You’d think that in a town like Chapel Hill, built around a college like UNC, there would be plenty of young professionals walking down Franklin Street, eating in our restaurants and working in our offices.
Unfortunately, as The Daily Tar Heel reported on Jan. 25, only 7.5 percent of the town’s population is non-student residents who are between 25 and 34 years old — the young professionals.
The new Chapel Hill Town Council members ran on platforms that valued affordable housing, and we think that’s admirable and needed — but it’s not enough to work toward more age diversity in Chapel Hill.
We need town leaders who recognize that we are losing an entire age group to neighboring cities because not only can they not afford to live in Chapel Hill, but there aren’t many places for young professionals to work if they decided to live here anyway. Chapel Hill’s cost of living is much higher than Durham or Raleigh —18 percent and 16 percent higher, respectively.
We believe the Town Council should prioritize bringing more job opportunities to Chapel Hill in addition to ensuring available and affordable rental housing, instead of focusing on keeping the town the same.
Make Chapel Hill a place the 25 to 34 age range comes to live, not a place they aspire to retire to.
There are many people who want to stay in Chapel Hill after they graduate and people who love the town enough to move here — but there are too many obstacles to keep them from living and working here.
