Written by Sally Kestin, Asheville Watchdog.
Eblen Charities was forced to lay off half of its staff after ending a nearly 20-year relationship with Buncombe County to administer programs providing emergency assistance to low-income families.
In audits going back to 2021, the county had identified errors with Eblen’s work and placed the charity on an improvement plan.
“We did have some issues with performance,” said Eblen Executive Director Beth Russo. “It just became evident that we just weren’t going to be able to meet the need in a timely way.”
Eblen terminated its agreement with the county Nov. 30. On Dec. 4, the charity laid off nine of its 18-person staff, Russo said.
“It was a really, really difficult decision, and it was very painful to make,” Russo said.
County spokeswoman Stacey Wood said Eblen “has been a valuable partner in administering these critical energy and emergency assistance programs since 2005.”
The main problems the county had identified included Eblen’s “timeliness in processing requests for assistance and challenges related to staffing levels,” Wood said.
The assistance programs represented 70 percent of Eblen’s $2.6 million budget, Russo said. Without the contracts, she said, “we just didn’t have enough work to keep that level of staffing.”
“This is not an effort to cut costs,” Russo wrote in a memo to staff. “It is simply a response to an unexpected loss of funding and workload that necessitated a reduction in staffing.”
Buncombe County is now administering the programs. The Low Income Energy Assistance Program provides a one-time payment for heating bills; The Crisis Intervention Program pays for past-due heating bills or fuel; and the Emergency Assistance program pays for rent, electric bills, water and other expenses for families in short-term financial trouble.
“Applications Dramatically Increased”
Eblen assisted more than 4,250 households through the programs in 2023, Russo said.
“The volume of applications has dramatically increased,” Russo wrote in an Oct. 17 letter to county officials. “At our current staffing levels, we are no longer able to provide the quality of service that these programs, and our citizens deserve, and fulfill our obligations to your office and the contract.”
In the first quarter of 2023, “we had 800 new, first-time applicants,” Russo told The Watchdog. “We had added staff in order to address what we thought would be the need, but we just couldn’t staff up to be able to respond to those program requests in a timely way.”
In discussions with county administrators, she said, “we all agreed that it would be best if they had those contracts returned to them.”
Russo also said that Eblen did not have access to a state database on public assistance. “We were having to do income verification the old-fashioned way with copies of check stubs and tax returns, and it just took us much longer than it would take the county,” she said.
Wood acknowledged that the access problem limited Eblen’s ability to serve clients “by creating a bottleneck for processing applications.”
Russo said Eblen leaders were “really sensitive” about the timing of the layoffs just before the holidays. “We did give severance packages,” she said. Her memo to staff said the employees would be paid through the end of December.
At least three of the employees have been hired by the county to continue working with the assistance programs, Russo said.
Eblen’s board will “be doing a lot of work in the next few months…to revisit our vision,” Russo said. Other programs will continue, such as the St. Nicholas Toy Store that opens two weeks before Christmas and provides toys, clothing and other items to more than 1,300 families.
Eblen also conducts a Winter clothing giveaway and assists people “living in and at the edge of poverty” with gasoline money for job interviews and medical appointments and provides shoes and clothes for school-age children.
“Eblen has always been about meeting the needs of our community,” board chair Drue Ray said in an email. “We will continue to fulfill our mission of assisting families and individuals during times of crisis and hardship.”
Russo’s memo to staff said, “We are not going anywhere, but how we operate and offer our help to the community will change.”
Second Major Transition
The downsizing is the second significant transition in recent years for the charity, formed in 1991 by Asheville resident Bill Murdock with support from Joe Eblen, who ran the family-owned Biltmore Oil Co.
Murdock, Eblen’s longtime executive director, left in 2019, two days after CNN detailed the account of a 47-year-old Asheville woman who said Murdock, a former teacher, sexually abused herwhen she was his teenage student. Murdock had been charged with a felony sex crime in 1988 and pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor, but maintained his innocence.
The charity named a new director, and several members of the board resigned. George Suggs, a former board chair, said he “didn’t feel comfortable with the new board.”
Suggs said he and three other Eblen board members left and started their own nonprofit, Beyond All Borders, that does similar work. This Sunday at the T.C. Roberson High School gym, he said, “we’ve got two tractor trailer loads of toys that we’re going to be giving away to the public.”
His group also raises money to help pay electric and phone bills, rent and moving expenses.
Suggs said he hopes Eblen survives the latest turmoil. “I really do because the public needs all the help they can get,” he said.
Asheville Watchdog is a nonprofit news team producing stories that matter to Asheville and Buncombe County. Sally Kestin is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter. Email [email protected]. To show your support for this vital public service please visit avlwatchdog.org/donate.