I will be there! And more characters
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I’m sure there will be a lot of real characters at this meeting.
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You didn’t even @ me 
!
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Wow I didn’t even remember to snap a pic. Debrief thoughts tomorrow but the meeting seemed pretty even here, leaning towards pro missing middle, from my perspective.
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A big thanks to those of you that took the time out to go and voice up. Glad to hear this one sounded better than the Five Points over-emotional-fist-at-cloud fest.
I plan to attend the virtual one on Feb. 8th but I’m not sure how the format will translate and still think the in-person are the best way to go if you can make them.
Here are the remaining meetings:
Wednesday, February 8, 2023
6-8 p.m. Join the virtual meeting
Tuesday, February 14, 2023
6-8 p.m. Sertoma Arts Center
1400 Millbrook Road
District A
Saturday, February 25, 2023
10 a.m.-Noon Barwell Road Community Center
5857 Barwell Park Drive
District C
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There was definitely some slippery nimby-ism in the building. One guy complained about short-term rentals in ADUs, and another guy at the table chimed. In that there is now a whole home short-term rental in his neighborhood and he’s very concerned. But that short-term rental discussion quickly evolved into an argument that some neighborhoods have duplexes and ADUs and others don’t, and it should stay that way…
At one point I was at a table where I was the only supporter and there were three complainers (avg age 65)
That were concerned with the transit overlay options, especially on Western boulevard near where they all lived coincidentally. As I began expressing respectful disagreement, one started questioning me with interruptions “do you ride transit?” “Do you own a car?”.
Overall it was great and huge kudos to the city for having pro housing staff members present at every table to even push back at times on some of the fear mongering comments
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“Do you understand how irrelevant that is?”
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My thoughts from it was that it was a pretty mixed bag of YIMBYs, NIMBYs, and people somewhere in between, so I thought it was actually pretty representative.
I think I mostly got the more NIMBY crowd I talked to to support greater density in the activity centers that already exist, and greater density along frequent transit corridors. However, the same group seemed to think Midtown isn’t that, so I’m not sure where else they think the density should go besides downtown proper.
My other main feeling I got, and I really hate to say it, is that I felt significantly less optimistic about Jane Harrison’s ability to address our housing supply crisis. There were a couple comments like, paraphrasing, “we have way too much demand and our city is never going to be able to create the housing we need to support that, so”. It’s almost like a giving up attitude. That’s at least the feeling I got from speaking with her at one of the tables. I got this same sort of talking point from a lot of the other more NIMBY people I talked to, about basically Raleigh is too desirable of a city for what we can house. One person said we need to discourage people moving here, and another said we need to close the door to people moving here completely.
With that being said, I was really happy to see a lot of people who I don’t know from the forum also there speaking up in support of these missing middles policies. Glad we’re not alone!
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So, we build a wall!
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Oh, that’s a clubby opinion. It was good enough for them to come here. But, now the boat is full. Oof!
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I had the exact opposite experience of this, all my tables were between mildly supportive or hugely supportive, with one man thinking we weren’t doing enough of it.
I do think that the messaging isn’t clear/could be clearer or has been muddied by the opposition. Missing Middle seems to be interpreted as a solution for bringing down housing prices. I believe this to be true in the long term. However, the problem is that some people think that as soon as a missing middle housing type is built, (for example a townhome in 2022) it automatically needs to be lower than the average going rate for housing. Since they don’t see that, then the MM policy must be a failure.
There’s skepticism and no belief that it’s a long-term game here and that the introduction of additional units on the same land starts to bend the ever increasing housing cost curve. The city’s presentation mentioned this but I felt that should have been emphasized more.
It simply sounds like the skeptics and opposition want short term results. I can actually sympathize with this but only a little. I mean, there’s going to be disruption. It’s probably hard to tell the family that was kicked out of an affordable SFH to make way for a duplex that this is good for the city. At the same time, missing middle or not, there will be disruption. On one side we at least get a duplex instead of just a larger SFH.
On the other hand, we should show empathy here with the people who may be disrupted, skeptical against missing middle but are actually just worried about paying the bills. To them, it’s about the budget. When the ‘Rent’ line item goes up, NONE of this matters to them. If they can move to a lower cost house, townhome, apartment, they’d probably do it and have little to complain about. Short term help is needed here. Not sure what that looks like but missing middle, whether it’s rolled back completely, expanded, or something in between, isn’t going to help them.
Finally, I’m more convinced now than ever that this is all making up for the mistakes of classist Raleighites in the past who banned all these housing types and we are now feeling it. We’re fixing it now and it’ll take decades to stabilize again.
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Disappointing to hear this.
Seems very defeatist and also disingenuous to hold this opinion and simultaneously stress the importance of affordable housing.
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Hmmm, have they figured out that we live in America? Something something freedom…?
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It was great to meet you! I will add a bit of optimism on Jane Harrison. I remember the comment you are mentioning, and I’ll give her a little bit of grace that I think she was heading in the direction of we need to increase supply and increase tenant protections while building more affordable housing.
I emailed Jane earlier this week about the rezoning of city property that went so south and was labeled eco apartheid by livable Raleigh, to build affordable housing adjacent to the Greenway and flood plain along Fayetteville road near the Raleigh water works. She responded very quickly and was appreciative of my message and support to further exploring that site. She mentioned that city staff was going to be analyzing the extent of the floodplain and usable land there for affordable housing across from Eliza pool Park.
She also came up to me after the session and was super complimentary of our table. The first group when you and I were sitting at the table with her. She thought we both along with that other guy had great input and ideas
EDIT: sorry, my voice to text is a bit rambling
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I’m a bit late to the party on this one - what was the “eco apartheid” context? That is a SPICY take.
I would also love to hear what they think “closing the door” would look like. Actively making the city unattractive to potential new residents means that the city would also become unattractive to current residents. Maybe some people can sit all comfy in their HOA regulated bubble of a neighborhood for most of the day but when the quality of their public spaces, professional services, and goods goes down (along with their property value) as a result of their plan to discourage new people from moving here, I don’t want to hear any whinging.
Looking forward to attending the District C missing middle meeting.
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@dtraleigh as usual, you come with the well thought out take from the meeting. I’m glad that the tables you sat at were all more supportive, and glad we got our voices recorded :). Maybe you should’ve been at some of my tables to help push back better :P. I 100% agree with everything you said.
This was my thought, too, which is exactly why I posted it here. I was really looking forward to hearing her thoughts, and, maybe @evan.j.bost will argue with me, but what I got was much more argumentation against how it hasn’t been working and that there isn’t much we can do. The point I continuously tried to make when these comments were brought up, and that @dtraleigh made above, is that this could take a long time, and we’re in the middle of the period of recovering from the impact of the restrictions we had on housing for so long.
Hehe well I’m glad she thought so, because I did think you and I made good points. And I understand that this was a place to discuss and allow disagreement, and she 100% is allowed to push back on points that we make, but I do believe the responses she gave to the points we made were negative and defeatist, and I didn’t hear anything from her about what we should do instead of missing middle to address housing affordability, whereas you and I gave our view on what we should do to address it (which mostly is supporting our current missing middle policies). I guess I should note that this was a 12 minute session I had with her and that that can no way be a true representation on her full thoughts on what to do to make housing more affordable, but it is an accurate representation of what I got from this 12 minute session.
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