City Manager, Debra Campbell, provided an update to Asheville City Council on the City’s response to homelessness at the January 11 meeting.
The video to the managers report can be found here.
The slide presentation can be found here (Pg 7 – 31)
Key Takeaways
- Homelessness is a community-wide issue that requires a community-wide response.
- The City is responding daily while also working with partners on longer term solutions to address homelessness. Community opinions differ on best approaches.
- City continues to address criminal behavior as well as increased monitoring and clean-up of parks and other public property.
- City has procedures it implements when homeless camps occur on publicly or privately owned property with safety of the campers, the general public and staff always being the highest priority.
- Encampments are unsafe and not solutions to homelessness.
- City’s goal is to move beyond managing homelessness to ending homelessness.