The return of the notorious MAB?
4 Likes
A lot of progress has been made on the âNew Bern Crossingâ affordable apartments (just east of 440 next to Holiday Inn Express), in the last few months. Good aerial pics on this link: New Bern Crossings Apartments â C. Herman Construction
A few blocks away at 3700 Lake Woodard Drive, construction has just started on âLake Havenâ affordable senior apartments.
8 Likes
He says Raleigh Union Station was constructed in 2008. I think he meant 2018.
Good catch! Still, hard to believe itâs been 7 years. Time flies when youâre getting old. 
1 Like
This announcement was in our church bulletin this week. Regardless of our varying political views, I would hope we would all agree that this is a bad place to throw the homeless situation back in the laps of the local governments. (There are other pending legislative bills designed to tear down local planning authority as well - scary stuff if you ask me). At any rate, just making you aware what is going on with this bill concerning the homeless.
HB 781, âUnauthorized Public Camping and Sleeping,â would make it illegal for the unhoused to sleep outdoors or on public property or in front of business. If a property owner wants to, after five days they can sue the city or town for civil damages if the local government does not remove that person. Although the bill allows for a system where a city or town can designate a park area as a âsleeping zone,â they are not required to and if they do not, it would be illegal for the unhoused to sleep outdoors anywhere in the city or town. As of May 7, this bill has passed the House and will move on to the Senate.
4 Likes
So, basically empowering business owners to force the city to make homeless folks someone elseâs problem for them, but offering no aid to help anyone? Troubling, but sadly unsurprising.
In more positive news of churches getting involved in housing affordability-- Greenwood Forest Baptist Church in Cary has won unanimous approval from the town council to rezone some of their property and build 62 affordable units. As a member of a church which aspires to do similar things (I hope, at least), I hope to see more concrete action from faith communities like that.
10 Likes
Thankfully we are seeing more churches step up. My church is one of at least three participating in the white flag nights. Great to hear the work being done by Greenwood Forest Baptist. The need is great and the systems are cracking even wider open.
3 Likes
So it would make being homeless essentially illegal. Where TF is a person without a home supposed sleep if they canât sleep outdoors.
I guess they just need to stay awake and never sleep.
5 Likes
This might not be a popular take, but if Iâm running a business and someone camps out front, refuses shelter or help, and the city wonât do anything, am I just supposed to accept that?
A lot of people donât realize how often shelter and services are offered and turned down. Iâm really glad churches are stepping up and creating more space, huge respect for that, but laws like HB 781 donât seem aimed at people willing to get help. They seem aimed at situations where no one is doing anything and itâs affecting others.
Iâve been to places where whole blocks turn into campsites, and itâs not good for anyone. Iâm all for compassion, but I also think the public and small business owners deserve some kind of recourse.
2 Likes
Itâs a valid concern. Homelessness is a pesky issue with no easy solutions.
Off the top we need lots more housing across the board. Hard to do when every rezoning gets shouted down by the Livable Raleigh NIMBYs
Then a lot of better social programs like unemployment benefits, universal healthcare, drug prevention / recovery programs, better education system, etc. All of these take lots of money and political will to implement. These are near impossible in todayâs political climate.
So we just make a bill to make it illegal to sleep out in the open, and pat ourselves on the back for having done something.
4 Likes
I can empathize with points youâre both making, but to @xdavidj credit, a personal example from just the other day (Tuesday) in Durham:
I was loading my gear into my car after playing a show, and a homeless man approaches me and my gf. He states that the shelter costs $5 to get in for a bed and some food, and heâs just tying to stay there tonight. My gf, ever sweet and kind she is, gives him a couple singles (what she had). She went home shortly after, I stayed for the remainder of the show (at least another hour and a half).
The same man was walking around the same area as I was leaving, at least midnight if not a little later. I truly donât believe he ever intended to seek a bed at the shelter. Some of these folks truly just live this life and do not want to accept actual help and are just too far gone to try and better themselves and reintegrate into society. Not every homeless person, of course, but far more than I believe weâre willing to admit. And I do agree that itâs not fair to just throw our hands up and leave it to business owners to deal with those particular types who just want to remain camped out in front of their business and refuse to accept the help that they objectively need.
Itâs a very sensitive and tough situation, there are no easy answers. I donât particularly agree with the limitations of this bill (ok, so itâs now illegal to camp out/sleep outside, but will shelter capacity be increased to bring these folks to, or are we just throwing them in a jail cell for a few days, only for them to be released and continue the cycle? Is there increased funding for mental health facilities included?), but I also canât say I disagree with giving business owners more power to hold cities accountable for not assisting in situations where a particular âproblem personâ is negatively affecting their business.
1 Like
Appreciate the nuance in discussion here. The stigmatization of homelessness bothers me, but I totally agree that the impact on the ground for businesses is surely worth considering and addressing. I just donât like the nature in which this legislation is addressing it.
As folks have already said, the main problem is doing nothing else to help people. I would be more open to giving businesses legal options to protect their space, customers and revenue â if it were tied into a package which also helped aid the homeless in other ways. The bill is purely eliminating legal possibility of grace from the city/county towards the homeless with no other service, concession, or expectation.
Restrictions placed on the ability of a municipality to establish a designated space for people to sleep on public property, even if they want to:
- Must have beds and bathrooms (i.e. no, you canât just declare the campsite official)
- Can only be used a maximum of 1 year
- The city must prove there are not sufficient beds otherwise in homeless shelters
- Cannot be adjacent to residential zoned areas
- Cannot negatively impact the âproperty value or safetyâ of any other residence or business in the entire city (which can be sued for⌠by anyone)
Hard to see all of those being met in an official capacity by the city that doesnât essentially amount to building another shelter (and in the middle of the woods, I guess?). Maybe, best case, this forces the city to choose between spending money and personnel to enforce this law and doing just that? But as noted, many of these people do not trust shelters or otherwise want to use them.
