Durham Voters Overwhelmingly Approve Affordable Housing Bond to Fund an Ambitious Plan — The City of Raleigh Should Follow their Lead
On Tuesday, November 5th, voters in Durham overwhelmingly approved the City’s massive $95 million affordable housing bond.
For supporters of expanded housing affordability for low- and moderate-income families, this is an incredible accomplishment, and we congratulate our Durham neighbors for having the values, courage, and ambition required to see this effort through to completion.
Durham’s bond is the largest affordable housing bond ever to be passed in North Carolina. As described on the Durham Affordable Housing Bond website, money raised from the bond over the next five years will go toward accomplishing the following goals:
- Build 1,600 new affordable housing units.
- Preserve 800 existing affordable rental units.
- Move 1,800 homeless households into permanent residences.
- Provide affordable home ownership opportunities for up to 400 first-time homebuyers.
- Help to stabilize 2,800 low-income renters and homeowners so they can stay in their current homes.
Importantly, although $95 million is unquestionably an enormous price tag, Durham officials have recognized that not even this amount of money is enough to adequately combat Durham’s housing affordability crisis. In fact, the money raised from the newly passed bond will be combined with $65 million from other local and federal funding sources to inject a total of $160 million into the City’s Affordable Housing Bond Investment Plan.
To finance the bond over the next five years, City officials estimate the average Durham homeowner will pay an extra $37 per year in property taxes.
Lessons for the City of Raleigh: Details Matter
All totaled, some 15,000 Durham residents will receive housing assistance, in some form or another, as a result of the historic housing initiative approved by voters on Tuesday. This is no small accomplishment, especially considering that Durham Mayor Steve Schewel only unveiled the plan for the bond last February, during the 2019 State of the City Address.
The fact that the housing bond succeeded within less than a year only underscores the importance of having in place a clear and specific plan that starts with robust community engagement and includes land use ordinance amendments to complement proposed bond projects.
You can read more about the details of Durham’s five-year spending plan here in this detailed fact sheet.
Like Durham — and many other urban areas throughout the U.S. — Raleigh, too, is in the midst of a critical housing shortage. However, to date, we lack a clear and specific plan for how to achieve greater housing affordability.
According to recent estimates, Wake County has just under a two-month supply of houses in its current available stock. Over the past several years, this scarcity has helped escalate housing costs, deepen racial and economic inequalities, and exacerbate problems related to gentrification and displacement. Without a comprehensive strategy to deal with housing unaffordability, such as that now funded by Durham voters, there’s little question these problems will only get worse over time, especially as Wake County continues its rapid pace of growth.
Official projections are that Wake County will reach 1.45 million residents by the year 2035. This means that, over the next 20 years, around 430,000 new residents will be in need of housing in Wake County, putting even more pressure on our already strained housing market. Yet, as is often the case, the poorest and most vulnerable residents within our community will continue to be the ones most negatively impacted by housing scarcity and unaffordability.
All totaled, about 56,000 low-income households are presently unable to find an affordable place to live in Wake County, and this number is expected to more than double over the next 20 years. To make matters worse, Wake County is losing around 800-1,300 affordable units each year.
You can read more about the present state of housing affordability throughout Wake County here, in the Wake County Affordable Housing Plan.
Earlier this year, the City of Raleigh had considered putting its own affordable housing bond on the ballot for the primary elections coming up in March 2020. City officials approached WakeUP about leading the campaign for the bond, but we ultimately declined, citing a number of concerns with how the City’s affordable housing plans had progressed to that point.
Our hesitation in supporting a March 2020 affordable housing bond centered around concerns regarding inadequate community and stakeholder engagement, inadequate funding for a successful bond campaign, a lack of sufficient time and resources to run a successful bond campaign, and the lack of a clear and specific plan from the City for how money raised through the bond would eventually be spent.
You can read our letter to the Director of the City of Raleigh’s Housing and Neighborhoods Department, written jointly with the Greater Raleigh Chamber of Commerce, here in full.
As outlined in our letter, we strongly support plans to preserve and expand housing affordability in Raleigh and Wake County. However, given the seriousness of the issue, we can only support a plan that stands to yield a truly significant benefit for the residents who are most vulnerable and most in need of safe, quality affordable housing.
Now that Durham voters have paved the way, we’re confident the City of Raleigh will follow suit in advancing a similarly clear and specific plan for expanding housing affordability here.
Until that time, we’ll continue encouraging residents and city officials alike to think big when it comes to addressing our present housing shortage. We’ll also continue promoting opportunities for residents to voice their concerns on issues surrounding housing affordability.
In fact, the City of Raleigh is presently conducting a series of meetings related to updates to the five-year consolidated plan and looking for resident feedback. The five-year consolidated plan outlines how federal and local funds are spent throughout the city to address housing and community development needs, including affordable housing.
There are two more meetings in the Consolidated Plan series, as detailed below:
- Thursday, November 7th, from 6-8pm, at Tarboro Community Center
- Thursday, November 14th, from 6-8pm, at Chavis Community Center
Residents can also provide feedback on the five-year consolidated plan update through the Consolidated Plan Survey, available here.
WakeUP Wake County supports a solution to the problem of housing affordability that is, above all else, holistic, forward-thinking, and equitable. We support re-evaluating exclusionary land use policies, planning around reliable transit, implementing new programs to better protect vulnerable residents, such as low-income renters, establishing new partnerships and revenue streams, and prioritizing direct engagement with impacted and traditionally marginalized communities.
Brian Kurilla, Ph.D. is the Policy Analyst for WakeUP Wake County and an Experimental Psychologist and Data Scientist.