By Sarah Honosky
ASHEVILLE – Putting the key in the door of her Pisgah View apartment for the first time, Tiffany Walker said she was on “cloud nine.”
“It was the most amazing feeling in my life,” she said of her move-in day in October 2022.
She’s been in public housing for three-and-a-half years, now in Deaverview Apartments in West Asheville. But she spent the previous decade homeless in Asheville.
Moving into housing “saved my life,” Walker told the Citizen Times in April.
“The rate I was going, and the abuse that I was going through, I would have ended up dead if I’d stayed out there any longer, for sure.”
Walker’s home is her “sanctuary,” where she lives with her burly and affectionate pitbull, Mystical. Walls are painstakingly lined with her art: collages made with found materials and clippings from magazines. Curio shelves teem with small figurines — tiny toadstools and fairies; little owls and a ceramic red-capped gnome.
“I’m just now getting to where I can breathe a little bit easier now,” Walker said.
Her path to housing was accelerated through an admissions preferences process, which essentially can fast track people for public housing who are experiencing homelessness or are survivors of domestic violence. Walker was both.
But that policy ended in September 2023, less than a year after Tiffany entered public housing, during former Asheville housing authority CEO Monique Pierre’s tenure. What followed the preferences removal was “exceptionally hard,” said April Burgess-Johnson, executive director of Helpmate. The Asheville-based nonprofit provides domestic violence services, including free emergency shelter.
“It meant that people lingered in our shelter for much longer than they usually did. Sometimes twice as long. Because, for some folks, housing in HACA is the best, and sometimes only, option,” she said.
“When that option went away because preferences were abolished and then the waitlist was so long you couldn’t really make any progress on it, we saw folks get really, really stuck.”
How long can it take to get into public housing?
The waitlist for public housing sometimes holds thousands of names. People could wait two to three years for a one-bedroom unit. For a housing choice voucher, also known as Section 8, it can be closer to a decade.
But through the Asheville-Buncombe Continuum of Care, a community-based planning body responsible for the area’s homelessness response, the authority’s preferences have been reinstated. Referrals began through the process in late April.
The Continuum of Care board voted to select the providers that would implement the agreement with the housing authority in March, with Helpmate, Safe Shelter and Homeward Bound partnering to facilitate housing applications, submit preferences and provide a year of case management for referrals.
“This is really exciting. This was an action in the strategic plan for the CoC (that) will literally end homelessness for many people in our community,” said Homeless Strategy Division Manager Emily Ball in an April 28 update to City Council.
The Housing Authority of the City of Asheville, established in 1940, oversees 1,525 project-based voucher units across nine public housing properties, including Deaverview, Hillcrest and Pisgah View apartments, plus about 1,400 tenant-based vouchers.
In April, the housing authority also announced “organizational changes,” including layoffs affecting 34 employees, representing 21% of its workforce. It was addressing a projected $500,000 budget shortfall for its current fiscal year.
It also recently entered a new agreement with the Asheville Police Department that will provide supplemental officers in neighborhoods in response to safety concerns.
In February 2024, a Citizen Times investigation found three of Asheville’s public housing units had among the highest rates of violent crime in the city, including Hillcrest and Pisgah View. Later that year, another story detailed the experiences of residents who decried violence in their neighborhoods, demanding the authority, city leaders and law enforcement do more to protect them.
Ella Santos has led the authority since November, filling a nearly year-long vacancy after former CEO, Pierre, was fired by the board in a closed session meeting in November 2024.
Pierre is seeking damages for wrongful termination in a lawsuit filed April 22.
When reached by phone May 5, Pierre declined to comment on the preferences due to the pending litigation.
Preferences exist to “make sure that we can prioritize people within the community with the greatest need,” Santos said in a late February interview.
Under the new process, the authority will have two waitlists: one for the general public who have applied for housing, and the other for those with exiting homelessness or survivors of domestic violence. When a project-based unit opens, the authority will alternate which list it pulls from.
“We are the largest landlord in Western North Carolina. So we recognize that we have the resource, the community has a need, so why not pair this up in a more coordinated way?” Santos said.
How does it work?
Notably, applicants accessing preferences must be referred through the Continuum of Care’s coordinated entry system, and units are only available to people who qualify for rapid rehousing.
