Five Myths About Housing and Hunger

Not mainly. Addiction and mental illness are real, and they make it harder to stay housed. But they are not what sets the size of the problem. The 2026 Point-in-Time count found 824 people homeless in Buncombe County on a single night. Of them, 91 adults reported a mental-health condition and 62 reported a substance use disorder, both self-reported. The far larger force is a housing market with far too few homes the lowest-income renters can afford.

Not at the wages most jobs pay here. It takes about $35.29 an hour to afford a modest two-bedroom in the metro, and $32.19 for a one-bedroom. A single adult's living wage in Buncombe is $24.10 an hour. The median home price was about $500,000 in May 2026. A steady paycheck is not the same as an affordable one.

Most of the people living outside here didn't. Of the 824 people the 2026 Point-in-Time count found, 334 were living without shelter, and they were asked where they last had housing. About 60 percent said Buncombe County. Another 31 percent said somewhere else, and the rest did not answer. Some do arrive from elsewhere. No one was asked why they came. The shortage is the cause of homelessness, and the shortage was made here. Nationally, there are just 35 affordable, available homes for every 100 of the lowest-income renter households, so there is nowhere lower-cost to land.

Not on their own. Food banks are essential, and they cannot cover hunger alone. The numbers say why. About 25,000 Buncombe residents rely on SNAP, the federal grocery benefit, down from about 29,000 in 2025. When that benefit was held up in November 2025, during the federal shutdown, local charity could soften the blow but came nowhere close to replacing it. And SNAP itself does not reach everyone who struggles: an estimated 25 million food-insecure Americans, nearly half of them, likely earn too much to qualify.

The map says otherwise. More than eight in ten of the U.S. counties with the worst food insecurity are rural. In Buncombe, about 16.8 percent of residents, roughly 46,200 people, are food insecure, the highest reading on record here. The federal survey these county estimates are built on was canceled in 2025. Feeding America plans to keep producing them by adding other data sources, so later readings would rest on a changed method. In most of the counties that border Buncombe, a larger share of residents get SNAP than in Buncombe itself, a pattern explored in Rural Hunger Is the Real Story.