Chapel Hill works to increase affordable rental housing

EDITOR’S NOTE: Due to a reporting error, a previous version of this story said the Mayor’s Committee on Affordable Rental Housing was proposing several items to increase affordable rental housing in town. The document was only a draft of the committee’s proposals. The article has been amended to reflect this change.

This summer’s flooding left hundreds of Chapel Hill homes damaged — and a lack of affordable rental housing for displaced residents only worsened the problem.

Mayor Mark Kleinschmidt said the town has known about the lack of available affordable rental housing for a long time, and this spring he created a committee to address the growing problem. The committee will wrap up its work later this month and plans to update the Chapel Hill Town Council by the end of September.

“We are adding a lot of rental housing here in Chapel Hill,” Kleinschmidt said. “But one of the things we struggle with is making sure existing and new rental units are affordable to a wide range of people to make sure we don’t become a socio-economically exclusive community.”

There is an estimated demand for as many as 817 new market-rate rental units in Chapel Hill by 2014, according to a residential market study prepared for the town.

Councilwoman Sally Greene, co-chair of the Mayor’s Committee on Affordable Rental Housing, said the committee has worked all summer to come up with creative ways to increase the inventory of affordable rental housing in Chapel Hill.

The committee will meet Wednesday to further discuss its recommendations to the council. In a draft version of its recommendation, the committee encourages the council to pursue low-income housing tax credits and establish incentives for developers looking to provide market-rate rental housing.

“We’re looking at streamlining the development process, to make the development fees less costly, and density bonuses,” said Greene.

Flood victims

More than half of the units at Camelot Village Condominiums near University Mall were damaged during this summer’s flooding. Many residents weren’t able to find suitable temporary replacement housing, said Kristen Smith, spokeswoman for the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Chamber of Commerce and a member of the mayor’s committee.

The crisis highlighted the importance of the committee’s work, she said.

Delores Bailey, the executive director for the housing nonprofit EmPOWERment Inc., said her group, which manages 33 affordable housing units in Orange County, supplied temporary housing for flood victims.

Bailey, who is also a member of the committee, said it was difficult to find suitable replacement housing for most of the victims, so she’s excited to be part of a committee that she hopes can meet that need.

“There has never before been a committee to address affordable rentals, just affordable housing,” Bailey said.

Student-fueled

Bailey said the problem with the availability in affordable rental housing for Chapel Hill’s workforce began when students moved into low-income neighborhoods throughout the town and rented homes originally slated as single-family units.

“The student rental market has really driven it up,” Bailey said. “The cost of renting an apartment here is more inflated than it is in Durham County and Chatham County.”

But Greene said students’ movement into low-income areas was inevitable and makes economic sense for landlords.

“Three or four students who decide to rent a two-bedroom bring more economic resources to the table than a single family with one income,” Greene said. “It’s nothing to say about students, per se. It’s an economic reality and something any college town has to grapple with.”

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