affordable housing

It seems that Grubb Properties wants to tear down Glen Lennox, a neighborhood of moderately-priced rentals, and rebuild more densely with a mix of uses including presumably higher-priced housing. The neighbors are applying for a Neighborhood Conservation District, which is, um, interesting. This isn't really what NCDs were designed to do - which is to protect the character and quality of neighborhoods as they change - but no-one seems to be using them for the intended purpose anyway. (Grumble.)

The Leadership Advisory Committee on Carolina North had an interesting discussion about housing as a part of Carolina North this afternoon.

Here are some prepared comments that I presented as a way of launching the discussion:

The housing problem at Carolina North is, in short, that the new workers at Carolina North will either live at Carolina North or they will live elsewhere and need to commute to the campus. There is not a great deal of vacant housing currently available within the Chapel Hill Transit service area (although there is some), so new employees will either have to occupy housing that is to be built in the Chapel Hill Transit service area, or they will have to live outside that service area and commute. Let's take a look at the scale of the problem:

The Ayers/Saint/Gross Development Plan commissioned by the University proposed to build the following: