The WNC Desk · Buncombe County
Where the FY2027 budget invests in housing, food, and the safety net, and the requests it leaves unfunded.
Budget adopted June 2, 2026 · Prepared 2026-06-30
Buncombe County does the region's heaviest lifting on housing and food. Its FY2027 budget puts real money into affordable housing, food access, early childhood, and behavioral health. It also runs a competitive grant process where the asks outrun the dollars, so the same budget that funds millions in help marks a long line of requests "not recommended for funding." Both halves are the story.
The Affordable Housing Services Program authorized about $13.4 million, paid from a mix of the affordable-housing bond (about $9.9M), the general fund (about $2.3M), and housing-trust program income. The largest awards:
| Project | Authorized |
|---|---|
| Harmony Housing, Coxe Avenue construction loan | $9,800,000 |
| Urban Atlantic, Ferry Road II senior housing | $1,250,000 |
| Asheville Habitat for Humanity, home repair | $600,000 |
| Mountain Housing Opportunities | $500,000 |
| Eblen Charities, down-payment assistance | $400,000 |
The five largest awards total about $12.55M; the rest of the $13.36M goes to smaller repair, down-payment, and land-trust grants. Separately, the City of Asheville is managing roughly $225M in federal disaster-recovery (CDBG-DR) Helene housing money, a far larger pool covered in the city brief.
The county's grant rounds draw far more in requests than the budget can cover, so the budget book marks many requests "not recommended for funding." A few that went unfunded in the FY2027 round:
† On these figures, and why to read them carefully: the county's grant tables list each request on its own line, and a single organization often files several requests, some funded and some not. So an unfunded line is a verdict on that request, not on the group, and an org-level "they got nothing" reading is usually wrong. We removed three organizations from an earlier version of this list after finding each was funded for other work. Tracking many applications per group is genuinely error-prone; we reconciled every figure here against the county's appendix, but treat any single line as "check it against the source."
"Not recommended" is not the county calling these asks unworthy. It is a competitive process where demand exceeds the dollars, and staff rank requests against limited funds. Even after $13.4M for housing and millions more for food and the safety net, the region's nonprofits asked for more than the budget could fund. That gap is where housing and food insecurity lives.
If you want to know what your county dollars do for your neighbors, this is it: millions into housing, food, and the safety net, and a competitive line behind it of requests that did not make the cut. The funded list shows the county's priorities. The unfunded list shows the size of the problem, and where donations, volunteers, and advocacy still have the most room to matter.
Sources: Buncombe County FY2027 Adopted Budget in Brief (affordable-housing authorizations p.30; Strategic Partnership / community-grant appendices) and Annual Funds Budget Ordinance; Buncombe County budget news releases. The $225M figure is the City of Asheville's CDBG-DR allocation (ashevillerecovers.org). Grant amounts are the figures shown in the county budget book; an unfunded line reflects that specific request, not the organization overall. Independent summary; not affiliated with Buncombe County.