Plus, you just know some random guy is going to sue the city for even thinking about trying, because it makes kids who live a mile away less safe.
Genuinely, I donât take some hard line against businesses or municipalities regulating sleeping in front of shops. That idea on its own does not offend me, particularly. Legal crackdowns on basically powerless people, with no aid or mercy otherwise offered alongside, does. Please, letâs just build housing and get people in it.
I think ideally, in a good democracy, weâd have business owners advocate for their own safety and prosperity, and charities and concerned groups advocating for proven and sustainable ways to help homeless people, and weâd come together and compromise and tie those goals together into one policy. Instead, we get the former as law and the latter are left to try to do what they can, now burdened by additional legal restrictions.
9 Likes
I work with the homeless in Concord, NCâs 10th largest city. I would divide the homeless into thirds. One third are temporary homeless who may have jobs or recently lost then become homeless and transition out. One third are people with mental issues or unable to work much (maybe with disabilities) and these are most receptive to shelters and homeless housing. One third are serious addicts who do not like rules of any kind and will not go to shelters or housing that has any kind of rules with them. These people need substance abuse treatment. Some of our homeless we have in Concord will not go to a shelter under any circumstance because of rules. Many in the first 2 categories will do so. We have seen people get off the streets and others because of lifestyle of substance abuse will not. However I have seen people hit rock bottom and seek treatment and then transition out of homelessness. We donât judge them but will feed and cloth them and this is a Christian based motorcyle ministry I work with. The worst thing you can do is hand people money no strings attached. You want to help hand them food or water. Or go buy a meal and circle back to where they are. Give money to organizations that work on housing them and supporting them. The Houston metro area has one of the best approaches to homelessness in the country in terms of what they do. Charlotte is finally adopting some of these methods. They are reducing homelessness in a metro area of 8 million.
https://www.cfthhouston.org/
go under data and see how they are doing. They are building housing for them aka single room occupancy housing. I think Raleigh has just built one building like that and that is great.
9 Likes
I was born in Raleigh and lived there for 40 years, and I lived out west, in Reno, Nevada, for 10. I can only recall larger numbers of homeless in raleigh from the late 90s maybe? when I got to reno in 09 it wasâŚhomeless sweep up one year along the truckee and then reaccumulate for the next yearâŚrinse and repeat. since I left reno, if I recall, they dedicated an area 100 yards from the Truckee River, near railroad tracks and a recycling station, as some dedicated homeless living. there was obscenity going on along the truckee river greenway, a guy I hit tennis with at the time just called it counter-culture. tough call. i used to walk the greenway in raleigh at night and noticed a tall mirror propped up against a tree with a sleeping bag laying in front of it. i thoughtâŚthatâs a new one fo rme.
1 Like
I assume this is the best thread for a general article on housing. TBJ has a brief article on the downtown apartment boom. A few highlights: downtown has added 6,243 units since 2020 (this accounts for 40 percent of all units over the last 5 years built in Raleigh per RentCafe). Q1 occupancy rate was 92.3%. There are currently 10k units downtown with 10k in the pipeline by 2030.
https://www.bizjournals.com/triangle/news/2025/05/22/downtown-raleigh-apartment-construction.html
Iâve said it before but I do think all of these units coming online will tremendously help with the street activation around town. Itâs just a positive reinforcement loop as more people live in walking distance.
21 Likes
I definitely see more pedestrian activity downtown now than I did 5 or more years ago. Itâs all anecdotal though as perceived on my walks after work. The after work sidewalks used to be nearly vaccant. I look foward to the 10,000 additional units.
6 Likes
Thatâs great. Hope it continues and we see even more.
1 Like
A bit of a follow-up to my questions from a few weeks ago about the cost of affordable units, and whether 40k per unit was a reasonable reflection of the value of these units in the developerâs proposed pay-out to the cityâŚ
Durham is partnering with a developer to build 240 affordable units at the former Police HQ site. The development agreement seems to be collapsing because the developerâs requested subsidy from the city has ballooned by about $17 million since they were awarded the project.
The part that was really interesting to me though is that their requested subsidy for the affordable component is 175k-195k per unit (the higher number includes parking). 40k vs 195k is drastically different, and I wonder if that 40k metric needs to be updated to more accurately reflect the cost of building affordable housing.
On the other hand, I think this number is unusually high because the units are proposed in a standalone 12-story high-rise with its own parking podium, which really goes to show the impact/importance of incorporating units into a mixed-income building that can offset some of the baseline costs, especially if it is a more expensive construction type. It also seems like if youâre going to go higher than 7 floors, you need to go much higher, like we discussed here, because it makes zero economic sense to do a 12 story building like this.
8 Likes
The separation between âaffordable housingâ and market rate housing is what helped create this crisis and others⌠so I donât understand how cities keep thinking itâs going to somehow be a solution.
The publicâs perception of solutions with separate but equal housing should no longer be the stance for politicians to fall on, itâs only worked to separate economic classes further.
You can not achieve Jane Jacobâs vision through Robert Mosesâ policies, but maybe division is the goal, as we see with national politics.
5 Likes
Iâm not sure I understand what youâre advocating for other than an end to subsidized/public housing. Am I misunderstanding?
Do you believe that the market will create housing today â not through filtering over the timespan of a generation â that is affordable to someone making 30%-60% AMI?
Probably better to move this conversation to the affordable housing thread if it is not relevant to RUS Bus specifically.
1 Like