Hmm, not so sure about this being a redlining case. Positioning affordable housing right by future DTS and Caraleigh area where housing prices are rising significantly would be considered the opposite, youd think. Also, this property is significantly elevated from the creekbed. Have never seen flooding issues in the direct vicinity so Id have to defer to the environmental analysts, which it sounds like Mary Black should do as well. She says the current floodplain map is not adequate. I would love to hear her expert (she does have an environmental science degree) explaination as to what needs to be improved.
3 Likes
A lot of those people get the term ‘Affordable Housing’ confused way too much. Affordable Housing means that it’s government-subsidized housing:
https://raleighnc.gov/housing/affordable-rental-housing
So, it’s absolutely possible to add government-subsidized affordable housing to an area where prices are going up. Normally, people are just looking at market-rate prices of market-rate apartments and then bringing up the fact that those market-rate apartments aren’t affordable. They’re looking in the wrong places.
That said, we need to do more in terms of affordable housing. Raleigh had one of the highest on-average rent increases in the country. Crested Butte dealt with it on a much smaller-level, but it shows what can happen to a community if the average worker can’t afford rent:
I’d actually say that a lot of these people argue in bad faith. The reason the focus on making affordable housing is because it requires a lot of bureaucracy to set in place (I’m talking out of my ass here, this is mostly an assumption). Then, if it actually does start to come to fruition, they’ll provide so much obvious bs pushback because it doesn’t meet zoning standards, the roads won’t accommodate density, etc. Every single time one of those is addressed, they’ll bring out a new roadblock.
We need to bring back “FLATTEN THE CURVE”
1 Like
I think this reply should be a twitter thread, because I’d like to retweet it 
1 Like
Ha, good idea. Give me a few.
5 Likes
Just jumping in to say my experience at the Missing Middle event was positive. The majority of people who spoke at the tables I was at didnt really have problems with missing middle. People mostly just really wanted rent to stop going up and for their to me more affordable housing. I sat at a table of mostly older folks that suprised my by all being positive about the missing middle stuff.
I think the city was smart in how they structured things so that everyone got a chance to voice their own opinion instead of having loud upset ones take over. Was chatting with Leo about this, but I think it was a format where just showing up and saying something calmly positive about missing middle would be recorded and make as much of a difference as the vocal hate it voices. So go do that (the positive side) at one of these events if you have not already!
Bonus points for always beeing a good time running into cool people from the DTRCommunity Forum!
One funny story I will add is that a guy kicked off comments at my table (not for the larger group) saying the presentation was borring as hell, and they did a bad job blah blah blah. Then he picked up his info packet, looked at it, and said, “I mean, yeah… this is all good. But that presentation sucked”. 
For the record I thought the presentation was good. Dude just cracked me up.
14 Likes
Again with misunderstanding: we build for the future we want to have, not the present we have.
What a sad dearth of vision. Not only have American cities grown much faster, but they also grew much better once upon a time. Here’s a chart (from Homer Hoyt) of how real estate markets reacted to Chicago’s post-WW1 population explosion:
By the mid-1920s, the population was growing by 100,000 a year – but there was so much new construction that rents were falling!
(And for what it’s worth, rents and prices for Raleigh housing are both falling right now.)
The city that exists around us wasn’t handed down on stone tablets to Moses; it was created by people like ourselves, and we in turn get to shape the city that we will pass down to the future. I personally take inspiration from the Athenian citizenship oath: “With heart and mind and hand we will strive that we may bequeath this city not only no less but nobler and more beautiful than it was transmitted to us.”
I grew up in Wake County, watching the built environment around me changing almost by the day, and I cannot fathom how anyone who lives around Raleigh can internalize the notion that cities are fixed entities. I mean, maybe I can understand how someone who’s lived in Youngstown or Altoona might think that, but Raleigh?!
(Oh, and sorry nativists, but the Constitution guarantees a right to travel within the US.)
True, but it also works in the short term, because MMH directly bends the cost curve (not just indirectly, via a supply effect). MMH has lower input costs per unit: lower land costs, lower material costs because smaller units are possible, lower labor costs because they share some services. Just the land cost savings is ~$50K per unit, which is nothing to write off!
