Business

The Asheville City Council has set aside millions of dollars to create a grant program to help homes and businesses recover from damage caused by Hurricane Helene.City Council member Maggie Ullman said Wednesday the measure is the first step in recovering from Helene, and it comes nearly a month after the storm passed through the area.”People that care about us from near and far have already been contributing a lot of money so that we can get up and rolling, but for us and local government, anything that we could find so that we could do this immediately is of utmost importance,” Ullman said. Around $4 million for the grant program is coming from the city’s affordable housing capital improvement program, a housing authority project no longer under development and other grants, according to public documents.Officials said the money could be used to begin repairing homes and businesses, provide rental assistance, and cover administrative expenses.”This first money is to stop the bleeding,” Ullman said. “There are businesses that are still keeping people on payroll out of their own pocket, and we want those people to keep their jobs, but we want those businesses to survive also.”Manna Food Bank’s former facility on Swannanoa River Road is among the severely damaged or destroyed structures the city is continuing to count since Helene. Weeks after the storm, the nonprofit has set up its operations out of a leased facility in Mills River, near Asheville Regional Airport. “The flooding destroyed all of our inventory, our equipment, and we’re literally starting from scratch,” spokesperson Micah Chrisman said. “You can see all of our donations are sitting on the floor, and we’re starting from the beginning.”Chrisman added the food bank served around 158,000 people per month throughout the 16 counties it serves prior to the storm. He said he would not be surprised if that number has doubled.”We need your support two months from now, six months from now, because it’s going to take years to recover from this,” he said. Officials said the city is looking to identify nonprofits to partner with to distribute the grants where needed. They added they plan to select the nonprofits within the next two weeks.