We've compiled issues of interest coming before or at play in each of our municipalities and the county this Fall, which we’ll be following. Here goes:
Carrboro
The Carrboro Board of Alderpersons gets back to regular work with a meeting on September 4, 2018. Here’s a snapshot of what’s on their horizon:
- Public hearing on Weaver Street Market renovations
- Report on NC 54 West Corridor Study
- Update on the 203 South Greensboro project (Southern Branch Library)
- Public hearing on Lloyd Property conditional rezoning (it’s back!)
- Update on the Old 86 commercial development concept
Chapel Hill
The Chapel Hill Town Council re-convenes on September 5, 2018. Here’s what we and they have to look forward to this fall:
As we’ve covered before, there are many mobile home parks in Orange County and they are some of the most affordable types of housing we have. Many, however, are situated on land that is valuable and ripe for re-development (we are keeping an eye on the mobile home park on MLK and Taylor called the Tar Heel Mobile Court as the gas station in front of it has recently closed).
Last year our School of Social Work class, a service learning course with the Community Empowerment Fund, learned how to use a racial equity toolkit to assess 5 local community policies or programs and hopefully produce an analysis that was informative and useful to our elected officials.
For years now, residents and elected officials alike have expressed concern over the affordability of housing in Orange County and the Triangle. Durham’s “Pennies for Housing” and Chapel Hill’s recent “Affordable Housing Bond” attest to the central role housing affordability has played in civic discourse in our area. Moreover, research suggests that the cost of an area’s housing is among the most prominent variables that factor into people’s decisions on where settle.
Which is why it’s nice to see articles that help us make investment decisions. Take a recent one by Derrick Miller published on the SmartAsset site. Miller uses the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)’s definition of “housing cost-burdened”—i.e., when people spend more than 30% of their income on housing—to estimate the percentage of folks in various U.S. cities who are burdened by their housing costs. His calculations reveal that Newark, NJ is the nation’s “most severely housing cost-burdened” city in the U.S. and that Cary, NC is the least housing cost-burdened city.
I opened the mailer and threw it away. The return address was “Planning Department, Town of Carrboro”. As a city planning student, I thought I would have been more intrigued. But the notice was for a zoning change in a neighborhood I knew nothing about, despite the fact I live just across the train tracks in a North Greensboro Street apartment.
I live with 7 housemates. When I tell that to people, sometimes their mouths go agape.
“Seven?!” they’ll wonder or say aloud in surprised disbelief.
“Yeah, seven, and I like it that way.”
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