Carrboro
The Chapel Hill and Carrboro downtowns are vibrant spaces where you can find good food, great music, art, lectures, run into friends and jump on a Chapel Hill Transit bus for free. Some residents have started sharing what they love about our downtowns over on Twitter with the hashtag #loveourdowntowns. Here's a collection of what's been shared so far. Join in on Twitter or share your thoughts on this thread. We'll post another set soon
{Cross Posted from Chapel Hill News}
If you boarded a Chapel Hill Transit bus back in February, you might have been greeted by someone with a clipboard asking you to answer a few questions about your ride. The results of this survey were just released and include relevant and interesting findings as we think about the future of transit in our community.
These survey data tell us quite a bit about who rides Chapel Hill Transit. Most riders (88 percent) were somehow affiliated with UNC, and 93 percent of those surveyed were taking the bus to get to college or work. A majority (68 percent) ride the bus five days a week while another 21 percent use it three or four days a week.
{Cross posted from the Chapel Hill News}
A picture of a stop sign graffitied to read “STOP PROGRESS” appeared on Twitter last week. The person who Tweeted it captioned it simply: “Chapel Hill politics in a nutshell.”
A few days later, a community leader expressed to one of us their disappointment in how our community is perceived. “People used to look to us as a leader in innovative policies, a place where cool things were happening. That doesn’t happen anymore.”
How we got to this point is no mystery. Past local elected officials enacted policies that made it difficult to open new businesses and build new kinds of housing. As a result, most development of the past few decades has been low-density, single-family homes on dead-end streets.
To RSVP for March 22 hearing, go here: http://www.ifcweb.org/rsvp
Starts at 7:30 p.m. Board Chambers Room 110 of Carrboro Town Hall
From the IFC Website: "The IFC has met with the Board of Aldermen to start the process for FoodFirst, but we need your continued advocacy and support to bring this vision to reality! A public hearing will be held on Wednesday, March 22, 2016, and we would love to see as many friendly faces as possible to speak on behalf of FoodFirst. You can find more details about this project at www.ifcfoodfirst.org!"
Statement of Support for IFC Community Kitchen in Carrboro:
Weaver Community Housing Association would like to voice its support of the IFC locating the Food First community kitchen in downtown Carrboro. WCHA is concerned about public safety for all of its residents and that includes those of low-income and marginalized populations. Hence, our organization does not support criminalization of the homeless by spreading fear of panhandling and loitering. The existence of poor residents is not a public safety issue. Tactics such as these have been used by many cities to push the poor and homeless farther out of town where they are invisibilized. We stand with the National Coalition for Homeless and their Homeless Bill Of Rights and recognize that violence and marginalization of the homeless is a national problem.
We also recognize the the Food First kitchen will be supplying groceries to many families who plan to cook meals in their homes and that a focus on fears of “idle persons” is largely unwarranted. Roughly 1.7 million people in North Carolina live in poverty, which amounts to about 1 in 5 people. There is an overwhelming need for centralized, community services especially now that the state of North Carolina has stopped supplying food stamps to those without work. We also recognize that people of color disproportionately make up these affected groups at, by some estimates, roughly 78% of those who live in poverty in our state. When we choose to make these services less accessible, we do so at a detriment to these marginalized groups. We ask that Carrboro businesses and the town make the decision to support these community efforts downtown and stand up for those who are struggling in our communities. We also ask for other local organizations to sign on to this statement.
Weaver Community Housing Association is a non-profit housing association that is owned and managed by low-income residents in Carrboro, North Carolina. Our mission is to provide permanent, affordable and sustainable housing for low-income families and individuals, and to empower them to make decisions to maintain their homes and communities. See www.Wcha.coop for more info
Date:
Tuesday, March 22, 2016 - 7:30pm to 10:30pm
Location:
Room 110 Carrboro Town Hall
[Cross-posted from the Chapel Hill News]
We’re fortunate to live in a community with many resources and services. That’s a large part of what makes southern Orange County so appealing to newcomers, and so hard for natives and Carolina graduates to leave.
But our community isn’t perfect. We don’t have it all. The way we live is changing, and so our community and the things we want to see in it have to change, too. How we currently live and how people will live in 50 years are sure to be different. It’s important that we keep this evolution in mind in making decisions now that shape our community later.
We should start today to identify what’s missing in our community. For example, community conversations have already identified a desire for things like an arts district, more robust public transit options, more green space, housing options that are affordable for everyone, retail choices that don’t require driving to Durham, and commercial space to support microenterprises and makers.
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