It’s not passing the buck…it’s asking developers to make a small temporary sacrifice in exchange for something of great and enduring value…and if the developers are able to make it work within their plan then it’s a win win. If not they’re free to not include it and see what the city does at that point.
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Then the city needs to create incentives for the developer creating “something of great and enduring value”.
If the city benefits so should the developer.
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@GucciLittlePig @scotchman I know, and I do subscribe to the N&O, notwithstanding how disappointed I am with the product. But given that I earn my living as the editor-in-chief of a newspaper that keeps all of its content behind a paywall, I would just feel too much cognitive dissonance evading another paper’s paywall for me to do that.
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This affordable housing requirement is just a disaster. But people are voting these virtue-signaling politicians in to office, so this is the crap we get. Hassles and holdups. Canceled projects. Reduced projects.
We could have diverse politicians - conservative and libs / Republican and Democrats that have in the past built Raleigh to the top 10 American city that it is now. But the latest rounds of voting have flushed out all diversity, leaving us with only extreme liberal politicians that want to micromanage these private investments.
We could have 20 story towers going up there. The project would have featured around 500,000 square feet of mixed-use space, including around 40,000 square feet of retail, 230,000 square feet of Class A office space and 170,000 square feet for residential units. With all that sweet tax money coming in that the city could then decide to do something with. But that’s not good enough for these politicians:
The Central CAC voted to approve the rezoning earlier this year, but only on the condition that the plan includes affordable housing. The property owners did not fulfill this condition, and City Council members repeatedly asked them to consider it at the hearing Wednesday night.
Several officials brought up the possibility of including micro-units or potentially developing higher to accommodate more room for affordable units.
“Is the micro units something you can’t commit to because theres a finance problem?” council member Kay Crowder asked. “Because there doesn’t seem to be a finance problem in terms of being able to get money where there’s micro units. It doesn’t seem to be a barrier as sometimes affordable housing can be in the banking world.”
Council members Russ Stevens and Corey Branch also spoke in support of adding affordable housing to the projects.
The ridiculousness of these politicians, like Kay Crowder: ‘the bank should be able to get you more money to subside this crap’… UHHG. So disappointing.
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Plus, the research around the country around the country has shown that simply building more housing doesn’t have the “trickle down” effect a lot of people assume it will. In places where only zoning has been loosened, a huge majority of those units added end up being expensive. I think loosening up zoning, inclusionary zoning, new AH Bond and other tools all have to be considered/implemented to help provide relief for folks at all income levels. It would be nice if the gerrymandered GA would stop meddling and let Raleigh use some of these tools.
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I would really like to subscribe to more sites if they would offer a casual reader rate. Such as say offer limited number of stories a day. A lot of newspapers I do read offer a free daily number of reads, such as 2 or 3 storys per day,…
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It’s not a requirement, such a requirement would be illegal under state law. The council asked them to consider adding it and delayed moving forward to allow the developer to consider adding what the CAC asked for as a condition. It’s not the end of the project.
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It sounds like nothing got blocked or prevented here, it just got kicked to the new council, which is fine–preferable, actually. Kay isn’t even going to be a council member in three weeks, so her opinion isn’t really super duper that important.
Hopefully with the new council the whole thing sails through. Obviously, I personally would really, really, like to see some affordable housing included in this project, but I am super, super excited about building a 20-story, ADA-compliant (and pretty sweet-looking!) building right next to our two main transportation hubs. The project is fantastic, and adding some AH would make it basically perfect IMHO. But, look, with the new council, this is going to get approved.
@JetsJessie is spot-on. Certainly, increasing density and adding more market-rate housing is a necessary piece of multi-pronged strategy to increase affordable housing. If you don’t do that, you’re never going to be able to tackle the problem. But it is absolutely not sufficient to tackle the problem. If all you do is just liberalize zoning for more market housing, that new housing isn’t going to do much to deal with the lack of affordable housing. We need to keep a lot of tools in our toolbox, including inclusionary zoning and direct funding of affordable housing.
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Maybe you can see if the City Council can ask the N&O to look at allowing some affordable subscription plans to lump with their regular rates. Maybe the N&O can ask the banks to give a little more money to subsidize.
