Molly De Marco's blog
In November 2013, the Chapel Hill Town Council voted 7-1 to sell 8.5 acres of town-owned land on Legion Road to Durham-based affordable housing developer, DHIC, Inc, for $100 (the property was valued at $2 million) for the development of 170 units of affordable housing. One of the steps in that development was the need for DHIC to apply for tax credits from the North Carolina Housing Finance Agency to assist with funding for the development.
On Monday, DHIC president Greg Warren announced that, because a document was missing from the application, the application had been eliminated from consideration. Because of the incomplete application, DHIC must wait until 2015 to apply for the opportunity again, delaying the completion of an important affordable housing project as we continue to face a housing crisis.
Friends and allies for affordable housing in Chapel Hill---
There are numerous developments in various stages of the planning process in both Carrboro and Chapel HIll, so many that it is hard to keep track of them. Here we provide a rundown of the status of developments of most interest in Southern Orange County.
Carrboro
A summary of active development applications can be found here and is updated monthly. The Town staff also created a map of the active developments. Active or recently approved developments are:
Charles Blackwood and David Caldwell faced off in a second Democratic primary election Tuesday to determine who will be Orange County's first new sheriff in more than 30 years.
The map below shows the precinct-level results of this runoff election. The results are shown as the ratio of votes for Blackwood to votes for Caldwell. (As usual, these preliminary precinct-level results are inaccurate to the extent that early votes may have differed from votes cast on election day. See the raw numbers in this Google spreadsheet. Thanks to Damon Seils for providing the map.)
A total of 8413 Orange County residents voted out of a possible 91,173. So, only 9.23% of voters participated in choosing our next sheriff.
During budget discussions last night, some members of the Chapel Hill Carrboro School Board indicated that they would support a strategy to cut their budget that would affect some of our lowest income workers. A proposal was made to move 15 custodians from being school district employees making $11/hour to contractors making only $9.60/hour. This would save $30,000, but is it really the way we want to save money? Not me.
The School Board may vote on this budget cut on July 17th, depending on when the North Carolina General Assembly passes the state budget and what it includes.
Addressing affordable housing so that all people can afford to live in our community is an extremely important issue to many in our community. It has been given as a reason to develop and redevelop our towns and as a reason not to. Many organizations including the Community Home Trust, EmPOWERment Inc., Habitat for Humanity, the InterFaith Council, CASA, Orange County Justice United, and The Marion Cheek Jackson Center have been working with the towns and county to provide and/or advocate for housing at prices attainable across all spectrums of income.
In this season of municipal budget discussions, a rundown of what our towns and elected boards are working on around affordable housing seems appropriate. I asked members of each elected board what their board is focused on this year. Here is a summary.
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