The Town of Carrboro is in the process of rewriting its Land Use Ordinance into a new Unified Development Ordinance to better align with the Carrboro Connects Comprehensive Plan, the Town's 20-year policy strategy adopted in 2022 for the future of Carrboro.
It is the first time the Town will be rewriting its LUO since 1980. Since then, Carrboro's zoning regulations have remained largely unchanged through many minor revisions, Carrboro Town Council member Jason Merrill said. He said the regulations have accumulated amendments and restrictions that have made development increasingly complex.
Merrill said the original LUO was designed to control development, but an unintended consequence was that it restricted housing growth. In contrast, he said the new ordinance aims to encourage a broader range of housing types and create more affordable options for residents.
“There is currently a pattern where what gets built is what is easy to build, and what is easy to build is taking older housing stock that tends to be smaller square footage — like 1,500 square feet or so — and raising that to the ground and building a much larger house on that same plot of land, so the 3,000 or 5,000 square foot house,” Carrboro Town Council member Cristóbal Palmer said. “Which just exacerbates the affordability problem of the housing in Carrboro without providing significantly more housing.”
Additionally, Merrill said current regulations enable developers to build large, expensive homes because it is easier and more profitable, further worsening affordability challenges.
“A lot of [workers] are coming from 30 or 40 miles away now because they can't afford to live here,” Merrill said. “We just see that trend continuing unless we course correct.”
One priority of the Town's comprehensive plan is to address racial and economic disparities in Carrboro's zoning history. Council member Catherine Fray said many of the Town's past land-use policies have contributed to racial and class-based exclusion.
“Carrboro has a long and significantly unhappy relationship with race equity in a lot of its policies, and the land use ordinance is no exception,” they said.
Fray said the UDO aims to reverse these impacts by allowing for a wider variety of housing types that accommodate people at different income levels and life stages. However, they said the shift has raised concerns about displacement and neighborhood change.
