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City committee backs planning grant to fund project manager for emergency shelter development
Summary
The committee heard a proposal to use disaster-recovery planning funds to contract project management and professional services to move existing shelter planning into a shovel-ready project; staff requested $242,500 and estimated a 12-month timeline to deliver a plan for the Continuum of Care board.
At the City of Asheville Planning, Economic Development and Environment Committee meeting on May 11, Emily Ball, homeless strategies division manager, outlined a planning grant proposal to add project management capacity and move prior shelter planning work into a shovel-ready emergency shelter plan.
Ball said Storm Helene "immediately increased unsheltered homelessness by 50% in our community" and that 16% of people counted in the most recent point-in-time count identified Helene as the cause of their homelessness. She said the Continuum of Care (COC) has conducted extensive needs analysis and stakeholder engagement and that a project manager is needed to translate that work into site selection, program design, capital and operating budgets, data management and an implementation plan.
The recommended budget in the grant application is $242,500 to resource two broad activities: contracted project management and, if needed as the project evolves, professional services. Ball said the anticipated timeline, once a project manager is onboarded, is roughly 12 months to deliver a plan ready for execution and review by the COC board, which includes city representatives.
Committee members expressed support for adding staff capacity and asked that the shelter work group or its chair, Jim Hardy, brief the committee on prior planning work so council could better understand how the project manager would connect to existing conceptual plans. Ball said the work group would be available to present and that the proposed grant is intended to move planning to implementation rather than create new conceptual plans.
The item will return to the committee and to the COC board as staff scopes contracting and next steps; no formal vote to fund the grant was recorded at this meeting.
