Corrections & Updates

An earlier version said the region's food bank served about 158,000 pantry visits a month before Hurricane Helene, and more than 190,000 by June 2025. Neither figure could be traced to MANNA FoodBank or to any published report, and the 158,000 appears to have come from a count of people served, not visits. The piece now uses only figures we can cite: more than 170,000 monthly visits in September 2025, "the highest level in the organization's 42-year history" (Community Foundation of WNC); roughly 195,000 by that November (828 News Now); and more than 200,000 now (MANNA). The claim that visits are "more than a quarter higher than before the storm" was removed with the unsourced baseline. The point is unchanged: pantry traffic set a record and has not come back down. Caught by a three-model verification pass.

The home page's headline figure said 200,000+ Western North Carolina neighbors face food insecurity. The number is real but it counts something else: MANNA FoodBank reports that its pantries "are visited more than 200,000 times every month," and a household can visit many times. MANNA's own count of people is over 120,000 facing food insecurity across its region. The figure stays and the label is now correct: monthly visits to the region's food pantries. Every article on this site already used it that way; the home page was the one place it read as a headcount.

An earlier version said North Carolina "already puts more than $800 million a year into mental health." The figure is right; the framing was not. The more than $800 million the piece's own sources describe (NC Health News; the Governor's office) was invested in the state mental-health system in the prior budget cycle, a one-time commitment, not an annual one. The text now says so. The point is unchanged: House Bill 1104 reworks involuntary commitment while adding no new money. The error was caught by a new automated check that compares shared figures across every page of this site.

Earlier versions said roughly $250 million in hospitality investment and 1,200 new hotel rooms were entering the Asheville market across 2025 and 2026. That pair traced to no findable source. The pieces now use the figure city records support: nearly 1,700 new hotel rooms built, under construction, or in the development pipeline since the city lifted its hotel moratorium in February 2021 (City of Asheville records, via Asheville Watchdog). The first piece's title changed to match. The argument is unchanged: the boom is real, and the workforce to staff it cannot afford to live near it.

Five pieces said Buncombe County pantry visits were up about 20 percent since Hurricane Helene. We could not trace a Buncombe-specific figure to any source. The pieces now state what MANNA FoodBank's own reporting supports: monthly pantry visits across its WNC region rose from about 158,000 before the storm to more than 200,000, an increase of roughly a quarter, with no return to pre-storm levels.

An earlier version said Meals on Wheels of Asheville-Buncombe serves an average of 700 homebound seniors each weekday. The program's own reporting, and our directory's audited record, say about 700 seniors each week. The text now says so.

An earlier version anchored the 1980s rise in homelessness at "roughly 125,000 (1980)," a number that traces to no primary source. The text now uses the first federal estimate on record: 250,000 to 350,000 (HUD, 1984), rising to an estimated 500,000 to 600,000 by the late 1980s. A header note claiming early word processors did not recognize "homelessness" as a word was also unverifiable and was replaced.

An earlier version gave exact SRO counts for New York (129,000 rooms in 1960 to 25,000 by 1978) and Los Angeles that we could not trace to primary sources. The text now uses the documented record: New York City engineered the loss of more than 100,000 SRO units by 1985, and owners destroyed two-thirds of the remaining stock between 1976 and 1981 alone.

Earlier versions presented the Denver Social Impact Bond trial's cost comparison ($25,554 for the control group vs. $18,678 for people placed in supportive housing) as savings "with the housing itself included." The Urban Institute's evaluation says otherwise: those figures are use of other public services (jail, ER, detox, shelter), and the roughly $6,876-a-year offset covered about half of the program's own cost, not more than all of it. All four pieces now state the offset and the program cost honestly. The argument is unchanged: housing people returns a large share of its cost in avoided public spending and keeps 77 percent stably housed at three years, but it is not free.

Earlier versions framed Battery Park Apartments and the city's public housing as serving "the same kind of neighbor," presenting the contrast in their condition as a near-controlled experiment. Battery Park is in fact restricted to low-income seniors (age 62 and over), while public housing serves families and individuals of every age. Both pieces now disclose that difference. The argument is unchanged: the gap in condition traces to the financing platform each building can reach, not to the residents.

Two figures from the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies were mislabeled "as of 2024." The cost-burden shares (58 percent of older renters, 43 percent of older homeowners with a mortgage) are 2023 data; the count of about 11.2 million cost-burdened older adults, up from 9.7 million in 2016, is from 2021. The older-homeowner share was also corrected from 44 to 43 percent. Separately, the Urban Institute's 37 percent rise in older-adult homelessness between 2019 and 2022 refers specifically to sheltered homelessness, and the text now says so.

The musical-chairs framework was misattributed. It belongs to the sociologist Kay Young McChesney, "Family Homelessness: A Systemic Problem," Journal of Social Issues 46, no. 4 (1990). An earlier version misnamed her and conflated her paper with a separate 1990 editorial of a similar title by Elliott D. Sclar in the American Journal of Public Health. Both are now cited correctly.

An earlier version said food insecurity "roughly doubles" the odds of depression. The meta-analysis cited (Pourmotabbed et al., Public Health Nutrition, 2020) supports about 40 percent higher odds overall, and about 75 percent higher for adults 65 and over. The text and footnote now match the study.

The national supply figure was corrected from 37 to 35 affordable and available homes per 100 extremely low-income renter households, per NLIHC's The Gap (2026). The 37 matched no edition of the report.

Earlier versions described the 1980s federal housing cuts with three differing sets of figures drawn from different budget series. All three pieces now use one sourced framing: budget authority for subsidized housing peaked at about $82 billion in 1978 (in constant dollars) and was cut by more than half in the early 1980s (NLIHC / Cushing Dolbeare, Changing Priorities, 2002).