The police won’t come: Residents decry inaction to violence in Asheville public housing

‘The police won’t come’: Residents decry inaction to violence in Asheville public housing

One September morning in 2022, Elizabeth Alvandi was taking in her trash can behind her Deaverview neighborhood apartment when she heard a man yelling at her from across the street.

“Is this what you’re looking for?” Jeremiah Jenkins, 45, shouted at her, pulling what appeared to be his penis out of his pants, as seen in a video obtained by the Citizen Times. He then ran up the hill, punched Alvandi in the head, knocking her to the ground, and continued to strike her in the head and back multiple times.

Jenkins was a man Alvandi had often seen in the West Asheville public housing neighborhood although he had been banned from the property since 2020.

Vulnerable Residents

One of Alvandi’s neighbors, Heather Smith, heard screaming. From her second-floor window, she saw Alvandi on the ground and Jenkins’ fist hit the right side of her face. Smith ran downstairs to help Alvandi while another neighbor called 911.

“I’ll fix you; it’s going to be a lot worse next time,” Jenkins said after assaulting Alvandi, according to court documents.

Alvandi is one of multiple women in Deaverview who are calling out a pattern of violence by people living off-lease with little to no consequences, and are demanding the Housing Authority of the City of Asheville, city leaders and law enforcement do more to protect them.

Unsafe Environment

Some of the violent offenders have been banned from Deaverview but permitted to stay by a site manager who looked the other way, according to a former high-ranking housing authority staffer. This makes already vulnerable, low-income tenants feel trapped in their own homes and ignored by police and housing officials, they said.

The Citizen Times spoke with these women over several months and is not naming some — including the former staffer — who said they feared further violent retaliation. Their stories come after a Citizen Times investigation found three of Asheville’s public housing units had the highest rates of violent crime in the city.

Police Response

While Deaverview wasn’t among those three, the neighborhood had 18% more gunshots over the past five years than did downtown Asheville, which is now receiving more City Council-approved, taxpayer-funded police patrols.

Some Deaverview residents say crime — and police inaction — in their neighborhood have become intolerable.

Fleeing domestic violence

Alvandi, 42, grew up in Massachusetts where she earned two art degrees at Wellesley College, got married and had a daughter. After fleeing years of domestic violence, she came to Asheville in 2017 to live near friends.

Having little money, Alvandi qualified in 2020 to live in public housing. She was expediently placed in an apartment through Helpmate, a nonprofit that provides assistance to survivors of domestic violence like herself. She believed she would be safe in Deaverview.

But Jenkins was not arrested for months after the assault — the most common crime in public housing, according to Asheville Police Chief Mike Lamb.

In the meantime, Alvandi and others frequently saw Jenkins around the 160-unit apartment complex, though he had been banned from all public housing property, according to court documents for a trespassing charge he received in late 2020.

“I should’ve beat you up. I just smacked you,” Jenkins called to Alvandi in a video she recorded in November, before he was arrested.

An arrest order was filed the day Jenkins assaulted Alvandi. Police officers interviewed both of them at the site, as Alvandi was still bleeding from her injuries. However, police did not arrest Jenkins until nearly two months later, according to court records.

Jenkins bonded out of jail two days after his arrest and returned to Deaverview.

Community’s Cry for Help

Feeling trapped in her own home, Alvandi started to wear a registered handgun on her hip that winter. Five months later, Jenkins was charged with hit-and-run for striking Alvandi’s car while she was driving near her home.

Alvandi, an artist who opened a studio in the River Arts District, said her “life has been brought to a halt where I’ve almost lost my livelihood.”

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APD Capt. Joe Silberman told Alvandi in a July 3, 2023 email that police couldn’t arrest Jenkins for failing to appear on the hit-and-run charge because APD couldn’t “see” the warrants for his arrest in their system.

Lamb said that could have been an issue with the processing time it takes for a warrant to be verified in the court system and transferred to the system police use.

Wary that police did not seem to be moving quickly, the former housing authority staffer said they asked an APD officer after Alvandi’s assault if Jenkins was a confidential informant.

The staffer was told: “I cannot confirm or deny.”

“I really want to see the relationship between how the police and public housing handle these kinds of systemic problems investigated at a higher level because there’s no accountability, or no consistent accountability to the law,” Alvandi said.

“Certain people like Jeremiah Jenkins are given way too much power over the culture of public housing and use that power to abuse people that have a right to be here.”

Assaulted with mirror, butt of rifle
Jodi Davis was walking into a Deaverview apartment in January when she said she was attacked by a man with previous charges for assaulting women on Deaverview property, according to court records. After what she called a “normal conversation,” he ran up the stairs after Davis, hitting her “over and over again,” throwing a mirror at her and striking her with the butt of a rifle.

Four days later, bruises lined her body and broken glass littered the ground outside the apartment as she recounted the events to the Citizen Times. Davis said she saw him pull the rifle’s trigger, but the gun didn’t go off.

Davis called police that night, who responded but told her to file a police report or go to the magistrate’s office. She went to the magistrate three days later to get a warrant, but was told since there was a gun involved, the police would have to take out a warrant.

Police Inaction

Police investigated but the case was closed without charges, according to police spokesperson Rick Rice. He said Davis was “advised of the steps to obtain a criminal charge on the suspect through a magistrate.”

Two months later, the same man barricaded himself in a Deaverview apartment with a woman he had “severely beaten” to the point of broken bones, Chief Lamb said. Hostage negotiators eventually talked him into surrendering.

“It doesn’t feel like people take it seriously, and nobody understands until they see it happen to them,” Davis said.

Responsibility for Residents’ Safety

“People fall through the cracks,” Heather Smith, the neighbor who witnessed Alvandi being attacked, said. “The police won’t come. Multiple times I’ve called, and they haven’t come, saying ‘you need to make a report.’”

“(The site manager) says ‘you got to call the police.’ The police say, ‘you got to talk to the property manager.’”

Also while waiting for an arrest, Alvandi took photos showing then-site manager, Tammy Mohamed, walking past Jenkins and a highway patrol cruiser parked on Deaverview property in October 2022. Mohamed was later seen on surveillance footage smoking a cigarette with Jenkins outside Deaverview’s office “like they were friends,” the staffer said.

Multiple residents, some wishing to remain unnamed for fear of retaliation, said they emailed complaints to Mohamed’s superior over open drug use, threats and theft by a group of 10-20 people living in one apartment that Jenkins was known to frequent.

Safety Regulations

Jen Hampton, who represents the WNC Tenants Union and lived in public housing until last summer, said she’s heard stories from other tenants and has her own experience with site managers who knew about people banned from the property but allowed them to stay.

The housing authority bans someone when staff are aware they committed or are being investigated for a crime within public housing “that impacts the quiet, peaceful enjoyment of our public housing site,” Monique Pierre, CEO of the Housing Authority of Asheville, told the Citizen Times.

Someone can be added to the banned list before they’ve been convicted of the crime. The number of people on the banned list fluctuates month to month, with over 280 on the list in April.

Lamb told the Citizen Times in May that “it’s entirely possible” people on the banned list could be living in public housing neighborhoods, he says, due to communication issues, turnover within housing authority staff and the lack of a direct liaison between APD and HACA.

Federal Regulations

The U.S. Housing Act of 1937 establishes a federal commitment to provide “decent, safe and sanitary dwellings for families of low income.” The act also requires a plan be established by the public housing agency to “ensure the safety of public housing residents.”

Asheville’s housing authority manages federally subsidized housing for nearly 3,000 city residents in 11 communities.