What a ride 2013 turned out to be. Yet despite the ups and downs, we moved forward. We began the year with Town Council members choosing Sally Greene over 10 other well-qualified and diverse candidates to fill the seat Penny Rich vacated a couple months before. In the November election this year, Greene was elected […]
All posts in category Housing
We did what this year?
Posted by Nancy Oates on December 30, 2013
http://chapelhillwatch.com/2013/12/30/we-did-what-this-year/
Buybacks
Tell me I’m not the only person to have donated something to the PTA Thrift Shop, then a month later bought it back. Town Council members know the feeling. They are asked to give away affordable housing as they vote to approve redevelopment projects, then scrounge for town resources to buy affordable housing somewhere else […]
Posted by Nancy Oates on October 21, 2013
http://chapelhillwatch.com/2013/10/21/buybacks/
Price tag on the gift
Head and heart – they can coexist. We desperately want them to in Town Council members. At a council work session last week, DHIC, a housing nonprofit in Raleigh, proposed building 140 apartments – 60 reserved for senior citizens and 80 for low-income families – on 10 acres of what is now part of Chapel […]
Posted by Nancy Oates on October 7, 2013
http://chapelhillwatch.com/2013/10/07/price-tag-on-the-gift/
Small town, big money
The Age of Private Equity Transactions has arrived in Chapel Hill. Private equity transactions are nothing new; they got a lot of press coverage during the 2012 presidential race because Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital specialized in them and made Romney rich. This is the concept: Buy an asset with borrowed money; resell it at a […]
Posted by Nancy Oates on September 30, 2013
http://chapelhillwatch.com/2013/09/30/small-town-big-money/
Free market
Developers and property owners who rant about their “right” to make the maximum profit regardless of how it affects the quality of life for the rest of the community should spend a couple hours at the end of a Saturday afternoon at the Orange County Solid Waste Convenience Center on Eubanks Road. There they could […]
Posted by Nancy Oates on September 23, 2013
http://chapelhillwatch.com/2013/09/23/free-market/
Lotsa lux
Remember Bicycle Apartments? Trinitas Ventures doesn’t, evidently. The Indiana-based developer of student apartment complexes has opened a rental office in the arcade on East Franklin Street for its project formerly known as Bicycle and now called Lux at Central Park. Gone are the images of healthy, clean-living students bicycling to campus and back, keeping reasonable […]
Posted by Nancy Oates on September 9, 2013
http://chapelhillwatch.com/2013/09/09/lotsa-lux/
A roster with ballast
“Fling … ends” read the headline in a local newspaper over a story about candidates running for office. And as I read through the profiles of the final candidates to file for Town Council – Loren Hintz, Jonathan Riehl, Amy Ryan and D.C. Swinton – and the school board – Andrew Davidson and Ignacio Tzoumas […]
Posted by Nancy Oates on July 22, 2013
http://chapelhillwatch.com/2013/07/22/a-roster-with-ballast/
Good data
Garbage in, garbage out they teach you in business school, though maybe not in those exact words. The idea is that a decision is only as good as the information backing it up. Rely on inaccurate or incomplete data or misinterpret or ignore the information available, and the mistakes will show themselves in the outcomes. […]
Posted by Nancy Oates on July 15, 2013
http://chapelhillwatch.com/2013/07/15/good-data/
The bleaching of Chapel Hill
Last week I walked along MLK Jr. Boulevard to go from my house off Piney Mountain Road to Harrington Bank. Schools had a delayed opening that day, and I passed several groups of high school students waiting along MLK for the school bus. Presumably they lived in the modest rentals and mobile homes in the […]
Posted by Nancy Oates on May 6, 2013
http://chapelhillwatch.com/2013/05/06/the-bleaching-of-chapel-hill/
Invite them where?
I listened to a panel discussion on WCHL yesterday afternoon as I drove around doing errands in the rain. Local residents who held various leadership roles in Chapel Hill and Carrboro talked about their vision for the town. One comment in particular stuck with me. Delores Bailey, executive director of Empowerment, said she would like […]
Posted by Nancy Oates on April 29, 2013
http://chapelhillwatch.com/2013/04/29/invite-them-where/