Chapel Hill residents organized to campaign for affordable housing

The people of Chapel Hill know affordable housing is in short supply, and several groups came together this year to try and tackle the problem.

Mayor Mark Kleinschmidt created his Mayor’s Committee on Affordable Rental Housing to address the problem earlier this year.

Town Council member Sally Greene, chairwoman of the affordable rental housing committee, said the town has faced challenges.

“The town has a long history of wanting to be inclusive,” she said in an interview in October. “Chapel Hill housing prices are high because it’s desirable. We’re uncomfortable with that.”

The committee met during the summer and presented its findings to the Town Council in October. It encouraged the council to pursue low-income housing tax credits and establish incentives for developers looking to provide market-rate rental housing.

A student-induced problem

Factors such as an influx of student renters, a lag in building for low-income housing and the county’s relatively high property tax rate have contributed to the affordable rental housing shortage in the town.

In 2010, the town adopted the Inclusionary Zoning Ordinance, which requires developers looking to build homes in Chapel Hill to provide 15 percent of their residences at affordable prices for low- to middle-income households.

The committee found that an estimated 1,257 new rental units will be needed in Chapel Hill to serve town residents earning at or below the area’s medium income.

The housing supply has recently grown with the addition of 140 West Franklin, East 54 and Greenbridge Condominiums — complexes aimed at high-income buyers that include some affordable units.

Recently elected council member Maria Palmer emphasized the lack of programs and resources that reach low- and moderate-income families.

“I think we need to do a better. And we can,” she said at a forum in October. “I am looking forward to doing everything we are doing and more.”

A worsening problem

Flooding during the summer damaged hundreds of homes in Chapel Hill, and displaced residents were frustrated by a lack of affordable rental housing .

Delores Bailey, the executive director of the housing nonprofit EmPOWERment Inc., said her group supplied temporary housing for some flood victims but that it wasn’t easy.

Bailey said renters in Chapel Hill can blame students who moved into low-income neighborhoods throughout the town and rented homes originally slated as single-family units.

But Greene said this was inevitable.

“It’s nothing to say about students, per se,” Greene said in August. “It’s an economic reality and something any college town has to grapple with.”

In October, GSC Apartment Homes, one of the largest apartment management firms in Chapel Hill, stopped accepting Section 8 vouchers — forcing residents who have lived in their apartments for years to move out when their leases expire .

Section 8, also known as the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Housing Choice Voucher Program, is designed to help low-income families, the elderly and the disabled afford private housing.

Roughly 600 people in the county use Section 8 vouchers, said Tara Fikes, director of the Orange County Housing Authority.

But private housing complex owners aren’t required to accept the vouchers, and Terry Meyers, the regional vice president at GSC, explained it was simply a business decision.

Another provider of affordable housing in the area, Community Home Trust, has experienced problems with selling its small residential units.

“There is a shortage of buyers,” said Robert Dowling, executive director, in an October interview. “There seems to be less demand than supply.”

‘Behind the curve’

The Chapel Hill Town Council voted just last week to sell town-owned land to an affordable rental housing corporation for a low-income housing tax credit project.

The Raleigh-based Downtown Housing Improvement Corporation, currently known as DHIC, now has the go-ahead to seek approval for federal funding for its 170-unit affordable housing plan on a portion of Legion Road near the Chapel Hill Memorial Cemetery.

“It’s a really great opportunity to turn vacant land into something that actually contributes to the community,” said Dan Levine, a member of the Mayor’s Committee on Affordable Rental Housing, in an interview last week.

“I think we’re really behind the curve on rental housing if you look at other communities across the Triangle. This is an opportunity to catch up.”

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