Coordinated entry is the process by which someone experiencing homelessness enters the system and is connected with staff, assessed and helped to access resources that meet their unique needs.
Ball said there are around 1,000 people on the by-name list, used to prioritize people for available housing programs, dedicated to those exiting homelessness through the coordinated entry process.
Jenny Moffatt, housing services director with Homeward Bound, said the people who fit the qualifications for those referrals are “mid-acuity,” not those experiencing chronic homelessness.
Even with preferences it’s not a “free for all,” she said. Organizational capacity is limited: Helpmate, 35 people; Homeward Bound, 45; Safe Shelter; 10 to 15.
Santos said admissions preferences were removed in September 2023, before her tenure. In a board meeting materials packet, provided by Santos, a resolution called for the elimination of preferences “recognizing that it is a core tenement of equity that no family or individual is more or less deserving of housing.”
At that time, the housing authority had 14 agreements with various organizations.
This is how we ‘move the needle’
Burgess-Johnson said with preferences reinstated, she feels “really optimistic.” Their return is ushered in by a new memorandum of understanding between the Continuum of Care and housing authority. She said it was a “much better set up than it was the last go-around,” with a clearer process for who qualifies and is selected for preferences and what expectations are for service providers.
Moffatt said the return of preferences was an “exciting turn of events.”
“Our community can be really vocal about wanting to see less people on the street,” Moffatt said. “This is the kind of thing that is going to actually move that needle to where people experiencing homelessness get into housing. Because we can’t end homelessness without more housing.”
How many people are homeless in Asheville?
An annual homelessness count in Asheville and Buncombe County, conducted in January, saw a 9% increase over 2025 — 824 people experiencing homelessness, up from 755 in 2025.
Of those, 334 were unsheltered, and 390 in shelters or transitional housing programs.
“Everybody deserves to have a home,” Tiffany said, but it was “scary” to think that for several years, people with similar experiences to her may have seen their progress toward housing slowed.
She had unsuccessful housing attempts before. But the time it stuck, Tiffany said she was finally ready. The process took about a year-and-a-half, she said. She went through AHOPE, Homeward Bound’s downtown day shelter, and remembered checking in every week: letting them know she was still homeless, still there and ready to “do my part.”
After she secured housing, Tiffany said the biggest change was feeling safe.
“I felt like I finally did something in my life worth right, you know?” Tiffany said. She grew up in Oakboro — which she described as a one-stoplight, country town “on the other side of Charlotte.”
Tiffany spent time sleeping on Wall Street because she knew there were cameras. If someone were to mess with her, then “at least it would be taped.”
Now she loves to cook. To take walks. She dreams of one day having a tiny house and a garden for her and Mystical.
Other changes at the housing authority
Under the new leadership, the authority is also implementing a work requirement that will begin in June for new residents and extend to existing residents in January 2027. It will mandate all eligible household members, 18 or older, to work for a minimum of 15 hours per week. This includes employment, but also job training, school and approved volunteer activities.
There are exceptions for those who are elderly, disabled or the primary caretaker of a child under 6.
David Bartholomew, homelessness prevention program director with Pisgah Legal Services, said in a March phone call that when preferences ended, “it was very troubling.”
For those in crisis, having housing first can be the best way to deal with other issues, whether that’s domestic violence, loss of work or denial of Social Security Disability, he said.
Bartholomew said Pisgah Legal was “optimistic” about the new leadership at the housing authority but did have concerns about the new work requirements, and said Santos had pledged to “involve us in that process and try to make it as fair as possible.”
In other areas with similar requirements, “it increases displacement, and oftentimes can increase evictions and homelessness.”
How to apply for HACA housing
The public housing waitlist is open. People can also apply for tenant-based vouchers. Applications are accepted online at haca.org/for-applicants/.
Your household must earn at or less than 50% of the median family income, based on housing size. That’s $32,600 annually for one person and $46,550 for a family of four.
As of May 4, the housing-choice voucher program and admissions are moving to appointment only. The window located downstairs at 165 South French Broad Avenue will be closed to the public except for appointments.
Sarah Honosky is the city government reporter for the Asheville Citizen Times, part of the USA TODAY Network. News Tips? Email shonosky@citizentimes.com.