Asheville made international headlines last week when its Omni Grove Park Inn hosted the Group of 20 finance track summit.
The summit is an annual global forum aimed at securing financial stability and consensus. It consists of delegates from 20 nations representing roughly 85% of the world’s population. Leadership is designated by country on a rotating annual basis, and the United States, with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent as finance track leader, chose Asheville in part for what it represents to senior officials nearly two years after Hurricane Helene devastated the region.
“With its local inspiration leading to global innovation, Asheville stands as a hub for corporate innovation and growth, making it ideal for a G20 focused on driving economic growth and prosperity,” the G20 website stated.
President Trump’s administration during the G20 looked chiefly to the Western North Carolina city’s entrepreneurial outlook as proof it had made what one senior Treasury official called a “comeback.” For what had previously been conversations among government representatives, this year’s G20 summit brought in private executives to talk about deregulation for the sake of corporate interests.
“We solicited inputs for the first time ever from the private sector to better understand how our efforts can reinforce theirs for the first time in G20 history. Business leaders joined ministers and central bank governors to discuss the practical barriers they encounter as they invest, innovate, and grow,” Bessent said during a Sept. 1 press conference.
However, some residents had a different opinion of Asheville’s recovery, insisting that residents’ livelihood in any place is hampered by growth and privatization. It is instead dependent upon how a community takes care of its people, they said.
“The truth is that Asheville has struggled to its knees,” said Leslie Boyd, a Poor People’s Campaign organizer who helped plan protest events last weekend as part of a local advocacy coalition called WNC Alignment Table.
“To say that ‘Hey, Asheville has recovered’ is a lie, and they know it’s a lie,” she said.
After Helene, Buncombe County’s unsheltered population was 1.5 times that of pre-hurricane counts. And by late March, about 130 individuals were still experiencing homelessness due to the storm.
Furthermore, Helene’s destruction extended far beyond Buncombe — and Boyd said in surrounding areas, that reality is even more visible.
“I went up to Marshall a few days ago to shoot some photos for a video that we at the Alignment Table produced, and it was just devastating to see that beautiful place still so scarred,” she recounted.
Two WNC sectors have rebounded, according to G20 metrics. Both have drawn public scrutiny for internal practices to varying degrees.
The first is perhaps as notorious as it is profitable. Mission Hospital in Buncombe County is an asset of for-profit HCA Healthcare, as of 2023 raking in the second highest patient revenues of any subsidiary hospital. Though Mission did sustain Helene-related damages, HCA in the wake of the storm yielded $1.27 billion in net Quarter 3 income, compared to $1.699 billion for Q2 2026, an increase of $429,000. HCA has faced numerous accusations that it prioritizes the bottom line over quality of care and that profiting from a public service underlies the problem.
Before its sale in 2019, Mission was a nonprofit health provider commended for patient satisfaction and outcomes.
“When [HCA] bought the hospital, they cut almost every non-billable service,” said National Patients Union Chief Organizer Kait Ziegler last Sunday at an Alignment Table-organized memorial space honoring ongoing post-Helene loss. NPU was one of numerous organizations tabling while performers took the Pack Square Park stage to sing, commemorate, and mourn.
Widespread staffing cuts, deficient sanitization practices, delays in isolating infectious disease patients and preventable patient deaths have been some of the most egregious violations, prompting four Immediate Jeopardy warnings from Federal Medicare and Medicaid services in the past five years, according to Asheville Watchdog. Immediate Jeopardy is the most severe deficiency handed down by the Center for Medicaid Services, indicating noncompliance to the level of patient endangerment. In recent years, Immediate Jeopardy has gotten more common, reaching a peak 8.2% in 2023 before falling to 5.5% by 2025. Nonetheless, it’s unlikely for a hospital to receive such a finding, let along multiple.
In the case of Mission, Boyd had a personal horror story to tell.
“I have a very dear friend who had a stroke, and she went to Mission, and she said, ‘I’m having a stroke,’ and they took a wait-and-see attitude, and now she’s permanently disabled,” she said.
Ziegler said regardless, people here don’t blame healthcare professionals for Mission’s downfall.
“I have never in my life, as an organizer, ever been to a place where in a town this large, every person knows the villain. Every person knows the year that the hospital was bought by a corporation,” she said.
HCA’s history is further marred by a disgraced former healthcare executive who then ventured into a profession adjacent to the G20 realm. Before he was a senator, Rick Scott was CEO of then-Columbia/HCA. The corporation throughout his tenure engaged in systematic over-billing and false claim submission, leading to the largest hospital corporation healthcare fraud settlement in U.S. history.
In Asheville, the tourism industry has also seen a post-Helene rebound. The Buncombe County Tourism Development Authority and its designated management organization, Explore Asheville, together form a public-private partnership like what Bessent promoted at the forum. According to Explore Asheville CEO Vic Isley, before Helene, travel and hospitality brought in about $3 billion — around 20% of the local economy. Most recent annual data indicated in 2025 that figure was about $2.6 billion.
“We haven’t fully recovered, but we’ve made great progress, and we’re determined to continue on that path to not only rebounding, but propelling forward for our area residents and economy,” she said. “By the end of this month, we will we have around $12 million available to award to tourism-related capital projects that will help in renovation, restoration, and rehabilitation.”
TDAs and their management organizations are mandated by state law to spend no less than two-thirds of money collected from occupancy taxes on marketing and the rest on tourism-related expenditures like capital projects.
But what is considered “tourism-related” has been routinely contested in Western North Carolina. A 2022 law modifying Buncombe occupancy tax usage — amid controversy about Isley’s salary (up to $578,000), the TDA’s marketing expenditures ($18.4 million), and overall city impacts — established the Legacy Investment From Tourism Fund, which manages the $12 million Isley mentioned.
