Asheville for All

This member commentary post does not necessarily reflect the views of Asheville For All or its members.

On Monday, I delivered a public comment at the Buncombe County Commissioner meeting that I want to share below.

First, some quick background:

Buncombe County collects an occupancy tax from every hotel, home-stay, and short term rental in the county. All of the money that gets collected goes to an institution called the Buncombe County Tourism Development Authority, or TDA.

The TDA’s rules are written by the state legislature, not the city or county. And the state has decided that the money that Buncombe County collects in occupancy taxes must be entirely spent on tourism-related programs. In fact, 66 percent of that money must be used for tourism advertising alone.

Recently, the Buncombe County Commission has signaled that revisiting the occupancy tax and the TDA—and determining what can be done at the county level to push back at the state legislature’s rules—is a possible priority for the 2023 session.

To learn more about the TDA, the occupancy tax, and the movement to make the TDA more attentive to the local needs of the county, check out the Buncombe Decides website.

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Hi everyone.

My name is Andrew Paul and I live here in Asheville.

And I’m a founder of Asheville For All, which is a nonprofit organization that advocates for pro-housing policy.

And I’m here to express support for making the occupancy tax more democratic.

The occupancy tax should be spent on the people that need it most. And on the things they say they need the most.

For our county that means subsidized housing.

It’s that simple.

But I want to use some of my time to say two things as a means of clarifying what I think this occupancy tax fight should be about.

First of all, I’m not anti-tourism. I’m not even anti-hotel.

Let’s be real. When people criticize the TDA and tourism money, sometimes they say things that are reactionary. They will say things like we need to prevent people from moving here. Or we need to prevent population growth full stop.

This line of argument should not be taken seriously.

Truth is that successful cities and successful counties grow. If our county is growing that is a good sign. We should welcome new neighbors, and see them as assets to our cities and towns.

Second:

We know that allocating money for affordable housing does NOT help if we don’t reform our zoning codes. Cities from California to Massachusetts have actually voted for subsidized home construction and then little got built because of exclusionary zoning. The biggest thing we can do to make housing more affordable is simply allowing more stuff to be built.