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It’s a matter of priorities: when we ensure Asheville is a safe, affordable, and sustainable home for our local families, makers, and creative workforce, we protect the very soul of our city. Supporting our residents and local industry first is how we build a future where everyone can thrive. Explore my platform below.

Transparency & the Role of the Mayor’s Office

The Mayor Sets the Agenda: This means scheduling the hard conversations our community needs to have and inviting subject matter experts to partner with staff. To increase transparency, I’ll continue the Monday Minute; hold regular press conferences; advance open meetings policy; and increase accessibility of public documents and engagement opportunities.

The Mayor Oversees Council Meetings & Decorum: I’ll end the regularly-scheduled, behind-the-scenes Council check-in meetings; and shift to a public pre-meeting process.

The Mayor Single-Handedly Appoints the Housing Authority Board, which oversees neighborhoods with 1,700+ deeply-affordable housing units: I’ll maintain communications with Housing Authority residents, resident councils, and staff, partnering in violence prevention and improving quality of life.

The Mayor Appoints Council Sub-Committees and Liaisons: These appointments include regional boards like: the Metropolitan Planning Organization that oversees state-maintained roads; the ABC Board; and the Regional Housing Consortium.

 

The Mayor Serves on the Economic Development Coalition: I’ll bring integrity and transparency to the Mayor’s seat on the Economic Development Coalition, leveraging living wages, union-supportive jobs, infrastructure investments, and climate resilience including partnerships in carbon reduction. For example: I voted against the anticipated Amazon distribution warehouse that Council approved in closed session, but it failed at the bank, so now I’m advocating for a Costco at that location instead, which would improve infrastructure and bring living wage jobs to our community.

Leading by Example: During Helene, I worked shoulder to shoulder in emergency response–getting the Incident Management Team here from NYC to relieve our firefighters, organizing daily communication distribution into neighborhoods, flushing toilets for disabled and elderly residents, and convening intergovernmental teams to support staff and community response. I’m committed to violence prevention, including a Mayor’s Youth Council focused on reducing gun violence, and I support bringing advisory boards back instead of dissolving them.

For more about my leadership experience on Council and my work to take better care of our neighbors and our mountain home, click here.

AFFORDABILITY

Housing drives Asheville’s affordability crisis. We need deeply-affordable homes, stronger infrastructure, pathways to home ownership, and protections that keep renters from being pushed out. As Mayor, Kim will set an agenda prioritizing housing affordability for all.

Pro-Housing for Every Neighbor in Every Neighborhood

     Current council housing agendas mostly benefit corporate developers, real estate attorneys, and landlords–protecting some neighborhoods from growth while others carry the burden.

     In two terms on Council, Kim has voted for the majority of housing. As Mayor, she’ll set a housing agenda that benefits people, fits neighborhood character, matches infrastructure, and creates more places for people to belong.

Housing Solutions Require Accountable Leadership

     Zoning and short-term rental enforcement can be fixed to incentivize housing.

     Kim negotiated for short-term rental enforcement that would’ve removed ~300 illegal listings from online platforms automatically while supporting locally-owned homestays.

     Kim also voted against reverting the Asheville Mall zoning from housing to gas stations and car washes. 

     We need strong leadership for support and follow through.

About that Missing Middle

     Looking for a place for an aging parent, an adult child, or a smaller home for yourself? That shouldn’t mean leaving your community.

     Missing Middle housing–duplexes, cottage clusters, and smaller homes in backyard lots–already exist across Asheville and fit our infrastructure.

     Kim supports zoning to make more Missing Middle housing possible so families have more choices in the neighborhoods they know.

Learn more about the plan–watch the four videos here!

The Sword & Shield

     Kim will continue to fight for more housing while protecting against displacement.

     Preserving affordability and preventing evictions can cost less than building a new rental, and helps workers and families stay rooted in community.

     Kim’s record supports eviction protection, home repair funds, downpayment assistance, infrastructure maintenance, and anti-displacement tools led by the Legacy Neighborhoods Coalition.

Sector-Based Housing & Transit-Oriented Development

     In 2017, Buncombe County opened sector-based housing for teachers. We should repeat that model for workers and families, using bond funds and city-owned land.

     Kim successfully advocated for city funding to purchase the Talbert lot downtown. She thinks it should be sector-based housing targeted for service industry, arts sector, and Downtown workers, freeing up units across the City for additional renters.

