In a move unusual for a small southern city, local officials publicly apologized for Asheville’s role in segregation, urban renewal and other discriminatory practices — and pledged to make good on past harms through policy changes and community investment.
At the time, many celebrated Asheville’s forward thinking, hailing the city as a “blueprint” and potential “national model” for how local governments could make amends for systemic racism and address disparities in outcomes for Black residents.
In 2022, the city and county formed the Community Reparations Commission, or CRC, a 25-member committee of Black leaders who were tasked with helping turn that vision into a reality. They formally issued their plan in late 2025.
But since then, Asheville City Council has yet to move forward – or even signal strong interest – in any of the 39 recommendations that the CRC delivered to them. For some officials, the political tides have turned so dramatically since the era of the George Floyd protests that they’re no longer comfortable standing behind them.
This increased caution is evident in the run-up to next week's primary election, a race that includes a mayoral race and a 20-candidate primary contest for the three open seats on Asheville City Council.
At forums and public appearances, candidates have spoken at length about the importance of affordable housing, reliable transit and a steady recovery from Hurricane Helene. But they are virtually silent about reparations. That’s in spite of the fact that several of the candidates in this year’s primary races, including Mayor Esther Manheimer, council member Sheneika Smith and former one-term councilman Keith Young, were all part of the Asheville City Council that unanimously approved reparations back in 2020.
Manheimer, currently running for a fourth term as mayor, said the Trump Administration has made implementing reparations more challenging.
“We have a difficult landscape with this administration, unfortunately,” she told BPR in an interview. “I'm talking about the president and on a federal level. Certainly we're one of many communities being scrutinized. And we don't take that lightly. I think we need to be very careful in how we proceed. But we're committed to the community to carry out the recommendations of the Reparations Commission.”
"Certainly we're one of many communities being scrutinized. And we don't take that lightly. I think we need to be very careful in how we proceed. But we're committed to the community to carry out the recommendations of the Reparations Commission.”
This extra scrutiny comes at a time when Asheville is more reliant on the federal government than ever before. The city suffered approximately $1.1 billion in damages when Hurricane Helene swept through the region in late 2024. So far, the city has received only a fraction of that funding and local officials, including Manheimer, have been making regular trips to Washington, D.C. to advocate for more support.
Is it money or politics?
Officials aren’t just being paranoid. There have been several occasions just in the last year when the federal and state governments have raised a magnifying glass to Asheville’s policies on reparations and other equity initiatives.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development refused to authorize a $225 million Hurricane Helene recovery grant until the city removed a clause from the action plan that prioritized small business assistance for minorities and women. The U.S. Department of Justice threatened legal action against Asheville and Buncombe County in September last year, claiming that the CRC’s recommendations, “if implemented, would violate federal civil rights law.”
And earlier this month, Manheimer and other officials were summoned to Raleigh by the House Select Committee on Government Efficiency to testify about Asheville’s reparations initiative, as well as the city’s $30 million budget gap.
At the hearing, Manheimer defended the reparations project, asserting that people who lost homes through urban renewal “were not adequately compensated;” however, she hedged on whether or not the city would prioritize reparations in the coming fiscal year.
“We don't know what our revenue picture looks like quite yet and I think we're going to take a hard look at whether or not that's something that we can prioritize going forward because we do need to deliver core services to the community and that's our priority,” she told the committee.
When BPR asked Manheimer if there were any specific reparations recommendations she would support, she replied that it was “incredibly complicated.”
“I think it would behoove us to move forward on those recommendations that we think are going to be less subject to state and federal challenge,” she said. “So, I think there's a lot there to work with and I'm excited to do that.”
Cornell Williams Brooks, a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School whose teachings focus on race and racism in public policy, has worked with several communities, including Asheville, on reparations efforts.
He maintains that reparations are not illegal and that the United States has a history of making amends to populations that have been historically wronged. He pointed to the reparations paid to Japanese Americans who were incarcerated during World War II and received payments of $20,000.
“The politics of this may not be popular relative to this administration. That's not the same thing as saying it is unlawful,” he said. “If the City of Asheville, based upon a serious study, makes lawful recommendations. If they decide we want to address housing discrimination, the impact of the redlining, the City of Asheville has a right to do that,” he said.
He continued, “Why are we allowing the federal government to essentially take a wrecking crew to laboratories of democracy in terms of what states can do, what cities can do to address their own problems?”
“Under legal review”
The City of Asheville and Buncombe County have already sunk a combined $780,000 into the process, which has included money for various consultants, staffing for monthly meetings and a ‘Cease Harm’ audit that examined inequities in local government policies. Around $6.4 million remains set aside for future projects.
That fund was growing annually, thanks to a yearly $500,000 commitment from Buncombe. But county leaders cut that allocation in its most recent budget cycle, citing Helene-related financial constraints.
The CRC’s recommendations range from ambitious goals like eliminating “the school-to-prison pipeline” to more specific suggestions, including direct cash payments to individuals harmed by racial discrimination and the creation of an Asheville Black Mental Health Network.
All of the suggestions remain under legal review for the foreseeable future, according to spokespeople from the city and county.
Manheimer’s challenger in the mayoral election, council member Kim Roney, was elected just months after the 2020 reparations vote. It’s the second time in a row she’s run for mayor. She supports moving the project forward, while acknowledging the political difficulty of the moment.
