Three bodies found in vacant Pisgah View apartments in Asheville

Three bodies have been found in vacant Asheville apartments this year, exposing a security breakdown at Pisgah View Apartments that now has the Housing Authority of the City of Asheville racing to add patrols in July. The latest death was 23-year-old Rachael Tuck, who was found June 9 inside an empty unit after she had been reported missing June 4.

Asheville police said a maintenance worker discovered Tuck’s body in the vacant apartment. Local reporting tied the death to the broader pattern at Pisgah View, where all three deaths this year are suspected overdoses, according to Housing Authority chief executive Ella Santos. The fact that vacant units were not being effectively controlled has become the central accountability problem: spaces that should have been locked down and monitored instead became places where fatal activity went undetected.

The Housing Authority and Asheville Police Department approved a public-housing patrol agreement in April to increase police presence around the clock in public housing neighborhoods, and the patrol program connected to the June deaths was set to begin in July. That move followed a separate April agreement between the city and the housing authority for extra APD personnel at housing sites. The timing leaves residents with a hard question: whether the new patrols will reach the specific weak points at Pisgah View, especially vacant apartments that appear to have been accessible without enough oversight.

The crisis at Pisgah View landed while the housing authority was already under strain. Asheville Watchdog reported that HACA cut 34 of its 156 staff positions in April, a reduction of about 21 percent, while the agency was also managing 1,525 apartments, about 1,300 housing choice vouchers, and a $9 million drawdown in reserves across 2024 and 2025. Pisgah View itself is 74 years old, a fact that adds maintenance pressure to a site already facing security problems.

The property has not been free of violence. Pisgah View was also the scene of a December 2024 double homicide and an October 2024 stabbing death, and Asheville leaders had already identified Pisgah View and Hillcrest as public-housing communities with more violence. Those earlier incidents, combined with the June deaths, show a pattern of escalating danger around the complex rather than an isolated lapse.

For Buncombe County, the immediate stakes are simple: whether HACA can secure vacant units, restore visible control at Pisgah View, and keep vulnerable tenants from living beside another fatal blind spot in public housing.