I’m inclined to think this is what happened - especially in a high-turnout election. Note that almost all of the WCDP-endorsed candidates won, notably Melton.
The fact that the citywide races were lost by the NIMBYs, despite an all-out ground war, is quite a repudiation of their self-importance. Those candidates, especially MAB, had much higher name recognition among Dem voters.
The irony is that national Democratic leaders, from Biden to AOC, overwhelmingly support YIMBY ideas. Raleigh’s YIMBYism is likely to unlock hundreds of millions of dollars in federal transit funding (and already has!), as USDOT has made its awards contingent on having existing zoning policies already supportive of transit — having witnessed too many situations like Denver and LA, where taxpayers spent billions to run shiny but empty new transit lines through miles of forever-SFH sprawl.
And a 2-year council cycle makes it impossible for anyone to learn that housing costs and housing finance are complex, and affordable housing is a wicked problem that can’t just be fixed with a bunch of empty “greedy people are bad” platitudes.
Yes. Exclusionary zoning does not work unless it’s paired with expulsive zoning. And because richer, whiter people have more political power, they have more power to exclude from their neighborhoods, and to expel onto other people’s neighborhoods: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0308518X18755144
Even OTB is making some decent moves. Have the Liberty Townhomes, McGrady Farm Property - just now clearing land for 293 Townhomes, and the Hammond Rd apartment complex. Nothing crazy compared to dt’s numbers or aesthetics but they should be decently priced.
The equitable thing is for expensive single family neighborhoods to densify and go MF. There are a plethora of those in the NW quadrant of ITB Raleigh. Though canst not gentrify that which is already wealthy.
That mansion->17 townhomes development is exactly what we need to do 1000 times over. Unfortunately itnis exactly the project that brought out the pitchforks.
Former CC member, Russ Stephenson was hawking voters as they got out of their cars, at the heavily NCSU populated Brooks Avenue Ch of Ch. He handed them the Dem Party endorsement flier & pointed out (to students mainly) the 2 State Profs on the ballot - one being tRuth. Calling out MAB for taking developers $. I asked a Dem Party about their (Dem) party openly promoting one Dem over another Dem. She became very agitated and said she nothing about that, as she walked away. Bunch of has-been hold the Dem Party in Wake. This should motivate a take over. They don’t represent the people. Stay tuned.
This was the second shoe to drop on the current council. The first shoe was the elimination of the CACs. This allowed the NIMBYs to draw a straight line from the CACs’ elimination of to the 17 townhouses in Hayes Barton, thus providing the perfect boogieman for their narrative.
“I’m optimistic that we’ll find good collaboration with all the folks who will be on there,” she said in an interview late Tuesday. “And I hope that we’ll find ways to collaborate and continue the good work that the council has been doing, but also enhance some places where we’ve fallen short in the last few years.”
I really don’t think she’s going to be that bad. She seems at least open to collaborating, while Harrison and Jones come off as very recalcitrant.
I’m going to float a theory, could be way off on this.
I think a lot of younger first-time politicians have a tendency to run very naïve campaigns, especially when they’re running on a platform of “I don’t like the way things are now, so I’m going to do things differently.” Then they arrive and realize that city politics aren’t as black-and-white as they initially thought.
We may see some of that among the four newcomers, particularly Black and Patton, so, even if they disagree with the incumbents on policy, they’re going to be looking to them for guidance as they navigate uncharted territory. This could, potentially, present opportunities for mentorship within the council. When they’re faced with real housing problems that extend beyond the mere perception of gentrification, they’re going to be forced to make real choices. Maybe, if we’re lucky, they’ll seek out the experience of their colleagues.
It’s easy to be a wealthy NIMBY in leadership, which is what a lot of the Council of No was. Wealthy NIMBYs tend to want status quo (“screw you, I got mine”), blocking density for the sake of blocking density. Patton and Black, on the other hand, have both expressed concerns about affordability and seem to value “smart growth,” so they’re going to have to figure out how to reconcile that with their current NIMBY tendencies. It’s possible that, with a little time, we may find an ally among one or both of them.
I’m definitely choosing to be half glass full about this council until proven otherwise.
Find it hard to believe that every decision will be a 4-4 split, I think everyone would realize that doesn’t benefit the city or anyone’s political aspirations.
I don’t think a Liveable Raleigh endorsement is a death wish for development, and I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing if we get a council that considers some of the finer details. I easily could’ve seen the previous council passing the Berkeley rezoning without a thought if the owner of the Cafe hadn’t spoken up. I don’t think there’ll be any opposition to building 40 stories on empty parking lot, but there might be some more nuance like we saw with the Berkeley preservation.
At least this is just me being hopeful that they see the obvious compromise.
See, I absolutely do. It’s too tall, what about traffic, what about shadows, what about blocking the view from another building, etc. I’m not saying all 4 of the new members will block it, but I completely expect this kind of crap to be brought up for every downtown rezoning.
For each new council-member, community engagement is a big priority, which means a lot more of this is up to us (especially those here who live downtown). I know I’ve personally never considered speaking because I could trust the council to vote yes on most things, but now that’s not necessarily the case.
If they would start out working on some common ground stuff and get some good chi going among them, then maybe they’ll find a way to work together going forward?
I’d think that the pro-development voice on the council would think long and hard about getting their engagement model effectively up and running before the (now) elevated grievance voices on the council start using their platform to spread the grievance wider throughout the Raleigh community.
They could maybe they could create a complaint council where they could just moan and grown about sidewalk issues or any stuff going on, but no development say.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but the Nexus (N&O) lot has already been rezoned to 40-stories, and we just haven’t seen a new development proposal yet to reflect the newly higher zoning. That said, the new iteration of CC can’t really do much regarding any new proposals, since they can build-by-right to 40 stories now.