I think Asheville reached the breaking point when a plan to turn the Flatiron Building, home to dozens of offices, including several non-profits, into a hotel was brought before the city council and approved. All those organizations and offices are out on their ass, and people are not happy about it. Meanwhile, fully three percent of the housing stock in Asheville is given over to Airbnb rentals, the highest percentage in the country, while fully half of the renters in Buncombe County are rent-burdened and pay more than a third of their income on rent. And meanwhile, a city of about 93,000 and the infrastructure to serve it, continue to also serve an estimated eleven million tourists per year. Asheville is rapidly being loved to death.
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"To sustain the life of a large, modern city in this cloying, clinging heat is an amazing achievement. It is no wonder that the white men and women in Greenville walk with a slow, dragging pride, as if they had taken up a challenge and intended to defy it without end." -- Rebecca West for The New Yorker, 1947
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