Heritage Park’s renovation is the first thing that comes to mind, but it looks like there’s others. The 89 out of 149 units planned in the East College Park neighborhood near St. Aug’s, as well as the 162 family and 72 senior units in Washington Terrace seem to be some of the more developed projects.
It’s helpful to keep this in context, though: this new project in the historic Hayti district is taking up a bigger chunk of Durham’s overall investments into affordable housing. Raleigh’s affordable housing investments, on the other hand, are more spread out on a map.
Here’s how the two cities’ affordable housing investment plans stack up against each other. Units are in households unless indicated otherwise:
| Type of Affordable Housing Investment | Durham | Raleigh |
|---|---|---|
| Housing bond amount | $95M (2019) | $80M (2020) |
| Total expected investment | $160M | $143M |
| Affordable rental units, to build | 1,600 | 2,850 |
| Affordable rental units, to preserve | 800 | ? |
| Housing for the homeless | 1,700 | 6,300 |
| First-time homebuyer support | 400 | 250 |
| Help homeowners remain in/improve home | 3,000 | 250 |
| Workforce development | ? | $400k |
| Homebuyer counseling | ? | $350k |
In case I did the math or analysis wrong, here’s Durham’s webpage on their housing bond, and here’s Raleigh’s. For Raleigh, you might find this spending plan summary helpful, too.
By the way... (click me!)
As you may have noticed above, I didn’t do an apples-to-apples comparison of affordable housing investments in Raleigh vs Durham. This is because the data available from the two cities were pretty different, and I only had so much time and patience to harmonize them.
Durham’s website on its housing plan (see above) quickly summarizes what their investments will accomplish, but their paper trail is harder to follow. The data it does show, though, is a healthy mix between the dollar amounts to spend and the number of people it will help.
Raleigh’s counterpart webpage, on the other hand, goes straight to the cost of the investment, and take you straight to the slide decks behind key decisions. But it’s also clear that the city is making up its targets as it goes: that site doesn’t have key details like the number of AHUs advertised as clearly. Durham has more defined objectives, but Raleigh has easier-to-find justifications of their decisions.
Raleigh’s jargon-y transparency actually reveals more interesting data, too, if you dig deep enough.
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Only about 30% of new Section 8 voucher holders in Raleigh actually find available units
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8,843 households are on public housing and/or Section 8 waiting lists
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To create a subsidized unit for a household making 30% AMI, the city or county needs to spend “more than double the amount [that is] needed to create a 60% AMI unit”. This, of course, means “fewer total units can be created with same amount of funding”.