Hundreds of new shelter beds, housing units planned as part of $30M ABCCM expansion
ASHEVILLE - The view out the playroom windows, overtop plastic play kitchens, colorful bean bags and stray dolls, is of an empty, expansive field. Demarcated by a black chain link fence, it is the remaining, and majority, acreage of Transformation Village's 24-acre campus.
The existing building provides 100 transitional housing beds to women and children experiencing homelessness in Buncombe, Asheville and surrounding counties. The planned expansion, which ABCCM executive director Scott Rogers sketched out atop the scrubby grass of the rain-sodden field, is slated to bring 128 more beds in a new 64-unit building.
It's one piece of $30 million in shelter and housing expansions planned across the next two years, Rogers said.
ABCCM, or Asheville Buncombe Community Christian Ministry, is a faith-based nonprofit supported by a network of 300 area churches. It focuses on veterans, women and children and runs three shelters: Transformation Village, the Veterans Restoration Quarters and Costello House.
Transformation Village, a sprawling facility off I-26 in Buncombe County, just outside of the city limits, provides transitional housing to women and children, most coming directly from the streets.
Transitional housing is considered a crisis response by the National Alliance to End Homelessness, which defines it as a "temporary housing intervention partnered with supportive services to assist the transition to permanent housing." Stays are no longer than 24 months.
Beyond the footprint for the new building, ABCCM also plans a 38-unit permanent supportive housing apartment building, the first of four they hope to build on the property. PSH is a housing intervention that provides longer-term rental assistance and intensive supportive services to people who were chronically homeless.
The National Alliance calls permanent supportive housing and "rapid re-housing," which is short-term rental assistance and services, the two most effective homelessness-focused housing models.
Alongside expansions at Transformation Village, 96 more units of PSH are in the works for the Veterans Restoration Quarters, an East Asheville campus with 200 transitional housing beds and 50 units of PSH dedicated for veterans.
These projects are encompassed in the $30 million price tag. In front of Transformation Village, at the edge of the existing parking lot, 36 emergency shelter beds are also planned. Currently, emergency shelter is mostly limited to Code Purple, which triggers when temperatures drop below freezing.
It's a massive undertaking. ABCCM is already the largest shelter provider in the area, Rogers said.
“It’s a God plan, it’s bigger than all of us," he said. “It just depends on what I’ve said all along. When the funding comes, then we will do it.”
'Trying to find my way'
Brittany Bell has been working as a Resident Assistant at Transformation Village since February. She is a peer support specialist, a position that combines lived experience with professional training.
“I wasn’t far from where they’re at in their lives, not long ago. I’ve been on the upside of it for about six years and I’ve gotten my life together, but I would have given anything to have a place like this to come to," Bell told the Citizen Times April 11.
“The only thing I would change about Transformation Village is how big it is. I wish it could be bigger. That more people could be here. More beds, more women and children.”
She spoke to the Citizen Times in a conference room onsite along with Ashley Byas, a resident, and Judy Martin, a dedicated volunteer.
Martin chimed in, excitedly, to say, "that's in the works. We're looking forward to that."
Transformation Village averages a waitlist of 130-150 women and children. They turn over about every six months, serving around 200 people a year. There are no religious requirements to graduate from the program, Rogers said.
“The only number I want to leave you with is eight out of 10," Rogers said. That's the average over the last 15 years of people who leave ABCCM programs and don't reenter homelessness.
People exit Transformation Village into all kinds of housing, from the Asheville housing authority to housing owned by some of the area's largest property managers. But the most significant "landlord network," Rogers said, are congregants and leaders at the 300 churches that support ABCCM's work.
Byas has been staying at Transformation Village since September. She's from Asheville, having grown up in Fairview, and is painfully aware of the difficult housing market. Asheville boasts among the highest rents in the state.
“I just want to have stable housing and a stable job. That’s really all that’s on my mind is trying to find where I’m going to go from here that’s going to be not somewhere I have to leave in a month," she said.
“Like I said, I’m still trying to find my way, too. I just know that every day that I’m sober I have a better chance of it then I did when I was not sober and on the street.”
Day to day, Byas, 31, takes classes at the village — Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College has dedicated classrooms onsite, offering programs that range from industrial sewing and nursing to construction trades — and attends support group sessions.
But it was working Code Purple, the emergency shelter beds offered in cold weather, where she said she truly found her place. It has encouraged her to pursue becoming a peer support specialist herself. She is also on track to become a Resident Assistant.
“Although I was doing classes and everything before, I really felt like I didn’t have a purpose," she said.
Once she started working intake at Code Purple, and supervising the late shift, "I had something to do. I felt like I was needed ... I was starting to get pretty depressed and I didn’t know where I was going to go to work, so them giving me a job really changed my life."
Coming through the doors
Rogers walked a route April 11 similar to the one any incoming resident would follow — through intake, into a space to wash clothes, take a shower and get toiletries. Past a salon and community rooms. The resident halls and cafeteria.
There are about 20 staff members onsite, including a nurse, but ABCCM is largely volunteer-run, with a team of about 1,800, with people like Martin among them. She is with a local chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution. They focus on supporting the veterans among the resident populations.
“It’s been very rewarding for them, and also very much rewarding for us," Martin said. “We try to make them feel at home and let them know how much we appreciate everything they’ve done for us and the country.”
Veteran care is a large focus of ABCCM. A report from the National Alliance to End Homelessness, contracted by the city, with funding from Dogwood Health Trust, noted that more than half of the transitional and permanent housing interventions in Buncombe County require veteran status.
A January 2023 point in time count, a census of the area's unhoused population, found of the 573 people experiencing homelessness, 171 were unsheltered. Of the total population, 32.5% are women. New numbers from the latest count should be coming this spring.
Earlier in April, Buncombe County commissioners approved an application for a $1 million grant from the N.C. Commerce Recovery Housing Program to support the 128 new transitional housing beds at Transformation Village. Of these, 64 will be reserved specifically for women in recovery from substance use disorder, working to meet a critical and escalating crisis, according to the draft application.
Expansion of existing recovery programs will be done in partnership with the Buncombe County Department of Social Services and Vaya Health, and support transition to permanent housing.
Rogers said they would be able to use that $1 million to leverage more funds. They have about $3.5 million committed from the city, Dogwood and N.C. Housing Finance Agency for the permanent supportive housing units.
More: Debunking homelessness myths: Asheville experts take on 5 common misconceptions
More: CIBO hears homelessness update from 2 of Asheville's largest shelter providers
Sarah Honosky is the city government reporter for the Asheville Citizen Times, part of the USA TODAY Network. News Tips? Email shonosky@citizentimes.com or message on Twitter at @slhonosky. Please support local, daily journalism with a subscription to the Citizen Times.
This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: ABCCM anticipates $30M in expansions over next 2 years