“We are operating out of a place of fear and in our community. We're even more vulnerable because this administration has to sign the checks for our recovery efforts,” she said.
Still, Roney contends that there is at least one recommendation where Asheville has a “legal path forward:” universal early childhood education.
“It's not just a recommendation for the reparations commission, but it benefits our whole community,” Roney said. “And so, if we can get that kind of work done, which is wildly popular, that's just a really good investment for all of us.”
There’s also an opportunity for the city to practice more equitable contracting practices, Roney said, which is one of the recommendations from the Cease Harm audit.
“Right now our process has resulted in disparities in the city's contracting with local entrepreneurs and businesses, whether that's landscaping or professional services or construction contracts. And so we have a legal path forward in that area when it comes to our disparity study,” she said.
“We get a little frozen”
In the Asheville City Council race, candidates have mixed opinions about how to move forward with reparations.
When asked about the increased scrutiny around race-based programs, incumbent Antanette Mosely replied that she doesn’t see it as “a new sentiment.”
“I think it's more permissible to vocalize it loudly,” she said. “What's old is new again. And so folks who have been in the trenches are not disheartened, because it's expected. It's very predictable.”
She added that she’d like the city to move faster on its reparations program.
“There's some parts of the community where, when requests are made, we move with deliberate speed. And with others we get a little frozen,” she said. “I think it's incumbent upon us to listen to our residents.”
“While I admire the intent of the reparations effort, years in, I lament the time, energy and resources wasted by the execution. We've seen our city give $175,000 to an out-of-state consultant for subpar work, be sued more than once for discrimination in its DEI efforts and appropriating over $2 million to a fund with no clear legal plan on how to spend it."
Sheneika Smith, a two-term council member up for reelection, expressed more hesitancy.
“Nobody wants to be the person that, you know, causes this thing to go to hell,” she said.
“I think you have to choose when boldness is appropriate and, right now, it is not appropriate because of the lunacy we're seeing,” Smith continued, referring to the Trump administration. “We don't need to do anything that causes a risk that will have a generational ripple.”
There’s at least one candidate who has disavowed the project altogether. Local architect and candidate Scott Burroughs described the efforts around reparations as “all hat and no cattle.”
“While I admire the intent of the reparations effort, years in, I lament the time, energy and resources wasted by the execution,” he wrote in response to BPR’s candidate survey.
“We've seen our city give $175,000 to an out-of-state consultant for subpar work, be sued more than once for discrimination in its DEI efforts and appropriating over $2 million to a fund with no clear legal plan on how to spend it. The city needs to take ownership of fixing planning efforts that failed such as urban renewal, but we cannot do that through discriminatory actions that preference one group or ethnicity.”
Of all the candidates, Burroughs is the only one publicly critical of the campaign. Most of the other candidates are supportive but noncommittal on how far they want to take reparations.
Two council candidates helped write reparations plan
Two candidates in this year’s primary have been intimately involved in the process: Keith Young, a former one-term councilman, and newcomer Tiffany DeBellot who both served on the CRC.
Young is arguably the reason the local reparations effort exists. In 2020, he wrote the resolution and helped drum up votes from other council members. But just months after the resolution got voted through, Young lost a reelection bid.
“I don't think people actually realize that, even though I wrote this policy and started our DEI department as an elected official, I have never been in office to actually implement it,” he said.
Young is back on the ballot this year because he wants to see more “results” from city council. He doesn’t mention reparations as a priority issue on his campaign website, but when asked about it, he told BPR that the project is at a “crucial crossroads.”
“The moral case has not changed, but the environment around anything labeled DEI has become more hostile and more legally contentious,” he said. “That reality doesn’t mean you abandon the work, though. It means you make it more durable.”
Young, a Deputy Clerk for the North Carolina Superior Court, said, if elected, he would support and implement the CRC’s recommendations in a “legally durable way” that focuses on specific, disadvantaged neighborhoods and income brackets rather than race-based requirements.
“The moral case has not changed, but the environment around anything labeled DEI has become more hostile and more legally contentious. That reality doesn’t mean you abandon the work, though. It means you make it more durable.”
“For recommendations that must be explicitly race centered, I would use local and private dollars with careful legal review,” he added. “The goal is results people can feel and that can stand up to scrutiny, not symbolism that becomes an easy target.”
Candidate DeBellot, on the other hand, has an alternative approach. DeBellot serves as the executive director of the Center for Participatory Change, a nonprofit that focuses on social justice issues. During campaign events, she frequently mentioned the need for a “citywide youth plan.” That idea was not one of the 39 official CRC recommendations, but it’s something that was mentioned during commission discussions, she told BPR.
The idea is that the city could bring together all of the “youth-serving organizations” to help address and fill in gaps for youth services, like education and crime prevention.
And as for the official guidance?
“I do hope to get some of those recommendations pushed forward. But I also understand that a lot of the recommendations aren't on the city and county's purview,” she told BPR. “So before I get into office and say, you know, we need these things pushed, I really need to understand where we are as the local government. And what feasibly can be done.”
See what other Asheville City Council candidates have shared about reparations, along with their thoughts on the city’s budget gap, housing policy and other topics in BPR’s City Council Candidate Guide.