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What’s the problem - housing is expensive in downtown? Then don’t live there. Easy solution, right? We’ve asked it a million times - why does affordable housing NEED to be in downtown’s most desirable projects? There’s so many other choices for housing in the area.
Meanwhile you guys are trying excuse these politicians by saying ‘they’re not delaying it, they’e kicking it down the road’. But that adds to the risk of this project getting scaled down just like the Kane project that went from 12 stories down to 4.
I heard directly from the executive director of CAM that nothing is happening with this project for the foreseeable future. I think that the rezoning is more of a property value thing.
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They’re pushing it off for three weeks so that the newly elected council members can take the seats of the people who got defeated, which is sensible enough. I don’t think there’s any real risk here. That’s very different from the Clancy & Theys project (which got scaled down to six floors, not four). And I know there’s been some questions about this assertion, but a source who has been very credible for me in the past said he spoke with someone very close (cough, cough) to the decision-making process on this one and said that the vociferous opposition from the local residents in Boylan Heights was what killed the project, not a resignation that they couldn’t ultimately get a rezone approved by the new council. And the objections from the Boylan Heights residents had absolutely nothing to do with affordable housing.
There’s a whole thread on this forum devoted to affordable housing that address questions like “Why are people so adamant that we build some affordable housing downtown where land is more expensive?” and “Why don’t we just build all the affordable housing in Southeast Raleigh, far away from the big concentrations of jobs, where land is cheap and also the transit links are poorly developed?” If you are genuinely interested in learning more about the topic and getting answers to some of those questions, I would definitely recommend checking it out.
The first part of this is consistent, up to a point, with what I’ve heard from the HQ Raleigh folks, who have told me that it’s likely to be several years before any actual work commences. But, the owners have already submitted architectural renderings, and from my conversations I can tell you that they’re very serious about doing this development and building 20 stories here.
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I never said they weren’t serious, but the timeline on this sounded like there was no rush to build, at least on the CAM end of the property.
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I think the research shows mixed results. This article summarize research showing that expensive new units help relieve pressure on rents at a variety of levels.
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Yeah, given the size of the parcel, I have no idea if this would be done as one rebuild, or whether it would happen in phases, in which case there may in fact be different timelines for different parts. But yeah, I’m definitely hearing the same story about there being no urgent rush to break ground on this, so it’s not like delaying the rezoning for a few weeks would be any sort of a problem. Honestly, I was pleasantly very surprised at how quickly they came out with the awesome renderings.
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David, I know you struggle with not being condescending, but I’m an avid user of this forum and know well of the Affordable Housing thread, as I keep up with all the threads here.
We’re talking about the delay on THIS project. Which you chuck off as ‘a few weeks is no big deal’. And the delay is due to demands by liberal politicians on private developers to have to have non-market rate housing for a select group of citizens. It’s bad policy. It’s mind boggling people expect a 40 story luxury tower (Kane, etc) to have to have affordable units. It’s a luxury tower for pete’s sake!
How many of us on this forum live in downtown? Probably not even 20% us. And if you make just 50K a year, you wouldn’t qualify for one of these subsidized units, but maybe someone making 20K would. So they get to live cheap, right in the finest projects in downtown, but not the rest of us. Wow, that’s really inclusionary!
Well, I hope the politicians don’t screw this up any worse.
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Build some housing WITHOUT granite countertops, WITHOUT stainless steel appliances, WITHOUT wood floors, WITHOUT spa like bathrooms, WITHOUT high end gyms & over the top amenities, WITHOUT over providing parking, and you’ll have a more affordable product to offer to the marketplace.
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With $16 burgers and $60 steaks downstairs. 
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Hmm. Sounds simple, but I wonder how the pro forma changes with less value in each unit to markup. With a fixed amount of general requirements and costs to go vertical (design, engineering, impact/permit fees, grading, foundation, framing, roof, glazing), the builder would have to increase margin to make same profit on a “stripped down” unit. Either way you’re going to install appliances, plumbing, lighting, flooring, etc. So if you’re charging the same margin on a $500 fridge versus a $1,500, that is 1/3 the margin for the same scope of work. And they may require warranty service/replacement more often. Seems like they’d have to increase % to make it worthwhile. Kind of thinking out loud here.
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