At last Wednesday’s Town Council meeting, the town’s Housing & Community staff presented an 
innovative plan to encourage municipal employees to live in Chapel Hill. Stronger communities result when people live in the town where they work, and work in the town where they live. Not to mention the improved functioning of the town in inclement weather if critical employees can get to work more easily.
The Housing & Community staff adopted a professional market-study approach, sending out surveys and conducting focus groups to learn what their target market wants.
Fully half of the survey respondents said they would like to live in town. A third of all town employees commute more than 30 minutes each way. The vast majority of the town’s 750 employees draw middle-class salaries or less. No wonder 84% of those who live out of town cited Chapel Hill’s out-of-reach housing costs as the reason they do not live here.
The Housing & Community staff’s multi-faceted proposal included options for renters and for homeownership. Master leasing (where the town rents the units and sublets to employees), rents discounted by apartment complex owners, and assistance with security deposits and utility connections fees were some ideas posited to help renters. For those wanting to buy a home, the town could potentially provide down-payment assistance or match savings put aside for buying a home.
Council weighed in on details that still need to be worked out. Should the incentives be tied to length of time employed by the town? What, if anything should the employee reimburse the town upon moving out of town or leaving the town payroll? Would that change for employees terminated for cause?
One of my colleagues on the dais suggested that the incentives be applied to housing anywhere in Orange County. Forget that the purpose of the incentives is to enable more employees to live in town, not encourage modestly paid workers to stay out. Forget that those town employees who commute more than a half-hour away already live in Mebane and Efland because housing is more affordable there. Forget that it makes no sense to incentivize someone who commutes from Mebane but not from Pittsboro or Durham.
Federal housing grants given to Chapel Hill must be spent in Chapel Hill. Perhaps legally Chapel Hill could use its own taxpayers’ dollars to outsource workforce housing to another town. But why would we? How would that benefit us as a town to ensure that low-wage-earners live outside our borders?
The Housing & Community staff are off to a good start. Their model presumably could be expanded to include school system employees and those who work at the hospital or university.
Let’s hope council, in our well-meaning way, doesn’t muck it up.
— Nancy Oates
Terri
/ February 26, 2018Other communities are exploring the concept of inter-jurisdictional affording housing. In a community where there is insufficient low/moderate cost housing stock and where there is little/no unused land, the inter-jurisdictional model makes the most sense. This model creates partnerships between participating towns, serves the employees, and is a common sense solution to making housing affordable. It could include public transportation between the participating towns, cooperative economic development, etc.
Kudos to the staff for including this idea. Hope the elected officials are smart enough to give it serious thought.
Nancy
/ February 26, 2018The purpose of the incentive was to make room in Chapel Hill for employees who devote all or part of their careers to strengthening the town. While I agree that providing transportation from outlying areas is important, and one of the many reasons I object to DOLRT taking money from so many bus options, that is not the purpose of this particular initiative.
Terri
/ February 26, 2018Good to know you have an open mind to alternative approaches.
CitizenWill
/ February 26, 2018It takes more than good intentions and a modest pot of money to change direction.
Removing the Ephesus/Fordham “wild west” district would be a good first step in bringing developers back to the negotiating table for affordable housing.
David
/ February 27, 2018There is plenty of room in the Berkshire to experiment with the kind of programs described in the blog post. More than a year after completion, it remains only about half full. I’m all in favor of the apartment owners—especially owners of buildings with low occupancy rates—offering discounts to public employees. I’m less enthusiastic about the master leasing arrangement if it means the town pays full rent and then sublets the units to employees at a discount. Why should the taxpayers subsidize the profits of real estate investors who made a poor business decision by purchasing a building full of luxury apartments for which there is apparently insufficient demand?
In Asheville, the school district partnered with Buncombe County and with the State Employees Credit Union to build local housing for the district’s teachers that the teachers could afford. SECU has a large presence here in Chapel Hill; the former superintendent of the Asheville school system is now the CHCCS superintendent. What is getting in the way of us doing something similar to what Asheville has done?
Nancy
/ February 27, 2018I can’t imagine there would be support on council for the town paying market rent and subletting at a discount. The idea is that this would be mutually beneficial — the town has a roster of employees who would be excellent, stable tenants any landlord would love to have. So the landlord would offer apartments to the town at a discount to be able to tap into this desirable tenant pool.
David
/ February 27, 2018That sounds more reasonable, though I can imagine plenty of other lower-income folks who work in Chapel Hill—school system employees, UNC and UNC Health Health Care employees—would also like to be eligible for the same discounted rent. Do you have a sense of how many total discounted units Chapel Hill apartment owners might be willing to make available in such a scheme? Every little bit helps, but I think to really begin to make a dent in the need we will need to start doing something similar to what Asheville and other cities have done. And, of course, never again exempt entire districts from the town’s inclusionary zoning policies, as was done in Ephesus-Fordham.
Another thought: the apartment owners don’t need the town’s involvement to tap into the desirable tenant pool of town employees. They could simply decide on their own to offer discounted rent to anyone employed by the town. If they haven’t previously felt motivated to offer discounts to public employees, why might they feel inclined to do so now? Have market conditions changed?
plurimus
/ March 1, 2018How does the town propose to mitigate accusations (real or imagined) of fair housing violations?
https://westfaironline.com/92092/housing-groups-sue-town-of-bedford-alleging-discrimination/