March 2015

In its ongoing series on affordable housing, the Town of Chapel Hill hosted Michelle Winters, senior visiting fellow at the Urban Land Institute’s Terwilliger Center for Housing last Tuesday to talk about the policy tools and best practices for affordable and workforce housing.

Winters began her presentation discussing housing trends nationwide and specifically talked about the recent surge in renter households that is expected to continue into the future. The most important takeaway: Half of all renter households are at least moderately cost burdened, meaning they spend at least 30% of their income on rent. This statistic highlights why housing professionals have broadened their discussion of what affordable means in recent years to include a range, all the way from homelessness to just below market rate. As the town’s executive director for housing and community development, Loryn Clark, put it: housing needs to be affordable for everybody.

Serving on the Chapel Hill Town Council has been an enormous privilege. We’ve accomplished a lot over the past four years, but as residents remind me every day, there’s still a lot we can do to improve and strengthen our community.

That’s why I’m announcing the launch of my campaign for re-election to the Chapel Hill Town Council.

I’m proud of what we have achieved over the last four years. A stronger food truck ordinance, expanded access to our Community Center pool and a single-family stormwater ordinance that actually works all have had a positive impact for our community. The Glen-Lennox development agreement, new zoning in Ephesus-Fordham, as well as  exciting projects in downtown like LaUNCh Chapel Hill and a redeveloped University Square will bring new jobs and expand our economic tax base.

On April 9, Chapel Hill-Carrboro Schools will present an unprecedented living wage policy for full and part-time employees to the Orange County Board of Commissioners.

According to School Board Member James Barrett, the idea for a living wage policy emerged from a cost-savings discussion during the summer of 2014 to move some school janitors from district to contract-based employment. In doing this, the city would save money at the expense of a drop in wage for workers.

The unanimous board-approved wage decrease from about $11.50 to $9.50 an hour infuriated Barrett, who was not present for the vote.

“I raised a fuss about it,” he said. “I didn’t think it was acceptable to give our lowest paid employees a twenty-percent cut while at the same time giving our highest paid employees—our administrators—a three-percent raise.”

Later in September, Orange County Commissioner Mark Dorosin continued the discussion of a living wage for both employees and contractors in a joint meeting between the school board and the Orange County Board of Commissioners.