     Kim supports transit-oriented development that connects housing to jobs, so driving isn’t the only option and transportation is more affordable.

A Pathway to Home Ownership

     The pathway to ownership is a crucial step to building wealth, but affordable homes won’t be built on unaffordable land. 

     Asheville needs to untangle the red tape and implement the Affordable Housing Plan that’s been stagnant for 2 years. 

     This looks like smaller homes on smaller lots, implementing neighborhood plans, and empowering locals to preserve and build starter homes in their neighborhoods. 

What is the Unified Development Ordinance (UDO)?

     Asheville’s UDO, developed in 1997, is the rulebook for what can be built and where. The code is long and complex, but it doesn’t need to be complicated.

     Asheville doesn’t have a people-friendly code; the UDO prioritizes corporate developers by limiting competition and driving land prices up. 

     City Hall is currently updating the UDO. This is our chance to fix it!

Fixing Our UDO with an Equity Lens

     Asheville’s code, with documented harms of Urban Renewal and redlining that we’ve committed to repair, prevents creative use of the city’s land.

     Asheville can look to Durham and Greenville for more accessible zoning codes, like allowing someone to build a sensible duplex without hiring an attorney.

     As Mayor, Kim will work for a simple, equitable development code with easy to understand rules.

Homelessness Is Indeed a Housing Problem

     Unless we build housing for our current neighbors, we’ll build housing and still have a housing problem.

     That’s what author Gregg Colburn said when he was in Asheville, sharing what he’d learned since writing Homelessness is a Housing Problem.

     As Mayor, Kim will lead with a people’s agenda of housing, wages, and transportation to shape affordability.

Update coming August 20th!

Leading for a more reliable, regional transit system at the intersection of equitable access, economic mobility, and environmental sustainability.

Update coming August 27th!

Securing our food and water systems by supporting local farms and community gardens and addressing the cost of groceries.

 
 
 
 
 
View this post on Instagram
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

A post shared by KimRoneyforAsheville (@kimroneyforasheville)

Living Wages & an Economy That Works for Locals

Affordability is a national crisis, and Asheville’s housing costs and stagnant wages make us more vulnerable. Kim understands addressing affordability starts with diversifying our economy, supporting local businesses, and prioritizing living wages. 

The Mayor’s Seat, A Powerful Table

The mayor serves on the Economic Development Coalition (EDC), deciding what kind of jobs we have in Asheville–shaping regional decisions about business growth, career development, and attracting new employers.

Endorsed by the WNC Labor Council, Kim will use the EDC seat to advocate for living wage and union-supportive employers committed to hiring locals and strengthening our community.

Healthcare Must Put Patient Care Before Profit

Healthcare is the largest industry in the Asheville area, but HCA/Mission’s owners are failing our community. Kim stands with unionized nurses and Reclaim Healthcare WNC to demand accountability, safe staffing levels, and patient care over profit margins.

Good jobs and quality care go hand in hand.

Yes to Costco, No to Amazon

Kim has long advocated for Costco and was one of two Council members that voted against a potential Amazon warehouse that would’ve blocked it.

Costco would bring improved infrastructure, tax revenue, good jobs, and more affordable gas and groceries.

Asheville should prioritize employers that create good local jobs, improve infrastructure, and help reduce everyday costs–not employers that extract wealth or undermine better opportunities.

Diversifying Beyond Unchecked Tourism

Asheville has a long history of tourism. Our guests are attracted to our art, music, culture, food, craft, and relationship with nature. 

Unchecked tourism causes harm: burdens our infrastructure, extracts resources, and displaces residents. 

Kim will fight to protect what makes Asheville special by diversifying beyond tourism for a more balanced economy. This is why she protected the Grey Eagle from the hotel overlay map and has voted to fund growth of local manufacturing jobs. 

A great place to live and work is a great place to visit

Residents are picking up the tab for a tourism-driven economy: sanitation, public safety, parks maintenance, and infrastructure.

Meanwhile, state law requires that two-thirds of our hotel taxes go into advertising for more tourism.

Kim knows our neighbors serving on the Tourism Development Authority see the same issues we do, and she advocates for changing the law so more hotel taxes benefit our whole community.

A Long-Term Investment in Local Businesses

The cost of doing business is rising, and local entrepreneurs and businesses need space to operate so they can stay and grow. 

