With respect to the last post about all he misinformation allegedly circulated by the media, I have to agree with Dr. Carl Mumpower. Though the City of Asheville can pass the buck and wipe its hands clean of blame for what happened at McCormick Heights, government, in general, cannot be absolved.

The City of Asheville just passed up a chance to receive $50,000 from an Atlanta-based investor. The investor was interested in purchasing McCormick Heights, a property owned by Asheville Mountainside, LLC, a subsidiary of Progress Energy, and operated by the Housing Authority of the City of Asheville. Asheville became the owner of the property’s second and third deeds of trust while acting as the pass-through agency for federal CDBG ($225,000) and HOME ($138,188) grants.

The 8+ acre parcel was located on prime real estate, up in the wooded mountains, with excellent views overlooking the city, and close to the heart of downtown. The property’s assessed value was $2.5 million, but that was assuming 90% occupancy for its 100 rental units. Unfortunately, only 40% of the units were occupied. This property was supposed to be a mixed-income development. People would live in the subsidized units, but it was hard to find anybody interested in paying to live in McCormick Heights.

Mayor Bellamy said it was due to slumlording. City staff, however, shared the findings of inspections and lists of code violations. Most of the problems were due to vandalism. These would be fixed and a new list of vandalized items would be compiled with each successive inspection.

Mumpower said the problem was crime. When I visited the sight, I was greeted by seven drug dealers, two of whom were just tots. I saw the drugs dangled in both front windows of my car. The dealers insulted me and pounded on my car when I said I didn’t want to buy anything. One pulled out a gun that looked just like the kind Asheville Police officers use. I probably would have run over somebody, as they were on all sides of my car, if by some miracle something hadn’t shouted “PLASTIC” in my head. The dude started firing projectiles into the car, hitting me with only one, and I left.

Think of it as Asheville’s version of, “Hi, Honey. I’m home,” and wonder why nobody wanted to pay either fair market value or inflated rates to pay for the subsidized units. The city has since spent $120,000 to evacuate and resituate the remaining residents.

But this should have never happened. The property had a facelift in 1998, and we all know that if the haves give the have-nots nice housing and state-of-the-art facilities, they’ll become good upstanding citizens – at least we hear that all the time at Asheville City Council meetings. Government money was thrown at this project. Now it’s in foreclosure, waiting to get bulldozed. Scott Best, a foreclosure attorney, told the city it would be hard for somebody to come up with more than $3 million cash to buy the property and pay down Asheville’s deeds of trust in the foreclosure bidding, but members of city council decided to take their chances.