affordable housing

After 6 years (term limits!) of service with the Orange County Partnership to End Homelessness Leadership Team, the last few as chair, my run ends with 2018.  Throughout the month of December I’ve been curating a series of tweets talking about the state of homelessness in Orange County and nationally and the work that we and our partners are doing to make homelessness “rare, brief, and one-time.”  

You can take a look at the full twitter archive here to learn about our partners, our successes, our needs, and ways you can help end homelessness in Orange County.

In an unusual move, the county commissioners have invited comment on 2016 bond referendum—even though it’s not on the agenda.

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.