DOLRT bills: woulda, coulda, shoulda

Think of the transformative impact $14.5 million could have had on Orange County if we had spent it on extending bus lines so the modestly paid could commute to work and fewer people would have to rely on cars.

Instead, Orange County commissioners gambled it away on studies, design and engineering for a light rail line that would connect UNC and Duke hospitals and N.C. Central University, providing that federal and state elected officials agreed to pay the bulk of the cost.

But they lost their — correction: OUR — money when state and federal politicians got stuck in a power play. Federal officials said the Durham-Orange Light Rail Transit project would be eligible for up to 50% funding only if state and local governments committed to the other half; state legislators said they would agree to fund up to 10% of the cost (leaving Durham and Orange counties to pay the remaining 40%) only if the feds promised to pay half the total bill.

If all had gone as the commissioners at GoTriangle had planned, the state would have committed as much as $247 million and the feds another $1.2 billion of the rail line that ultimately will cost $2.47 billion plus $830 million in interest, for a grand total of $3.3 billion. Durham and Orange counties had agreed that Durham would pay 81.5% of the local share ($1.5 billion), with Orange paying 16.5% ($306 million) and private donors kicking in the remaining 2% ($37 million).

Numbers have been flung about and picked apart based on laws and formulae determining regional maximums, scoring and other details. But it all adds up to a boatload of taxpayer money committed to a perk for the middle class and upper wealth residents of Chapel Hill and Durham.

Supporters of DOLRT say it might be useful in attracting corporations to the region, apparently believing that well-paid employees would turn their noses up at riding the bus. (Data on incomes of light rail riders and bus riders from some cities show that to be true.)

Once all options for federal and state funding have been exhausted (DOLRT proponents are holding out for the possibility of a “technical correction” to the state budget), Durham and Orange county commissioners and GoTriangle will have 15 days to decide whether to pull the plug on DOLRT, or at lease put it on hold. If they aren’t able to apply for funding by the end of the year, they/we will not get reimbursed for the money spent so far.

If the commissioners and GoTriangle quash the project, they would have another 20 days to come up with an alternate transit plan.

Fortunately, during the debate on whether to move forward with DOLRT in the first place, community members came up with ideas for a commuter bus system that extended to Mebane and Pittsboro. And plans are still moving forward for Bus Rapid Transit, which had to bow out of vying for state funds so as not to compete with DOLRT.
— Nancy Oates

by on June 4, 2018  •  Permalink
Posted in Budget, County business, Lifestyle, Roads, Spending, Taxes, Transportation
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Posted by Nancy Oates on June 4, 2018

https://chapelhillwatch.com/2018/06/04/dolrt-bills-woulda-coulda-shoulda/

Mama Dip’s Legacy

Chapel Hill laid to rest one of its better-known and much-revered residents yesterday. Mildred Council died May 20 at age 89. Unexpectedly, perhaps because she was an icon, and we all thought that Mama Dip would always be there.

She always was there, for anyone in the community who could use a meal or two to tide them over. She nurtured, fed and gave a hand up to those who needed it. She persevered through whatever life served up, and the menu included plenty of hard times.

The baby in a family of seven children, Mama Dip was only a toddler when her mother died, leaving her father, a sharecropper on a farm in Chatham County, to raise them just as the Depression hit. Meals came from whatever the kids could harvest or hunt and often was stretched to feed stragglers — boys who had run away from abusive homes or been thrown out by their families. Her father taught them to cook, and when she was 9, he taught her, too.

Mama Dip was a quick study.

Her father moved the family to Chapel Hill when she was in her teens. After an unsuccessful attempt at becoming a beautician, she began to cook for a living, first for local families, and then for fraternities and sororities, and restaurants that in segregated Chapel Hill wouldn’t have allowed her in as a customer.

She had married young, had eight children, and when she finished her workday, she came home and cooked for her family, and anyone else who was hungry. Frequently, she’d cook meals and deliver them to families she knew didn’t have a stove.

When her youngest turned 18, she left the marriage that had become violent. In her late 40s, she opened a restaurant at the behest of a local real estate broker who was looking for a tenant to take over the lease of a vacant café.

