I live in Buncombe County, where Asheville NC is located.
I used to live in Asheville city proper, but moved further out, mainly due to crime.
The city has fallen off a cliff, everyone knows it.
Homeless people are EVERYWHERE, in every park, taking shits on the street, st*bbing people with needles, doing very little jail time.
Almost every city park in Asheville is now overun with the homeless.
They live there... in tents. Under pavilions.
They do drugs and pass out and then scream at people.
You cannot take your kids there, it's horrifying.
...and the city council has zero interest in fixing the problems because they have no incentive to do so
The last Republican elected to city council in Asheville was in 2009 and there hasn't been another one since.
All these people do are protest and posture and demand more in taxes.
I was liberal and I was in favor of a lot of the policies, especially around homelessness... I was extremely sympathetic.
Honestly?
I still am sympathetic.
But the solutions being offered are not solutions, they are shoveling money out the door to NGOs that have no incentives WHATSOEVER to fix the problems.
All the incentives are align to keep homelessness alive and to make it even worse.
Bus loads of homeless people arrive in Asheville for this VERY REASON.
It's horrible for tourism, horrible for families... AND YES, it's horrible for the homeless too.
It isn't kind to just pretend people can sleep on the streets and everything is ok.
A HUGE NUMBER of homeless people were hit by cars last year, so much so that they banned begging for money on some city streets because SO MANY homeless were getting hit with cars.
It's terrible.
I once said the word, "homeless" here and someone got offended and said, "DO YOU MEAN THE UN-HOUSED?!!!!"
So yeah, things are not great.
But they will continue to vote for liberals who will keep these policies alive.
They tried to defund the police too, they demonized them so severely that 40% of officers just left.
Police officers come and talk to me all the time about how frustrated they are that they have to constantly arrest the same people over and over again.
One officer said he literally arrests 3 generations of family criminals... IN ONE DAY.
It breaks my heart because there are SO MANY good people here.
I saw it first-hand after Hurricane Helene, people stepped up in a BIG WAY.
The blue-haired libs worked along the red-truck MAGA to actually help people and I'll never forget how beautiful that was.
...but then Trump got elected and everything fell apart
It started before Trump, but once he got elected, everyone forgot about helping victims of Helene and the liberals shifted to protesting the VERY SAME MAN WHO WAS HELPING THEIR CITY.
It has made me sick to my stomach to watch protest after protest in Asheville... where the same people protesting likely drove over bridges, drove by homes, drove by communities that President Trump helped.
It's disgusting and infuriating and makes me so sad.
Once-charming, US mountain escape has transformed into 'nasty, crazy, and scary' city
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