Orange County candidates for office in Chapel Hill and Carrboro pledged to improve conditions for day laborers, expand affordable rental offerings and work with the county to mitigate the effects of the Rogers Road landfill and an alternative for the county’s garbage during the fall meeting of Justice United, a nonpartisan community advocacy group last week.

Candidates for the Chapel Hill Town Council and mayor, Carrboro Board of Aldermen, Carrboro Mayor Mark Chilton and Chapel Hill-Carrboro Board of Education participated in the event and responded to questions individually when asked about their commitment to resolving county issues like when to close the Rogers Road landfill and how to create more lower-income housing.

North Carolina is getting $229 million in affordable rental apartments as part of a federal tax credits program approved this week and loans from the North Carolina Housing Finance Agency.

The awards will be used to build 1,912 privately owned, privately-managed affordable apartments in 25 counties. About 69 percent of the apartments will be for families, with the rest designated for elderly residents and people with disabilities.

Rent assistance will make the apartments affordable to persons living on Supplemental Security Income of approximately $660 a month, under an initiative financed by the N.C. General Assembly and offered through a cooperative arrangement between the Housing Finance Agency, the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services, local service organizations, and the apartment owners and managers.

The apartments will be created at 31 properties including three in the Triangle: Bowman Plantation in Garner, The Woods at Avent Ferry in Holly Springs and Water Garden Village in Raleigh.
 

Who says being energy efficient has to be costly? A new neighborhood in Henderson, designed by a nationally known conservation planner, is one of six in the state where the Conservation Trust for North Carolina has helped develop affordable neighborhoods that save natural spaces. Read more about it here.

DHIC, a Raleigh-based non-profit housing development company, has received a $626,000 grant to fund new affordable housing projects and homebuyer counseling programs.

DHIC's grant is among the largest awarded under the NeighborWorks America program, which will provide more than $119 million to more than 230 nonprofit organizations in thousands of communities nationwide.   

The grants will be used to for homebuyer counseling; construction and rehabilitation of properties left vacant by the housing crisis; foreclosure prevention efforts; and producing and managing affordable rental properties and homeownership opportunities.  

DHIC has built or rehabed more than 1,500 apartments and 400 homes for sale in the greater Triangle. It also provides education and counseling to first-time homebuyers.

The nonprofit receives funding from the city of Raleigh, the town of Cary, Wake County, the N.C. Housing Finance Agency, commercial bank and federal stimulus funds to build three affordable apartment communities in Wake County including:  

DHIC's projects include Highland Terrace in Cary and Brookridge and Meadowcreek Commons in Raleigh.

Between them, Habitat for Humanity and the Community Home Trust have more than 1,000 households on their interest lists for affordable housing.

Despite worries about selling small 1- and 2-bedroom condominiums, East 54 has sold all 23 of its first-phase subsidized units.

"The market is not providing the housing for the full range of people who work in Chapel Hill and would like to be able to live here," said former town planner Roger Waldon, now a consultant who helped develop the town's proposed Inclusionary Zoning Ordinance.

The proposal would take the Town Council's practice of requiring 15-percent affordable housing from developers who request zoning changes for their projects, apply it to all residential developments greater than five units and provide density bonuses for developers who comply.

The Town Council will open a public hearing tonight on a proposing Inclusionary Zoning Ordinance, which would codify the town's decade-long policy of requiring 15 percent affordable housing in new developments.

Currently, the 15-percent mandate is not law and therefore applies only to developments that violate other zoning codes and need a Special-Use Permit (SUP) from the Town Council.

If approved, the new law would provide density bonuses as incentives to developers who provide affordable housing even when they are zoning-compliant and require only site-plan review by the Planning Board. Single-family developments could be 15 percent larger than under current zoning, and multi-family developments could add 3,400 to 4,400 extra square feet per affordable unit.

Since zoning along Franklin Street downtown has no density restrictions, the law would require a flat 10 percent affordable housing.

The ordinance would require half of the subsidized units to be affordable to those earning below 65 percent of the area median income and the other half to those earning between 65 and 80 percent, about $35,000 to $45,000 for a two-person household.

The town has been requiring 15-percent affordable housing in SUP projects since 2000. In that time, they have approved 336 affordable units out of 2,421 total housing units, just under 14 percent. They have also received pledges for $2.6 million as payments in lieu for affordable units not planned into projects for various reasons.

So far, developers have built 118 affordable units and placed them under the management of the Community Home Trust. More than 20 other homes built early in the last decade complied with council's policy because they were purposefully small in size and therefore sold at lower prices, even though developers sold them at market value.

Carrboro Mayor Mark Chilton and several members of the Board of Aldermen are concerned the town is not doing enough to support low-income housing.

“We have a lot of people who are hurting at a lot lower income levels than we’re currently reaching,” Chilton said at Tuesday night’s board meeting.

“Our current system doesn’t ever encourage anybody to create affordable rental housing for people who live on social security/disability income,” he said.

Chilton also said he was concerned about housing for people who live on minimum wage or 20 percent of the median income.

The comments came during a discussion of the affordable housing provisions in the land use ordinance.  In that ordinance, the town has a goal that at least 15 percent of units in new residential developments should be affordable.

Our lead story in tomorrow's Chapel Hill News suggests the town of Chapel Hill's affordable housing strategy is not working.

The policy asks builders to price 15 percent of new units affordable to people earning 80 percent of the median income. But developers have found what some consider a loophole and built tiny units to satisfy the requirement. Some units in East 54 and the planned 140 West Franklin project are about 700 square feet.

And guess what? Folks aren't buying.

Nearly two years after he first suggested it, Orange Community Housing and Land Trust Executive Director Robert Dowling is still trying to convince the Chapel Hill Town Council to stop requiring developers to build so many affordable housing units and start accepting more cash instead. The town's planning staff is recommending that the council refer Dowling's petition to its affordable housing committee during tonight's Town Council meeting. Below, read a story from when Dowling first proposed this approach in January 2007.