Travis Crayton's blog
In case you missed it (in the event that all of your Facebook friends didn't post it), the New York Times posted a "36 Hours in Chapel Hill-Carrboro" video and piece last week. The video features several local restaurants and bars, including Al's Burger Shack, ONE Restaurant, the Baxter Bar & Arcade, Neal's Deli, among others, and local attractions like the NC Botanical Gardens, Ackland Art Museum, and the Carolina Basketball Museum.
The editors of OrangePolitics thought the video was superb and truly highlighted some of the best food, drinks, and attractions in our community. But we did want to ask you: What do you think the NY Times missed that is a must-see if you're just dropping in for a few days? Let us know in the comments.
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.
As I took my seat in the Paul Green Theatre last Saturday for PlayMakers Repertory Company’s production of An Enemy of the People, I had no expectation that the performance would resonate with the kind of local government discourse and behavior I see right here in Chapel Hill. Yet, as the play began and the story unfolded, that is exactly what happened.
Written by Henrik Ibsen in 1882 and adapted by Arthur Miller in 1950, Enemy tells the story of Dr. Stockmann, a physician who attempts to expose an inconvenient truth about his town, only to find himself and his family alienated, alone, and in danger as a result of his actions.
As the play reaches its climax, Dr. Stockmann makes a final attempt to convey his findings and alert his community to what he has uncovered. But rather than being able to speak freely, he is silenced from speaking about the issue at hand, which causes him to dive into a monologue condemning the tyranny of the majority, the silencing of his freedom of speech, and the hypocrisy of those around him who abandon their values in the face of inconvenient truths.
Last week, Chapel Hill’s economic development officer, Dwight Bassett, presented some data on Chapel Hill’s housing market to a reasonably-sized crowd at Town Hall. Bassett’s presentation followed a brief talk from Robert Hickey of the National Housing Conference about what’s happening in housing trends around the country.
Like many of the other audience members, it was Bassett’s data that struck me the most. (During the Q&A following the presentations, all but one question was directed at Bassett rather than Hickey). The one number that really stood out: 3117%. That is, since 1990, the number of houses in Chapel Hill valued at over $500,000 has increased by 3117%.
Compare this to more affordable price ranges: For houses valued between $100,000-$149,000, the number of houses has increased by only 32%. For houses valued between $150,000-$199,999, there has only been a 107% increase in the number of houses.
Parking, like traffic, is a recurring theme in local conversation about growth and development. We often hear from some community members that there is nowhere to park in downtown Chapel Hill/Carrboro, that a lack of parking is hurting local businesses, and that the parking minimums required for the Ephesus-Fordham renewal district are insufficient.
But the facts simply don’t support these claims. The reality is that providing more parking – especially surface parking – is fundamentally incompatible with urban land uses.*
Numerous urban planning scholars have researched parking, and their research has consistently confirmed that more parking is not desirable on any metric – unless, that is, you want more people to drive and create more traffic.
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