By Will Hofmann
ASHEVILLE – They agree on where they are going, but they disagree on how to get there.
That’s what Asheville’s mayoral candidates Esther Manheimer and Kim Roney had to say about one another during Leadership Asheville Forum’s May 27 Mayoral Candidate Forum. Taking questions from an audience at the Asheville Country Club, discussion between the candidates addressed issues of homelessness, public safety, public transit, transparency and recovery from Tropical Storm Helene and more.
It’s a repeat of the 2022 election, with the same figures — three-term Mayor Esther Manheimer and two-term City Council member Kim Roney — again being the options in the general election.
Manheimer is endorsed by Buncombe County Commission Chair Amanda Edwards and State Sen. Julie Mayfield. Roney is endorsed by Register of Deeds Drew Reisinger, AFL-CIO and the WNC Central Labor Council. It was the first mayoral candidate forum since the March primary, where the two automatically proceeded to the general election.
In their opening statements, both candidates took a portion of their time to address the biggest event since their 2022 match-up: Tropical Storm Helene. The storm caused an estimated $60 billion in damages across Western North Carolina, according to a North Carolina Office of State Budget and Management report. It flooded Asheville’s river districts for days.
In describing her work during and after the storm, Manheimer pointed to her advocacy for additional recovery funding in and support for Asheville, which has included multiple trips to Congress and meetings with officials in both the Biden and Trump administrations. She is the co-chair of the Governor’s Advisory Committee on WNC Recovery.
“I left those meetings with nearly a billion dollars in funding that we are going to be able to invest in this community for our future,” Manheimer said.
Roney discussed her work as a volunteer with the Flush Brigade, a volunteer group that organized the flushing of thousands of toilets as Asheville remained without water for weeks after Helene. She also said she worked with a coalition of local elected officials to bring volunteer firefighters from New York City to Asheville.
“I’m deepened in my belief that we can secure a hopeful future together by taking better care of each other at our mountain home,” Roney said.
Here are takeaways on three major issues discussed during the meeting.
Asheville in an affordability and housing crisis, candidates say
Both candidates described the issues of affordability, housing and homelessness as a “crisis.” As of 2026, Asheville is considered to have the highest Fair Market Rent in North Carolina, beating out major metropolitan areas like Raleigh and Charlotte, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The fair market rent for a one-bedroom in the Asheville Metropolitan Statistical area is estimated to cost $1,674.
Both candidates described continuing to focus on affordable housing as a major goal if elected in 2026. Manheimer said it was her “first priority.”
“Just on recent action we’ve taken to effect change is to partner with Haywood Street Congregation, who just opened 41 units of deeply affordable housing. My vision for the future of Asheville is to replicate projects like that tenfold,” Manheimer said.
“I think it is necessary for us to continue to expand on the tools available for affordable housing. We’re embarking on rewriting the unified development ordinance as a way to make it easier for folks to build housing, whether it’s small projects or larger projects,” Manheimer said.
The Asheville area needs to build more than 13,921 units of rental housing to keep up with demand through 2029, according to a 2025 Housing Needs Assessment produced by Bowen National Research. Housing researchers have pointed to a lack of affordable housing as producing high rates of homelessness.
Asheville’s 2026 point in time county found that 824 people were experiencing homelessness, a 9% increase compared to 2025 results, the Citizen Time reported.
Both candidates support an emergency shelter but Roney advocated for a service similar to Durham’s Holistic Empathetic Assistance Response Teams, or HEART, program to address concerns around public safety and mental health treatment. The HEART program dispatches mental and behavioral health professionals to address mental health-related calls for service, according to the program’s website.
“Other cities across the country are doing this and it’s working out much better than sending police and fire, who are not the right people to send,” Roney said.
Intelligence center vote shows divide on public safety
One issued discussed during the forum underscored the duo’s contrasting approach on policy.
On May 13, City Council voted to accept federal funding for a real-time intelligence center that will connect public and private cameras to Asheville Police Department’s network — a vote that came at the end of a lengthy meeting that included 50 people signing up for public comment, with most against the proposal. Residents worried that the new intelligence center would expand citizen surveillance, monitoring and tracking while opening up venues for technology to be misused. The intelligence center would use software from Axon, a company that is also a contractor for the Department of Homeland Security.
In a 6-1 vote, Roney was the only council member to vote against the funding.
“When a billionaire-owned, AI-fueled, for-profit tech company is working with ICE and Homeland Security — and also the police department — to surveil people without a warrant, there are real questions about protections of our constitutional rights,” Roney said.
Manheimer couched the decision as one that would “save us money here in the city of Asheville.”
“Right now, we pay the sheriff’s department to have access to his intelligence center, which he’s been operating for many years,” Manheimer said.
‘Transparency’ or a way to ‘run a city’
Roney and Manheimer are split on what they define as transparency.
For years, Roney has called into question a City Council practice where they “check-in” with one another while not meeting quorum. North Carolina open meetings laws require any meeting with a quorum — meaning four or more members for City Council — to be open to the public with minutes kept. Council did away with the practice in 2023, only for it to return in 2024, the Citizen Times reported. Getting rid of check-ins would be among her first priorities if elected mayor, Roney said.
“One of my first priorities is doing the people’s work in public, because it’s not just the work that we’re doing, but how we do it,” Roney said. “So, for me, that means ending the check-ins and scheduling a better series of work session and community engagement opportunities.”
Manheimer called transparency “critically important” and suggested that Asheville has more public-facing meetings that are livestreamed than any public body in Buncombe County “or maybe even this state.” While not directly mentioning the check-ins, Manheimer said, “We also have to have discussions with one another.”
“We got to call each other back and be able to work through difficult issues. That’s not a transparency issue, that’s a functioning issue. That’s just a way you’ve got to be able to run a city,” Manheimer said during the forum.
Will Hofmann is the Growth and Development Reporter for the Asheville Citizen Times, part of the USA Today Network. Got a tip? Email him at WHofmann@citizentimes.com or message will_hofmann.01 on Signal.