In 2018 at the height of the “council of no,” a group called Raleigh for All started meeting to develop a counterweight to the “progressive” not-in-my-backyard establishment that held not just city council seats but a lot of “weight” within institutions like the CACs and city boards/commissions. The group stayed active into 2019 but petered out either slightly before or slightly after the 2019 elections. There hasn’t been a real group to replace it and there’s really no organized entity existing in Raleigh to support new housing/development and improvements to our community that might tend to fall victim to process and provincialism.
Would folks on this forum be interested in such a group? Am I missing the boat on an existing organization? Thoughts in general?
I been waiting for this and your on point will be in touch, its time to correct the narrative folks want to blame developers nope they need to look at these foreign companies and big corporations buying up the housing china actually uses this as a form of economic Warfare but no one gets it ! Easier to blame developers for building whats in demand, future luxury housing will become tomorrows affordable housing, I know its hard to grasp but in the end the market will correct things if we get the proper zoning, cut red tape with permits speed the process up and fighting to get state and federal government to actually get involved with redlining and zoning reforms as far as putting laws on the books to greatly reduce single family zoning and correct these foreign companies from buying up all the housing, its alot of work to be done.
I attended a few of those Ral4All meetings so I’m naturally in. On a related note, I was listening to this episode from Ezra Klein and caught this piece. From the transcript.
On the political side, this is a very young movement. It’s really only been active for maybe about five years. It’s gaining traction quickly, and it’s gaining traction in more places, not just in the blue expensive places. We’re seeing active reforms in places like Utah. There’s an active group in North Carolina pushing for statewide zoning reform. So it’s gaining traction in more places.
Does anyone know who she may be referring to? What group is this in NC? I wonder if going local as well as state-wide would really push the pro-housing movement. I’m curious to know who in Raleigh is part of this.
I think they are just referring to the fact that reforms are happening with us. Raleigh took down single family only zoning. So we make the list by default imo
Agreed. I was listening to that episode just yesterday, and I also felt like Schuetz just meant “group” as in “group of people aligned to a cause” (and not necessarily an organized group). She did back out of some of Ezra’s questions about messaging politics by saying she’s just an economist by training, after all, which may imply that she doesn’t have the habit of making that distinction by instinct. (As an aside for that episode, I’d love to hear a similar conversation with Micky Fearn, who spearheaded Raleigh’s study on a better system for CACs)
Back to the topic though: if we’re going to have a coalition in favor of housing, I think you have to look at this at a regional level rather than just Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill etc.
Like @atl_transplant and Colby mentioned, WakeUP Wake County and Raleigh Forward have recently been working in this direction (and outside of the Oak City, NEXT Chapel Hill). Beyond PACs and interest groups, Nate Baker, one of Durham’s planning commissioners have also been very outspoken on Twitter about developing better. There’s also a Durham analogue to the dtraleigh community which is also a natural place to organize. All of these places are good, but they’re inherently focused only on their corners of the Triangle. I’d argue that if you:
want to do something new that doesn’t currently exist in our region, and;
want to truly make an impact in our housing supply without one county becoming more lopsided than the other;
Agreed that the Triangle is lacking a regional focus (not just in housing advocacy, but in most spaces). We work better as a region, not as two competing cities. I’ve said this before, but I think a lot of the anti-commuter rail discourse is a result of being inwardly-focused. I know a ton of folks who live in one city and work in the other, so inward focus doesn’t really make much sense.
Thinking out loud, and I have no idea how we could possibly go about something like this… what if a forum like this existed for the region as a whole? It’d be a massive undertaking, but, if we could get more folks thinking regionally, could that lead to better advocacy?
Same! I think you’re onto something: a regional equivalent of our online community here sounds like the perfect first step towards a permanent movement. I’d be happy, as well, to be a part of a movement for a better RDU
…so much so that I may or may not have impulsively bought domain names to do just that.
I mean the tech to do this good to go. I just need folks who know the other corners of the triangle to moderate. And we have to meet up for beers occasionally. If you know anyone interested, why not talk about it.
The first test could be showing up ! And showing out ! For the North Hills rezoning, this next meeting is crucial the nimbys showed up and well showed out, now to be fair some of the stuff they have concerns about are legit, but alot of them that did show was backed by livable Raleigh and one wake, the Kane rezoning is not a slam dunk this go round, now what I do know is Kane will be making more concessions and yes rightly so, but we need to again show up ! And Show out ! For Density,Urbanism and this rezoning! Lets start at the next meeting folks we can’t let these Nimbys and the rest of the no crowd take this city ! Lets do a meet up at city hall for this rezoning! And show support !