She invested $64 in 1976 to buy food to cook for breakfast. The money she earned from breakfast bought food to make lunch. Customers flocked to her 18-seat Mama Dip’s Kitchen. She hired people fresh out of prison and others down on their luck.

In 1999, she moved across the street to a much large place that seats 189. She wrote a cookbook, was invited by President George W. Bush to the White House, had been a guest on Good Morning America and featured in Southern Living. The food critic of The New York Times ventured south and gave her a favorable review. A community activist before that term had been coined, she started the annual Community Dinner some 20 years ago.

But when we’ve tucked away that last pork chop or plate of fried chicken livers, when we’ve finished our peach cobbler or pecan pie, what do we remember most about Mildred Council? That by the way she lived her life, she made the world a better place. She didn’t need wealth or connections or a degree from a well-known university. She did what she knew how to do and did it well, seasoned with compassion and a penchant for justice. Would that we all follow her example.
— Nancy Oates

by on May 28, 2018  •  Permalink
Posted in Community life, Downtown Chapel Hill, Lifestyle, Northside
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Posted by Nancy Oates on May 28, 2018

https://chapelhillwatch.com/2018/05/28/mama-dips-legacy/

Honor Council

Not long ago, a few members of Duke University’s Honor Council spoke with students at McDougle Middle School about the roles of morals and ethics in making good decisions. Honor Council members set up a scenario for the moral dilemma all of us have faced more than once in our lives — You see someone break the rules; do you tell the authorities?

Honor Council members asked the kids to vote with their feet — stand on one side of the room if you believe yes; the other side if you say no; in the middle if you’re not sure. They got some vigorous debate going.

Those who exhibited higher moral development were rewarded with stickers reading: “Integrity over image.” That’s another way of stating North Carolina’s motto of “To be, rather than to seem.”

I wish the Honor Council would hold a similar program for Town Council members. Every meeting, it seems, we are presented with a scenario where we have to decide between the difficult, often slow path of making real, lasting change or take the fast track to nowhere by settling for the image of accomplishment.

Our decisions are shaped by our habits and by the environment that makes room for and supports one view over another. We, on council, need to create an environment that makes room for decisions that result in substantive changes, rather than give in to the big-eyed puppies of buzzwords like “affordable housing,” “childhood hunger” and “homelessness.”

Especially in this budget season as we stare down a tax hike, we need to be intentional about how we spend our money. What will make lasting change for those in our community, in particular for those whose voices aren’t always heard?

Coming up in the next month, I understand we will hear about proposals to scrap a housing development that would enable low-wealth people to live in a blended neighborhood they feel proud to come home to and instead build a complex where they would be segregated in low-income housing; a request for money to pay for an unnecessary administrative layer between food and the children who need it; and the dismantling of a rehousing program that has helped dozens of formerly homeless men in favor of sweeping the homeless into a closet where they can’t be seen by the rest of us.

It will take courage for council members to make decisions for real change instead of worrying about how our votes could be misconstrued in a tweet.

Wish us luck.
— Nancy Oates

by on May 21, 2018  •  Permalink
Posted in Budget, Community life, Council Members, Ethics, Homeless Shelter, Housing, Lifestyle, Politics, Spending, Taxes
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Posted by Nancy Oates on May 21, 2018

https://chapelhillwatch.com/2018/05/21/honor-council/

Indy loses its independence

Was a time when Chapel Hill and Orange County had a good selection of news providers to advise voters in the candidate selection process.

With the elimination of The Chapel Hill News and Chapel Hill Herald and the weakening of The Daily Tar Heel, the town has lost great resources. Now it appears that The Indy, which at one time was the go-to source for many voters who needed guidance, has slipped.

The weekly magazine used to approach its election coverage responsibly — it did its homework and used all its resources to study and give an in-depth look at each candidate. Not any more, though. These days the best advice voters can derive from The Indy’s endorsements is not to follow its advice.

