BY SEKOU L. COLEMAN
Recent reporting about Vice Mayor Antanette Mosley has sparked two wildly divergent conversations in Asheville. One is about allegations, eligibility and paperwork. The other is about why this story is moving so fast and why it feels so familiar.
Here’s the distinction: Politics feeds on heat and narrative advantage; government is supposed to be about accountability and delivering for the people who live here.
Let’s start with what is knowable: The reporting on this issue has raised questions about residency documentation and a property tax exemption in another state. Mosley has said publicly that Asheville is her home and she is rooted here.
The N.C. State Board of Elections has confirmed that it’s investigating those questions; as of this writing, no finding has been issued. And any complaint or eligibility challenge should be addressed through the official process, not through insinuation or repetition. Mosley has said she’ll address any concerns that need correction.
But it’s also important to place these events in context. Many residents see this as an administrative issue with a defined process for resolution — not a public safety crisis. That is part of why the timing matters. With election season approaching, voters and political operatives are primed to see how low-stakes controversies can be inflated into a politically useful news cycle.
Longtime Asheville residents have also learned to be cautious about politicians who sound progressive on paper but go missing when the work gets hard. And for people who grew up here and are still here, the idea that Mosley’s connection to Asheville is suddenly in doubt feels disconnected from lived experience, because they have consistently seen her here, in the mix, doing the work.
Devil in the details
I serve as a lead with the Legacy Neighborhoods Coalition (LNC), which works to protect Asheville residents from displacement while advancing community-led development. LNC’s member neighborhoods are Burton Street, East End/Valley Street and The Block, Emma, Shiloh and Southside. We support more affordable housing, and we push just as hard for the protections that determine whether longtime residents are actually able to remain here.
The work is rarely glamorous. A lot of it lives inside the city’s Unified Development Ordinance, zoning text amendments and technical policy changes that most people aren’t even aware of until their neighborhood is in the crosshairs. But those “unsexy” decisions are often where displacement pressure gets baked into the rules. LNC has had to show up at countless meetings, asking the city to listen to the residents most likely to be harmed, and pushing for guardrails that keep these communities from being treated as acceptable collateral damage.
This is where UNC Asheville Professor Emeritus Dwight Mullen’s lens is useful. The acclaimed political scientist has pointed out that planning strategies putting pressure on legacy neighborhoods are nothing new. This echoes earlier eras of “progress” that destabilized Black communities and working neighborhoods — and then justified the harm after the fact.
He also names a broader reality: When conditions deteriorate for Black communities, it often signals what’s coming for the city as a whole. In Asheville, for example, displacement pressures surfaced earliest in legacy communities and now shape the broader affordability crisis.
This is also why protecting residents sometimes requires saying no. Not to housing but to approaches that move fast on paper while leaving people exposed in real life. If you only judge the work by whether every proposal gets a yes vote, you miss the point. Sometimes the most responsible thing an elected official can do is slow down a decision, demand carve-outs, insist on protections or vote against a package that clearly falls short.
Standing up for residents
Mosley’s voting record illustrates the difference between a blanket opposition to housing developments and insisting on housing policy that doesn’t threaten the very residents it claims to help. Consider these recent examples:
On March 11, 2025, City Council took up zoning changes involving cottage housing and flag lots. In conversations with LNC leaders ahead of the vote, the vice mayor focused on getting protections in the form of carve-outs into the proposal, even if the overall package still raised concerns. The goal was to reduce the immediate pressure on legacy neighborhoods while also making it clear that developer-driven changes should not move forward without stronger displacement protections and a better engagement structure.
Council approved the zoning changes 4-3, and Mosley voted no, signaling that the carve-outs were a start, not a solution. Still, those exemptions matter because they reflect a basic truth that LNC has repeated for years: The same policy can land very differently depending on a neighborhood’s history and vulnerability. Responsible housing policy must take that reality into account.
But that wasn’t the only time this year that Mosley stood up for neighborhoods at risk. On Oct. 14, 2025, she named a fairness issue that many residents will recognize. “Legacy neighborhoods have been waiting literally four years for a requested change … and tonight we’re considering two ordinance changes for downtown businesses.” Her point was simple: Council’s responsiveness shouldn’t be reserved for the loudest or best-connected stakeholders.
And it didn’t end there. After that meeting, Mosley helped convene conversations with LNC, city staff and Council members, including the mayor. That dialogue led to a Dec. 5 memo from Assistant City Manager Ben Woody that outlined practical, near-term tools the city can use to protect neighborhood residents while also addressing the housing affordability crisis. Drawing on those ideas, I spoke at the Dec. 9 City Council meeting, emphasizing that LNC is not anti-housing but wants to see those efforts paired with the resident-protection strategies described in the memo. The city subsequently confirmed its readiness to meet with LNC representatives to discuss the proposed solutions and protections.
Whose city is this?
This sequence signaled both a shift in these neighborhoods’ relationship with the city and a nod to community-led power. But it’s hard to imagine that happening without the involvement of someone who knows Asheville well and has the relationships and social capital to connect the people capable of moving things forward.
Professor Mullen has also noted something else that many Black residents will recognize. Elected officials who disrupt entrenched interests can become targets, and Black elected officials, especially Black women, often face a particular kind of scrutiny that is faster, harsher and more personal. You don’t have to believe that every critique is racially motivated to acknowledge the pattern, which has been evident at the national level in the recent controversies involving New York State Attorney General Letitia James and Fulton County, Ga., District Attorney Fani Willis.
Naming that context is not a verdict: It’s a call for consistency and due process. So, yes, ask questions. Apply standards evenly. Respect due process. But don’t turn headlines into verdicts and don’t let controversy become a permission slip for stalling the work of government.
Asheville must increase affordability while also protecting renters and homeowners from being priced out. The measure of success is simple: Can ordinary residents still afford to live here? That’s what LNC is fighting for, and it’s why Mosley’s advocacy for legacy neighborhoods should be understood as what it is: insisting that progress include the people who are already here.
Sekou Coleman serves as coordinator for the Legacy Neighborhoods Coalition, which works to protect the communities most impacted by displacement, honor their history and culture, and advance community-led development.
