Carrboro leaders and residents discussed trends affecting the supply, demand and affordability of local housing Monday night — and how to work with those trends to keep housing accessible.
In honor of National Community Planning Month, the Carrboro Planning Board is hosting an Affordable Housing Dialogue Series with three events throughout October.
Monday’s discussion at Carrboro Town Hall kicked off the series.
Carley Ruff, the policy and outreach coordinator for the North Carolina Housing Coalition, began the meeting by presenting data about the state of housing in Carrboro and Orange County.
Because the county is home to an increasingly high number of renters — many of whom are students without a steady income — renter wages in the county are lower than the state average, Ruff said.
Local rental costs are also higher in the county than in the rest of the state, she said.
“This leads to a widening of the gap in what people can afford and what is available to them,” Ruff said.
Robert Dowling, executive director of Community Home Trust, works to alleviate this gap by preserving affordable homes for lower income families who live and work in Orange County.
Dowling said he has seen improvements in affordable housing in Chapel Hill, especially because of the town’s Inclusionary Zoning Ordinance enacted in 2010.