As much as I like The Indy’s politics and progressive news reporting, I am frequently appalled at the lack of depth in its election endorsements. There doesn’t seem to be the least vetting of the candidates. And those running for office come to understand that they can be unqualified, incompetent or know-nothings and still get an endorsement from The Indy.

It has become very superficial, as if whoever checks the candidate backgrounds or policy just googles a candidate’s address and phone number but doesn’t look into voting records or triangulate the community’s takes on voting records or issues.

During recent election cycles, I’ve seen some downright careless endorsements — endorsements that left me shaking my head and wondering, Did they even take the time to go over that endorsee’s public record?

Take the latest elections in Orange County. In its endorsement of Mark Kleinschmidt for Orange County clerk of court, The Indy failed to mention that Kleinschmidt had violated campaign finance reporting laws and been fined $500 — the maximum — by the State Board of Elections.

While Kleinschmidt was executive director and chief financial officer of Fair Trial Initiative, the organization was repeatedly fined for late filings, operating without a license and failing to file a year’s worth of required financial and regulatory documents.

Kinda important info on a candidate’s ethics or organizational skills for a voter to know, wouldn’t you think? But in its endorsement The Indy seemed more concerned about extra paperwork for same-sex couples who wish to adopt rather than Kleinschmidt’s administrative failings.

Recent election results hurt all the more because I’ve watched the current Town Council work to clean up the mess made by Kleinschmidt and Sally Green. Now the county will have to endure the questionable talents of the newly elected candidates.

The Indy has evolved into the very opposite of what an organization that endorses candidates is supposed to do. At the CHN we asked every candidate to come in and have a chat with us. We also sent out questionnaires and published opinion columns and letters to the editor. That depth of sounding often gave voters much more upon which to base a vote than what the Indy now offers.

And as a former newspaperman, I know the many obstacles and distractions that go with a deadline, but enough is enough. Superficial and uninformed endorsements undermine good government and responsible candidates. It’s time for The Indy to either ramp up its endorsement game or stop issuing endorsements altogether. To do anything else is a disservice to the voters and the community.
— Don Evans

by on May 14, 2018  •  Permalink
Posted in Community life, Elections, Ethics, Media, Politics
Posted by Don Evans on May 14, 2018

https://chapelhillwatch.com/2018/05/14/indy-loses-its-independence/

The value of green

To hear business leaders and major investors speak in favor of the need for greenspace as density increases gave me hope.

At the Eggs With Elected Officials gathering on April 18, sponsored by the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Chamber of Commerce, the topic of what to do with the 36 acres the town had purchased from American Legion came up at one of the tables I rotated to. I touted my opinion of wanting to preserve the entire parcel as a public gathering space.

Quite honestly, I did not expect anyone to agree with me. Sitting with me at the table were business owners, representatives of major corporations that donate to nonprofits and otherwise invest in the community, and another council member who holds a different view from me.

Here were people who look at land as opportunities to make money, and yet they said, in one way or another, that the highest and best use of that parcel was to keep it green.

A week or so later, I heard an apartment building manager tell how much he wanted a cement-capped former building site in front of his property reclaimed as greenspace. It would make his units more desirable to prospective tenants, thus making his building more competitive, if they had access to greenspace right outside their door.

Study after study shows the myriad reasons why greenspace is important as urban areas become more densely populated. Access to greenspace makes you smarter, happier and healthier, both physically and mentally, the studies say. Having greenspace nearby boosts property values, and customers are drawn to businesses close to greenspace.

Neighboring cities understand the importance of parks. Last fall, voters in Apex, a town with an operating budget of $107 million, approved a $48 million bond for parks. A few years ago, Raleigh spent $52 million to buy some 300 acres to save Dix Park.

In 2016, a majority of Chapel Hill’s Town Council passed a resolution to sell off some of the land to recoup some of the nearly $8 million taxpayers had spent on the purchase. But the community had a different opinion. The American Legion Task Force that collected ideas last year on how to use the land heard from more than a thousand residents, a solid 90 percent of them urging council to keep the land as greenspace.

Since then, newly elected council members have wanted to use some of the land for affordable housing. That makes a good political soundbite, but the town has other parcels it intends to use for affordable housing that are better suited.

