The dedication at New Heights on Oct. 1 was an emotional one. Habitat summed it up on Facebook as “lots of hugs, laughs, and tears.”

“Through the day to day of building homes, it means so much when we can all come together and celebrate what we’re all accomplishing.”

Asheville Area Habitat for Humanity, on Facebook

The post credited everyone who had a hand in it: donors, volunteers, homeowners, staff, sponsors and community members.

A neighborhood that keeps growing

New Heights sits off Old Haywood Road. Habitat built its first 38 homes there between 2020 and 2023, then came back in early summer 2025 to start a second phase of 60 more. Once it’s finished, 98 families will live there; WLOS called it the largest neighborhood Habitat has built.

The Oct. 1 homes are part of that second phase, and they came about a month after another ceremony there. In early September, four other families got their keys, and Habitat CEO Andy Barnett told WLOS the new owners came from “all different walks of life.”

How the homes get built

Habitat families help build their own houses. Each puts in at least 200 hours of “sweat equity,” then buys the home with an affordable mortgage from Habitat, according to the City of Asheville. Those mortgage payments help pay for the next homes.

Habitat posted photos from the dedication in a Flickr album.

Illustration by Asheville.gg

For more than 20 years, the lot where the Beacon Blanket mill once stood has been mostly empty. The mill, which employed thousands of people, burned in 2003, and Helene’s floods hit the site again in 2024. Now the nonprofit Beacon Foundation is turning it into Beacon Park, and Swannanoa is starting to fill in around it.

The plans include a paved pump track for bikes, skateboards, rollerblades and adaptive bikes that is expected to be the largest in the Americas. Around it go a mile-long walking path, bouldering walls, playgrounds, green space, a shaded pavilion near the greenway and an event lawn that holds 4,000 people.

“First and foremost, it is a community park,” Daniel Sapp, Beacon Park’s chief marketing officer, told Blue Ridge Public Radio. “So the bike park’s just one component.”

Help from visitors’ tax dollars

A $4.5 million grant from the Buncombe County Tourism Development Authority, which comes from taxes on hotel and vacation-rental stays, sped the project up. WLOS reported that the money cut the timeline from five years to about 10 months. Starting in 2027, the foundation plans a handful of large events to help pay for the park’s everyday amenities. Any money left after operating costs, WLOS reported, goes back to the community and to other nonprofits and Helene-recovery businesses.

The foundation told Spectrum News last month that it plans a soft opening this winter and a grand opening in the spring.

A new block across the street

The park is already drawing neighbors. Short Sleeves Coffee, Town Hardware General Store and Rite Buy Grocery have opened nearby, and Daymakers Slider Bar was set to open this summer. Helene destroyed Swannanoa’s post office and its main supermarket; both are being rebuilt in new spots.

People used to call the area “Swanna-nowhere.” Sapp has a new name for it: “Now it’s Swanna-somewhere because it’s different.”

Follow the park’s progress at beaconbikepark.org.

Photo: Harrison Keely, CC BY 4.0

Over the next year you can learn to mend your clothes in West Asheville, paint a mini-mural at the Asheville Tool Library, keep a nature journal in Swannanoa, or watch a free “A Christmas Carol” performed by kids. All of it is paid for by ArtsAVL’s Arts Build Community grants, which this year went to 21 local groups and artists.

The awards add up to $37,997, with support from Buncombe County and Pete and Cindy Perez. Every project has to be free and open to the community. This is the program’s ninth year.

Katie Cornell, ArtsAVL’s executive director, said the program is “about making sure the arts are happening throughout Buncombe County in ways that are accessible.”

A few to put on your calendar

• Oct. 25: The Asheville Tool Library wraps up its mini-mural project around the Smith Mill Works building with a community paint day during its free fall yard sale.
• Nov. 14: Swannatopia holds a free, all-ages night of large art installations, live music and dance on Warren Wilson College’s farmland.
• December: Montford Moppets Youth Shakespeare Company stages a free “A Christmas Carol” with about 20 students.
• Feb. 20: The Wortham Center and the YMI Cultural Center host a free masterclass with Ballet Hispánico dancers, with at least half the spots held for YMI participants.

Art as part of the recovery

Several of the grants go to places Helene hit hard. Carolina Corona of Corona Fine Art will lead two bilingual nature-journaling workshops in Swannanoa, ending with a display at Bounty and Soul Latino.

“This underserved community has had a lot of loss and destruction after the hurricane,” Corona said. “They might not have other opportunities to experience the creative process.”

The Glitter Sisters are bringing their youth fashion and music programs to Swannanoa through a partnership with the Swannanoa Resilience Hub. In West Asheville, The Odd is spending the year on free music and art shows it calls the Creative Recovery Series.

The full list of projects, from Burton Street oral histories to a documentary on Asheville’s Black marching-band tradition, is on ArtsAVL’s website.

Photo: anoldent, CC BY-SA 2.0

This spring, the people who run the Deerfield retirement community’s charitable foundation put a challenge to their residents. If the residents pooled their money for neighbors whose homes were still broken from Hurricane Helene, the foundation would add four dollars for every one they gave.

The residents said yes, and they said it fast.

“We were delighted when they responded quickly and generously, and we hope that our gift will inspire others to do the same!”

Michelle Wooley, executive director of the Deerfield Charitable Foundation

When Deerfield’s gift was announced in July, the rest of Asheville was asked to match it; Asheville Area Habitat for Humanity has now confirmed that it did. Together, Deerfield and its neighbors raised $1 million for free storm repairs to the homes of low-income families.

Where the money goes

The money goes to the Asheville Regional Coalition for Home Repair, known as ARCHR. Six local organizations make it up: Asheville Area Habitat for Humanity (which also manages the funds), Poder Emma, the Community Housing Coalition of Madison County, Land of Sky Regional Council, the Asheville Buncombe Community Land Trust, and Community Action Opportunities.

After the storm, these groups stopped running separate repair lines and built a shared one. A family applies once (one form, one home assessment) and the partners decide among themselves who takes the job. Repairs are free for homeowners in Buncombe and Madison counties who meet the income limits and still have damage from Helene.

In a July interview with WLOS, Habitat CEO Andy Barnett said crews had replaced a lot of roofs, and had rebuilt decks, stairs and manufactured-home skirting that the floods washed away or undermined.

“A lot of our neighbors are still not in homes that are safe and stable after the storm,” he said. He described people still living in RVs, or in what he called “a little more than a tool shed kind of temporary housing.”

When this campaign began, the coalition had already finished repairs for more than 200 families, and roughly 400 more were on the waiting list. Some of those families are still displaced. Others are living in homes that aren’t safe. ARCHR had raised more than $10 million since the storm, and it still wasn’t enough to reach everyone who applied.

Other donors have pitched in too. In April, Asheville Christian Academy gave the coalition $300,000 for repairs in Swannanoa, a tithe on the money it is raising to rebuild its own Swannanoa school.

How to help, or get help

Donate online at archr.live, call Asheville Area Habitat for Humanity at 828-251-5702, or mail a check to 33 Meadow Road, Asheville, NC 28803 with “ARCHR” on the memo line.

If your own home in Buncombe or Madison County still has damage from Helene, you can apply for repairs at the same website.

Photo: Madeleine Cook/FEMA, public domain