A fresh idea for Asheville that we already use for housing: Commercial Land Trust.

Instead of out of town investors controlling the market, a commercial land trust secures commercial property and provides permanently affordable leases to stabilize and sustain our local economy.

A More Resilient Economy Post-Helene

Kim connected local artists and businesses with federal agencies post-Helene, organizing to secure seats on the Economy recovery board.

Kim amplifies the voices of business groups and owners in City Hall, advocating to expedite the $15.5-million in Disaster Recovery funds and demanding transparency with public dashboards.

Asheville’s recovery hinges on bringing in more funds, which Kim will champion as mayor.

Living wages are fundamental to affordability.

The Just Economics living wage calculation for the Asheville area is $24.10/hour. 

Kim voted no on this year’s budget with two Council colleagues.

Living wages are key to recruiting and retaining City workers to provide excellent services. This budget left lowest-paid workers behind. 

Instead of percentage increases, the City could provide flat raises, addressing affordability for all and paying more staff a living wage without raising taxes more.

PUBLIC SAFETY

  • No Flock, No Mass Surveillance: Public safety should be transparent, accountable, and community-centered. Kim has consistently voted against Flock and profit-driven surveillance tech that makes our community vulnerable to violation of our constitutional rights. Most recently, she voted against the Real-Time Intelligence Center funding and outlined her reasons here, including warnings from the ACLU of NC and Electronic Frontiers Foundation. 
  • Protecting Neighbors from ICE & DHS: Kim works with impacted neighbors and orgs for community-led solutions to protect the rights of everyone who lives & works in Asheville.
    Kim supports City staff in their 4th amendment workplace policy. This means making sure every public-facing employee – safety, sanitation, parks & rec – knows their right to seek a signed judicial warrant if they are the victims or witnesses of violation of 4th amendment rights. 
  • Kim organized for Asheville and statewide LGBTQ+-inclusive Non-Discrimination Ordinances including veteran status, pregnancy status, and natural hair.
  • Kim drafted the resolution with local health providers affirming access to full-spectrum reproductive care.
  • Kim advanced the bold resolution affirming the rights of LGBTQIA2S+ residents including trans youth.

Everyone in Asheville deserves to be safe! True safety identifies community needs and utilizes the correct tools. A narrow definition of public safety limits results and creates new problems–and it’s really expensive. Instead, we need a holistic public safety response that works to keep everyone safe.

Kim has called for implementing an Office of Community Safety and HEART Program as outlined in her op-ed here. As Co-chair of Local Progress NC, she’s met with Durham council members and their District Attorney about their successes deploying first responders with the right tools and training to calls for service around substance use, homelessness, and mental health crises. They’ve compiled the data to prove it works. 

It’s not enough to react after something goes wrong. Building a holistic public safety response in addition to police and fire requires building a foundation of trust, support, and opportunity. That’s how Asheville becomes a place where every person feels secure and valued.

Supporting first responders includes prioritizing living wages so the City can recruit and retain staff to provide excellent service, and so staff can afford to live in the communities they serve.

As a member of the Policy Advocacy Committee for Just Economics, Kim doesn’t just talk about living wages, she takes action and builds coalition.

An example:

In 2024, she collaborated with Councilmembers Sheneika Smith and Antanette Mosely for an alternative budget that would have secured higher wages for our firefighters. Though the narrative in City Hall is that firefighters may occasionally sleep during their long shifts, it is not an on-call shift at home with their families, it’s in a bunk in the firehouse in close proximity to fumes and chemicals that are known to increase health risks–and they’re scheduled 56-hour weeks while salaries are compared to other 40-hour week staff.

Kim used the formal process to add the item to Council the agenda before the budget vote, but the Mayor skipped the item, and the other Council members moved quickly to pass the original budget with reduced firefighter wages. So our city left our firefighters behind in wages just 3 months before they led emergency response efforts and saved lives during Hurricane Helene. 

You can watch the 2024 budget conversation at about 46 minutes into the archive here.

Effective homelessness response focuses on prevention informed by data and people with lived experience, and innovation can move us towards matching serious issues with real solutions.

What we’ve been doing isn’t working, and now Hurricane Helene has made things worse. 

Kim believes in prevention, like interrupting evictions, funding rental support, and protecting tenant rights, so people can stay in their homes before a crisis happens.

