No, none of that. If this were an article about a fourth apartment being shot in less than a week, one being 12 times, in the Dillon, Glenwood South, or Mordecai, I would post it there as well. These instances occurred at one of the affordable housing communities downtown so I posted it here. I wasn’t trying to formulate assumptions or insinuate anything. Intention and tone are usually lost on internet forums, which is why I try and provide more content than opinion. Again sorry if that article was taken out of context.
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Yeah I didn’t see it and thought an earlier article was posted on here. Maybe the person thought you were equating the two or maybe they’re and ABC11 fan. I figured I’d ask and give you a chance to explain the post.
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I’m sure I’ll get push back on this… but why does the affordable housing have to be downtown?
Why can’t the city just buy a bunch of less expensive land just outside the beltline (there is quite a bit in the south) build an affordable housing community with a centralized bus hub that goes straight into downtown or other bus hubs in the area? A nice, new community with easy access to transportation… at affordable costs.
You can have affordable housing downtown… but do you have “affordable restaurants” or “affordable retail”? So why does the affordable housing have to be downtown?
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Because a lot of the people that are being displaced currently live and work downtown and transit sucks. Also not all affordable housing is subsidized housing. There needs to be more of the missing middle housing. Multi family units that aren’t luxury apartments, duplexes quads etc. the solution to this isn’t the city buying up land or subsidizing housing it’s allowing diverse zoning which will lead to more diverse housing options.
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I think it’s not a bad thought at all. I think the perception that affordable housing is needed in downtown is because of two main things.
- It’s currently the most (or one of) unaffordable places in the city.
- It’s currently where a lot of development is taking place.
Five Points may be unaffordable too but no new development is taking place there.
The edges of town may be more affordable but no new development is taking place there. (at a large enough scale anyway)
I see people calling for affordable housing simply because people are building stuff in an expensive area so therefore, we need to get them to also build stuff that’s affordable. Never mind that there’s nothing affordable along Glenwood between the beltline and Oberlin. Why aren’t people screaming for affordable options there? (as shown by @ADUsSomeday here)
I think downtown can do it’s part by contributing to mixed housing types as well as cost types but there are definitely other parts of the city that can be contributing.
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It is a city-wide issue. CODs limit where more affordable apartments can be built and even when those aren’t in place, neighbors have the ability to shout things down. I’m still unable to find the article but there was a developer who wanted to build affordable apartments for teachers, civil servants, fire police, among others and the local community threw a fit. It was somewhere way up north near Wake Forest.
If you’re a young teacher, fresh out of college, new to the area, getting your first gig at Broughton, what are your options for finding a place to live? Or a new police officer etc.
Eventually as the newer apartments cycle down there maybe some more options (although I imagine most will be refurb’d to bring them back to luxury standards) but what is done in the meantime?
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I remember reading that article in the news and observer. Those residents were NOT happy about having townhomes being built and were not ashamed to say nasty things on the record.
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I think this is it, the neighbors did not like this one bit.
https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/article210395984.html
“An undercurrent in the debate was who would be moving into the townhouses. Would they be subsidized buyers? Students renting from investors? Were they the kind of people who would trespass in a neighboring subdivision’s playground, or let their dogs mess their lawns?”
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Yeah they said the quiet parts out loud. I’m glad someone else remembers it I was starting to wonder if I made it up in my head.
In Cary, they’re blocking a Habitat for Humaity development. In Connecticut, towns block any multi-family housing like it’s the plague.
If the city council were really serious about addressing this issue they would do something like Minneapolis did and basically get rid of single family only zoning that exists in the city. If developers want to build up to a certain height and density and they meet basic standards let them build.
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This is actually different than the one I saw (or remember seeing anyway😁) but the sentiment remains the same.
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Yep. Thanks for linking it.
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@JosABanks makes some good points.
