I couldn’t help but wince when council members began their remarks at the May 19 Town Council meeting after nearly a dozen community members made impassioned pleas for money to support affordable housing. One organization played a 9-minute video of interviews with people who had benefited from affordable housing programs in Chapel Hill, perhaps assuming […]
All posts in category Housing
Housing hypocrisy
Posted by Nancy Oates on May 26, 2014
http://chapelhillwatch.com/2014/05/26/housing-hypocrisy/
Keeping pace with community
Ed Harrison understands that you can’t be a leader without followers. And if you get too far ahead of your followers, your nothing more than a guy on a road by himself shouting, “This way, really, I know what I’m doing.” At Town Council’s May 12 meeting, Harrison was one of three council members to […]
Posted by Nancy Oates on May 19, 2014
http://chapelhillwatch.com/2014/05/19/keeping-pace-with-followers/
Get it right first
UNC researcher and Chapel Hill native David Schwartz turns his analytical eye toward some of the factors that may be fueling our mayor’s apparent urgency to approve Form-Based Code initially in the Ephesus-Fordham area. Schwartz realizes there is more going on with the Ephesus-Fordham issue than simply the mayor wanting to impress his colleagues in […]
Posted by Nancy Oates on May 12, 2014
http://chapelhillwatch.com/2014/05/12/get-it-right-first/
Wreck-reation
Folks who attended the Town Council meeting Monday night in the Southern Human Services building off Homestead Road were treated to new definitions of recreation space. The meeting included a continuation of a hearing on the proposal by Blue Heron to expand the Timber Hollow apartments by adding 109 housing units. Fancy units would be […]
Posted by Don Evans on April 29, 2014
http://chapelhillwatch.com/2014/04/29/wreck-reation/
Office-retail only
Ellie Kinnaird’s voice was drowned out during her final years in the N.C. Senate by affluent colleagues who, having reached a high level of creature comfort, put in place policies that closed off that path to others. After several years of advocating for laws that made life better for residents in all socio-economic classes, Kinnaird […]
Posted by Nancy Oates on April 14, 2014
http://chapelhillwatch.com/2014/04/14/office-retail-only/
Hometown brand
Driving home from Raleigh one spring night with my car windows rolled down, I stopped at a traffic light. A car pulled up beside me, and the driver hollered out, “You must be going to Chapel Hill. I can tell by your bumper stickers.” Chapel Hill used to be known as an enclave for liberals: […]
Posted by Nancy Oates on April 7, 2014
http://chapelhillwatch.com/2014/04/07/hometown-brand/
Public-private = win-win
Chapel Hill needs a Stuyvesant Town, a large-scale complex of safe, well-built, no-frills apartments with rents affordable to your average working stiff. For some years during my New York days I lived in Stuy Town, an 11,000-unit complex built on 80 acres of what used to house leaky gas storage tanks and businesses and apartments […]
Posted by Nancy Oates on March 31, 2014
http://chapelhillwatch.com/2014/03/31/public-private-win-win/
Plans vs. promises
At its March 10 meeting, Town Council passed an Affordable Rental Housing Strategy that was such a foregone conclusion it should have been on the Consent Agenda. But without the fanfare of a staff-narrated PowerPoint and a time for public comment, council members and town staff would have been deprived of a feel-good moment. And […]
Posted by Nancy Oates on March 24, 2014
http://chapelhillwatch.com/2014/03/24/plans-vs-promises/
Senior special
A concept plan for a dense subdivision on the agenda at last week’s council meeting drew not a single resident to protest. Maybe this developer knew to schedule his presentation at the exact same time as a UNC men’s basketball game, or maybe this developer offered something that many of us have been waiting years […]
Posted by Nancy Oates on February 24, 2014
http://chapelhillwatch.com/2014/02/24/senior-special/
Tenant cap could tap down rents
UNC student Kylee Wooten has the proper mindset to succeed as a first-year associate in a big-city law firm: a willing slave mentality that all but welcomes abuse. I gleaned this from an essay she wrote pleading for the town to raise the occupancy cap on the number of unrelated people who can live together […]
Posted by Nancy Oates on January 6, 2014
http://chapelhillwatch.com/2014/01/06/tenant-cap-could-tap-down-rents/