BANFF Tickets on Sale Now
BANFF Tickets on Sale Now
We are excited to share that on August 25, Asheville City Council voted unanimously to allow duplexes in all residential districts and to increase the allowable size of accessory dwelling units! This is a big win for MountainTrue’s Block Party campaign, which has been working to increase housing options in the city of Asheville and reduce sprawl that can threaten farms and forests throughout our mountain region.
Dozens of MountainTrue supporters submitted public comments online, and seventeen people showed up to the public meeting in person while not a single person attended the meeting to voice opposition to the change. The message to decision-makers is clear: allowing more homes in the city is overdue and broadly supported by the public.
MountainTrue is now turning our attention to bolder reforms through the upcoming rewrite of Asheville’s Unified Development Ordinance.
Allowing more compact housing makes good sense for budget-conscious workers, families, and local governments alike. Living in close proximity to jobs, schools, and friends reduces the vehicle miles we have to travel by making it easier to walk, bike, or ride the bus. Additionally, homes are inherently smaller when built this way, and duplexes share walls so these households use less energy to heat and cool their spaces—resulting in lower utility bills and further climate benefits.
Towns such as Waynesville and Brevard were ahead of Asheville—already allowing duplexes anywhere a single-family home is allowed. This is good for their communities and for their bottom line. When local governments encourage building more housing in and up within city limits or where water, sewer, and power infrastructure already exist, we create more environmentally sustainable communities that keep us connected to our neighbors and help decrease our development footprint. Reducing sprawl makes delivering public services—like water and sewer systems—more efficient and helps local governments stretch their tight budgets to serve more residents. When a government can focus its limited resources on critical maintenance of infrastructure, rather than expansion of service, more of us can enjoy the benefits of systems that work as intended instead of needing to report line breaks or sewage leaks.
As MountainTrue works to help communities across the Southern Blue Ridge accommodate more housing options, we hope to encourage more small towns to recognize the benefits of allowing buildings like duplexes to be part of the fabric of their communities.
We know that it’s one thing to understand the benefits of these policy changes in theory, while it is a wholly different thing to experience these changes to our communities in real time. Yet, as more communities across our region adopt these changes, we are optimistic that neighborhoods will fill in with people we enjoy getting to know and homes that feel like they fit in. Unlike the dramatic changes you see when a stand of trees is clear-cut or a farm is graded to make way for an entire subdivision of large homes, allowing homes like quadplexes or small apartment buildings on our existing streets doesn’t actually change the landscape of our cities or towns that much. We built our towns like this back in the 1920s, and we can do it again.
Join us in talking to your friends, neighbors, and elected leaders about the many benefits of welcoming this scale of residential development back into our communities. In time, the benefits will accrue not just to the planet, but to our own individual day-to-day lives as corner stores can be viable again, our kids can walk or bike to school, and we make new friends at the annual neighborhood block party.