Some locals called for LIFT funding to be devoted to affordable housing, citing tourism as one cause of inflated rental costs that have priced many hospitality workers out of the area. Contenders for the first 2024 funding round included two affordable housing-aligned projects, according to Blue Ridge Public Radio. But the N.C. Restaurant and Lodging Association in a letter to Charlotte City Council cautioned that using tourism dollars to fund affordable housing efforts could lead to a lawsuit. In the letter, NCRLA also described Buncombe LIFT funding language as “manipulated and misinterpreted.” Board members did not select either project, Mountain Xpress reported.
A new state law, however, has eliminated that ambiguity, prohibiting occupancy tax from going toward solid waste, water supply, fire protection, law enforcement and emergency services, affordable housing or education unless already authorized by a local provision. This means that Explore Asheville can invest in the community through LIFT grantmaking to both government entities and nonprofits, but the projects it funds cannot address certain issues faced by residents, including travel and hospitality industry workers, whose post-Helene recovery Isley called “uneven.”
“Not everyone is on the same path at the same time,” she explained.
Likewise, Boyd said tourism awards power unevenly to visitors, employees, and business management, creating a dynamic that can range from dehumanizing to dangerous. Many service workers are reliant on tips because they aren’t paid a minimum wage.
“I have friends who are service workers who were told (during COVID) ‘You take off your mask and smile at me, or you’re not getting a tip,’” she recounted.
Boyd also questioned what tourism via G20 would bring to the region.
“They’re going to buy expensive meals, play a few rounds of golf, you know, funnel some money into the into the Grove Park Inn, and they’re probably not even going to venture into downtown,” she said.
Alternatively, Isley saw G20 visitor spending as a net positive, noting that it contributed to paychecks both within the Omni Grove Park Inn and beyond. Because some delegations were staying at other properties, transportation companies were needed. Destination management and decorating businesses were also hired.
Early TDA estimates of G20 total economic input hovered at $2 million.
“But that (estimate) has ballooned since then because of the growing number of attendees and the and the impact of the event,” Isley added.
It’s unclear, at least until Explore Asheville publishes its post-event analysis, if the actual number is anywhere near the Trump administration’s $20 million spending prediction. Though 1,000% of initial assessments, an additional $20 million doesn’t bring Asheville — nor Western North Carolina, for that matter — much closer to total estimated recovery costs. The federal government has reimbursed only 16.4% of the $59.6 billion in Helene damages per the state’s WNC recovery portal.
A senior treasury official on a G20 background call, when asked about Trump’s commitment to WNC revitalization, mentioned the president’s authorization of more than $5 billion in cumulative post-storm federal funding — and the work taken on by corporate financers. Private capital, she said, has invested $29 billion in North Carolina since the start of 2025, creating 42,000 jobs.
Bessent, when asked how the Trump administration is helping small business owners and farmers impacted by Helene, similarly said the G20 wasn’t a forum to discuss that topic, but that industry — for example, “large soybean purchases” from China and a new John Deere factory “reshoring” in the state — would surely help. Taken together, those two treasury statements paint a picture of what the administration might increasingly prioritize following similar disasters: corporate interests and privatization.
Boyd made it clear that recovery looks like infrastructure. Bridges and roads. Stream banks and flow. Not big business and venture capitalism.
Meanwhile, Trump’s industry-forward fossil fuel deregulations and environmental protection rollbacks could increase the frequency and magnitude of climate-related disasters. The U.S. Forest Service’s 2001 Roadless Rule recission draft environmental impact statement admits roadbuilding in “designated wilderness,” which the agency aims to do with said recission, could increase wildfire frequency and impact.
As for energy, the United States is pushing for “dominance,” and it “has never looked better,” said Bessent. The White House’s website describes this dominance as “historic deregulation,” “[opening] hundreds of millions of acres for oil, gas, and coal production,” and “revitalizing beautiful, clean coal.” Coal, oil and gas, the main drivers of climate change, constitute 90% of global carbon dioxide emissions.
United Nations scientists on Sept. 2 warned Earth is reaching a climate “overshoot” phase in which within several years, temperatures will unavoidably exceed the 1.5-degree Celsius target named in the 2015 Paris Agreement.
Climate change was not mentioned at the summit, although Asheville reached a record high of 92 degrees on Sept. 2, just after officials departed. Even during Bessent’s press conference, the sweltering heat was impossible to ignore. Still, it was a “beautiful day,” he noted during his remarks. Past him, in the distance, Asheville hotels and skyscrapers rose above the surrounding trees, set by the silhouette of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Ziegler at the memorial space contextualized the problem through a systemic lens.
“I think we’re seeing one that both climate and what is happening to the environment is connected to healthcare,” she said, explaining that health outcomes are influenced by where and how we live — the quality of our shelter, air, and sustenance.
Thanks to congressional passage of the president’s One Big Beautiful Bill, as these environmental conditions grow more precarious, 11.8 million people nationwide are expected to lose marketplace coverage, the American Medical Association reported.
“We were out on Merrimon Avenue today for — what was it? — three hours, and man, almost every car was beeping,” Boyd said of the alignment table’s Saturday protest. “As politicians allow worse and worse things to happen, people are becoming more and more aware that this is not how we’re supposed to be living.”
Luckily, Ziegler noted, there are other places to turn.
There’s a common refrain across Latin America — Solo el Pueblo Salva El Pueblo — which organizers sang onstage last Sunday. In English, it means, “only the people can save the people.”
“It’s not big governments, it’s not big companies, it’s not big elected officials who are coming to save communities,” Ziegler said. “It is grassroots organizing that is doing it.”