So what’s the plan? Following through with data-driven recommendations in the strategic plan to prevent and reduce homelessness, building deeply-affordable housing connected to supportive services, and getting out of silos into partnership through the Continuum of Care, where Kim currently serves on committees and–if elected mayor–would have an assigned seat on the board. 

Asheville is one of ten pilot communities for the Right at Home Grant. Learn more here!

Everyone deserves to get to their destination safely, whether they’re walking, biking, in a wheelchair, or driving.

Asheville ranks among the highest in the state for bike and pedestrian crashes per capita. That’s not good for the people who live and work here, or our visitors.

Kim envisions an Asheville where streets are designed to move people safely, not just quickly. By championing Complete Streets policies and safe street design, we can reduce crashes, improve access to neighborhoods, and make every trip safer.

Investing in Our Youth and Preventing Violence

Kim believes every child deserves opportunities to learn, grow, and live safely in their community. She advocates to restore Strategic Partnership Funds, providing mentorship, safe spaces, and programs that inspire and empower.

Asheville’s Youth Deserve Better

Our young people are the heart of Asheville’s future.

Kim has heard youth and young adults say it feels like Asheville doesn’t care about them.

They name the same barriers again and again: few affordable activities, no affordable housing, lack of economic opportunity, and not enough places to belong.

Our young people are eager to participate. Asheville needs to listen.

A Mayor’s Youth Council

Kim is committed to creating a Mayor’s Youth Council to bring young people into decisions that impact their lives.

The Council would focus on issues like the opportunity gap, mental health, climate and neighborhood resilience, and gun violence prevention.

The Community That Plays Together Stays Together

Third spaces improve public safety.

These are places where neighbors connect outside of home and work: a park, pool, coffee shop, library, community garden, recreation center. They can be privately or publicly owned. 

When people have safe, welcoming places to gather, play, and build relationships, communities become stronger and safer.

Broken Promises on Parks & Pools

Walton Pool. Grant Center Pool. Malvern Hills Pool. Jones Park. Now Weaver Park has lost inclusive infrastructure and little league ball field regulations.

Our community deserves better and wants to help!

Kim believes Asheville should invest in parks, pools, recreation, and public spaces where children, families, youth, and elders can connect safely.

Prevention Works

Violent crime often spikes in the summer, especially among teens and young adults.

Prevention means investing before things get heated, and other cities have proved community-based methods work: mentorship, affordable programming, safe spaces, job connections, diversion and reentry support, recovery resources, and trusted relationships.

Kim understands public safety starts with meeting people’s needs before crisis escalates.

Fund Community-Led Solutions

Community organizations are already working to fill the gaps for youth and young adults.

Kim and two Council colleagues recommended growing Asheville’s Strategic Partnership Fund, which supports local organizations doing this work. Instead, the fund was cut to $0.

As Mayor, Kim will advocate to restore Strategic Partnership Funds and invest in mentorship, safe spaces, and programs that inspire and empower.

Safety & Healing Go Hand in Hand

Kim is a member of the Community-Based Public Health Response to Violence (CPrV) Community Coordinated Response Work Group.

She values the relational role of community health workers, violence interrupters, educators, mentors, and neighborhood leaders.

If Asheville makes community-led solutions a budget priority, we can co-create responses and third spaces where everyone is safe, valued, and able to heal



 

Climate & Neighborhood Resiliency

  • As a member of the Planning, Economic Development, and Environment Committee, Kim moved to recommend a data center moratorium that passed unanimously at Council on June 23rd, 2026. This blocks new data centers from applying to be built while the City of Asheville studies and protects residents against harmful effects of data centers, including:
    • Straining our electric grid;
    • Burdening our water system still being repaired post-Hurricane Helene;
    • Taking land needed to prioritize housing;
    • Heat Island Effect; and
    • Health risks, including infrasound 

Leveraging our recovery funds to secure our water system and bolster our emergency responses.

Responding appropriately to our stated Climate Emergency.

Implementing adopted neighborhood plans and aligning Neighborhood Grants to implement our Climate Justice Initiative, including tree canopy restoration, stormwater mitigation, and resiliency hubs.

Demanding fair water rates for residents instead of the steep, bulk discounts for commercial water users the City allowed.

Holding the standard for renewable energy in all new residential development.

Centering racial equity and following through with our commitments to Reparations.

Looking for more?

READ ABOUT KIM'S EXPERIENCE ON CITY COUNCIL

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