The key is to compare like with like, i.e., new construction with new, not new vs. old. You can already see the effects in South Park, where new townhouses are selling at $500K vs. new detached houses for $700K… yes, more than the $400K for reno’d old houses, but those aren’t comparable. Or look at how lot split subdivisions are pricing in Durham: $425K for small new houses, less than comparably sized old houses and much cheaper than large new houses.
(1) They don’t have any feasible, constructive answers at the municipal level, besides I guess workers’ revolution, which is not good for homeowners either
(2) There are no quick fixes for wicked problems (and “There is no more classic example of a “wicked problem” than housing”), because if there were, they wouldn’t be wicked problems.
6 Likes
im not sure about classist, probably some…i remember when bishops park at wade and saint mary was built. this was early 80s and just across wade not far from the ‘williamson scare’ brought up a few months back. there were some people of note that lived in them. i cant recall what type of fight was fought to get them built though. but it was quite a few units, density wise for raleigh.
1 Like
i cant speak to all hoa neighborhoods but mine at north ridge villas was great to me anyway. kept junk cars out of parking lots and off streets, it paid for snow removal and the repaving of the streets and parking lots and with the townhomes it covered exterior siding and grounds maintenance and maintained a pool and playground and tennis court… it’s why i play tennis now many years later. we also had a harris teeter, numerous restaurants, gym and other stuff right out our backdoor essentially…we always walked or biked to the sc.
1 Like
I second that. My HOA keeps everything pristine. Nice not to constantly pick others people’s trash up in front of my house when I was living downtown. More than once I would see someone just throw their Bojangles trash out of the car window on the street. Then pull into their driveway. Even some of the locals disrespect their own neighborhood.
1 Like
One for the planning wonks out there
1 Like
Anyone call into the More Homes More Choices online event this week? I had a last minute conflict but expect to go to the one at the end of the month.
2 Likes
Or as we used to say:
“When you are ‘20 minutes to [insert list of amenities here]’…you are nowhere”.
3 Likes
In recent months, opponents to building missing middle housing in Raleigh have claimed that the $2M townhomes that are being built in the Hayes Barton neighborhood are “proof” that missing middle housing won’t help Raleigh address its housing needs… But if you know anything about the neighborhood, you know that the true story is more [complicated].(We need to talk about the $2 million townhouses in Raleigh - Triangle Blog Blog).
11 Likes
Is the “15 Minute City” a socialist plot? 
2 Likes
What a surprise that resistance is being cast as socialist conspiracy. 
Next it will be blamed on drag queens, and all public transportation will be banned as a result. Walkable neighborhoods will be banned as a direct assault to the vast majority of people who enjoy their zero walkscore suburbia and don’t want anyone to have anything other than what they have. Books on the topic will be banned and kids will be prevented from learning about it for fear of grooming.
12 Likes
I’m generally a skeptical person when it comes to power systems. I very much so trust random people I meet in life, but have a guilty until proven innocent mindset when it comes to massive, powerful systems like federal government agencies, intergovernmental agencies, and corporations.
Having said that, the “great reset” or illuminati, or whatever they want to call it, could very easily imprison people within our current development pattern, and it would undoubtedly be worse than if we had walkable, community oriented neighborhoods.
If the divide and conquer ploy is alive in corporate media and identity politics strategies, HOA governed cul-de-sac neighborhoods where neighbors don’t interact with each other except to tell each other to pick up after their dog are ripe for conquest. In the name of protecting democracy, or climate change, place a ridiculously high embargo on foreign oil and force gas shortages across suburbia, and watch it fall into anarchy as grocery store shelves empty and people fight each other for gasoline or EV charging stations while electric providers throttle production and force rolling blackouts. Good luck getting the basic resources needed for survival in a super car dependent place when gasoline or electricity is scarce.
If that despotic takeover were to ever unfold, I would much rather be in a walkable mixed use community where neighbors already know each other and have a sense of interdependent community. This is how humans have survived catastrophes and hard times for millennium. Chuck Marohn’s Strong Towns book opens with an analysis of human settlement pattern as it relates to building security, labor conservation, warmth, and convenience into the fabric of the streets and buildings of ancient cities. Fascinating stuff.
7 Likes
When are we going to see the Jewish space lasers in action?
1 Like
Oh yeah, that too…plus CRT.
1 Like