In addition, I imagine redeveloping all of downtown with upscale apartments will leave the city with a boring core, void of the diversity that makes downtowns so exciting in the first place. Simply moving affordable housing out of the core because it seems like a cheaper option doesn’t account for the benefits affordable housing, government offices, artist spaces, etc. bring when they are part of a downtown instead of out on the periphery. In reality, the “market” often fails to account for many of these “externalities” or “public good” that also create the reality around us, and then you end up with boring cores that lose the identity of what made them so fascinating to begin with.
I’m sorry to wander into a tangent on my first post, but I have seen the “why not just build affordable housing outside of downtown” a number of times on this thread and it seems like the thoughtful responses others have provided have either not been seen by these questioners, or ignored because it didn’t fit their mindset. I think affordable housing should certainly be considered outside the core - especially when it’s close to services and transit as others have noted, but notoriously hard to find or do in practice (often leading to more sprawl and expensive infrastructure expansions later on). But there seems to be some myopia around the benefits of preserving and increasing the amount of affordable housing around downtown and the negatives of pushing it out.
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I was going to post this in the other thread but here may be better. Regarding the quote above, why can’t the city offer more incentives to developers to build affordable housing? Kane is already building housing. Instead of the $1M fee they charged him, let the city give him some kind of credit to dedicate a few floors to micro apartments. Maybe they’re already trying this and Kane proposed the $1M instead. I totally understand why a developer wouldn’t want to do something like that, but I do think mixed income neighborhoods are best.
@JetsJessie Great first post, btw. 
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They do (or used to do) this in cities like Boston. The developers make a certain percentage of units affordable and the developers get some sort of benefit. In larger cities the benefit was that there were less hurdles to the approval process. Imagine a more streamlined or condensed timeline here. How many things would be under construction right now than in approval hell. Or the developers could choose not to participate and go the normal route.
The only way something like this can work is if the city council comes up with an actual plan so developers know what to expect beforehand. The council has been unwilling or unable to do so to this point.
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Great post, and you captured my point so much better than I conveyed earlier. It’s not just about who can/can’t afford a car, how long it takes to drive said car X number of miles, or whether people deserve to live in a given area based on their purchasing power. It’s also about socioeconomic segregation and the impacts that has on a community as a whole.
Not to mention, pushing people out because they can’t afford to live in a dense, high-demand area seems like the antithesis to advocating for more density.
@Straggler Kane reps told us straight up that they wouldn’t include affordable units on the Cabarrus project because of financing. It’s always about money, but maybe not always for the reasons we might think.
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Kane’s Million,
If the city asked for it = extortion
If he freely gave it = quid pro quo
Either way, no bueno till a true policy is in place
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Village Green on Lake Wheeler is $700/mo. Off Gorman are apts starting at $850. Friendly Dr near Dan Allen and Hillsborough St., 1 bd for $750. All of these places are within 10 min drive from Broughton. Some of these would have bus options if you refuse to own a car. All of this is doable with a starting salary. If you want to get really crazy and go 15-20 mins out the options open up almost endlessly…
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If Kane goes to the developer and says “I’m going to take X% of sqft. and rent it at below market rate” and the investors says “well I’m out”, what exactly is he suppose to do? Without financing the buildings won’t be built at all, affordable or otherwise.
Which also begs the question, depending on how the city council handles the affordable housing question, they may just scare off investors from putting money in Raleigh and end up just completely stopping growth.
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Village Green is student apartments. And pretty much the same with the ones on Gorman. Also what are the vacancy rates, I’m assuming most of the apartments near or around downtown are pretty full most of the time.
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Here’s a good economic analysis of the broader situation:
Part of the problem I think stems from the expectation that housing for all income levels must be the same, instead of realizing that housing stratification is essentially proportional to income level. Additionally, as pointed out by Leo and others, the city has done a terrible job providing a healthy urban core with the “middle-housing” it needs, or even ADU’s!
How can our government keep demanding that the private market solely solve this issue when they keep limiting private market solutions?
I’m not a fan of when bureaucracy limits the market’s ability to address an issue due to zoning limits etc., and then throw it back to the private market to solve the issue with at least one of its hands tied behind it’s back.
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