 300 comments, which it then used to inform revisions to the Plan.
“It’s not just the City who gets to decide how these funds are spent; it’s our community as well. And one thing we continuously heard from them was the urgent need for small business support and how important affordable housing is to the community, especially with so many displaced by the storm,” said Shelton.
As a result of these comments, the City changed the program allocations it had originally devised in the Draft Plan. It reallocated $5,000,000 that had been set aside for Infrastructure to three other programs. Two million dollars was added to the Small Business Support Program, bringing the total to $17,000,000. Additionally, another $2,000,000 was shifted to the Multi-Family Construction Program, bringing its total to $28,000,000. Lastly, $1,000,000 was moved to support the City’s planning efforts.
“Another thing we continuously heard from our community was the opportunity this funding affords to set us up to be more resilient in the future. That’s going to take some planning, and we want to make sure we do it right,” said Shelton.
The final Plan’s program allocations are as follows: $125,000,000 for Infrastructure; $52,000,000 for Economic Revitalization; $31,000,000 for Housing; $3,759,500 for Planning; and $2,000,000 for Public Services. The City has also set aside $11,250,500 to cover the administrative costs that will come with running the CDBG-DR programs over the next 6 years. “Each year, the City receives $1 million through the CDBG program, which our staff of five manages. We’re going to need to increase our capacity as a team in order to be responsible stewards of these funds and deliver them effectively to our community,” said Shelton.
Now that the Action Plan has been approved by the City Council, it will be submitted to HUD, who will have 45 days to review, request changes, and approve the Action Plan. Once the Action Plan receives HUD approval, the City anticipates receiving a grant agreement this summer with implementation to begin in the fall of 2025 and beginning of 2026. While the City awaits approval, it has already begun strategizing how to activate these funds for the community’s recovery.
“We’ve been in close coordination with HUD since the beginning of this process. We’ve worked with our federal partners as they’ve updated guidance and we’ve taken proactive steps to ensure a quick approval of this plan, and they’ve been impressed by our collaboration with the State and Buncombe County,” said James Shelton.
You can follow the progress of the CDBG-DR project on our recovery website.