The town has no land more suitable for a park than the American Legion acreage. An earlier land use map designated that property as parkland. Other sizable properties the town owns – the 14 acres on 2200 Homestead Road and the several acres where the Parks & Rec office now sits – are both within walking distance of a large park, and the town has designated those two parcels for subsidized housing.

If we are going to preserve greenspace for future generations, the American Legion property is our only option. And business leaders join many others in the community in recognizing the value of safeguarding that land as a park.
— Nancy Oates

by on May 7, 2018  •  Permalink
Posted in Community life, Council Members, Environment, Housing, Lifestyle, Spending, Taxes, Trees
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Posted by Nancy Oates on May 7, 2018

https://chapelhillwatch.com/2018/05/07/the-value-of-green/

Autopsy of a vote

After my colleagues on Town Council blew off applying for a quarter million dollars of free money toward the purchase of the American Legion property at the April 18 meeting, I was so disheartened I went out and got #NeverAgain tattooed on my chest. (Just kidding, Mom.)

So when I walked into the April 25 council meeting and saw that the free money pile had spiked to $1.5 million, this time for affordable housing, my resolve kicked in. Much to the dismay of many people in the community, I voted for taking the money in exchange for allowing a project to proceed that no one particularly liked but no one could stop.

Here’s what happened:

The Form-Based Code created in 2014 aimed to spur office and retail development in the shopping centers clustered around the intersection of Ephesus Church Road and Fordham Boulevard. The zone omitted ordinances and regulations applicable everywhere else in town, such as expectations for green space, trees, affordable housing and not building in Resource Conservation Districts that soak up stormwater runoff.

Because the area is the only place in town where developers don’t have to contribute to affordable housing, the district became a magnet for luxury apartments. The area has more than twice the number of apartments than the town’s business model expected.

The new owner of the aging and affordable Park Apartments on Ephesus Church Road made plans to tear down those 200 units and build 700 market-rate apartments. But first, a new road must be built connecting Fordham Boulevard and Ephesus Church Road to handle the extra traffic.

The process has gone slowly, and meanwhile, Hillstone and Fordham apartments have been approved by the town manager. (Council doesn’t have any say, as it is in the FBC district.) To get his project out of the ground and not fall too far behind his competitors, the Park Apartments owner offered a $1.5 million contribution for affordable housing in exchange for council removing its review of the road at 70% completion. This would enable him to start the permitting process right away.

That trade-off seemed fair. I made sure the town attorney specified when the money was to be paid (upon issuance of the building permit) and that we wouldn’t have to pay for the intersection modifications requested by the applicant.

State law won’t let us cap any rent, and the FBC won’t allow us to demand a payment toward affordable housing. This $1.5 million of found money is equivalent to subsidizing 60 apartments, according to the town’s formula of $25,000 per subsidized unit, which is fewer units than the 15% we expect elsewhere, but 60 more than we could demand.

We could not slow this project down much longer without risking a lawsuit. As it was, we were in danger of busting deadline and losing the final $900,000 reimbursement from DOT. The landlord already had stopped renewing leases, and even if council makes changes to the FBC, as we will consider in June, he would have a good case to go forward with building under the old rules.

The vast majority of people who rent apartments fall in the 80% to 120% AMI, and if the applicant is smart, he will build to meet that target market. One phase of the development will consist of three-story buildings with exterior staircases, designed to rent for a non-luxury rate. With the over-building of luxury apartments in the FBC, competition should keep rents from rising too quickly.

Community members raised valid concerns about the advisability of building a road in a flood plain and the traffic impact analysis not capturing other approved development, among other points. So this was a tough decision to make. But when I weighed the pros and cons, and the limits of what council could do to prevent more market-rate apartments from being built, the best option seemed to be to accept the money and move forward.
— Nancy Oates

by on April 30, 2018  •  Permalink
Posted in Council Members, Housing, Land Use, Politics, Roads, Town staff
Tagged , , ,
Posted by Nancy Oates on April 30, 2018

https://chapelhillwatch.com/2018/04/30/autopsy-of-a-vote/

Reverse Town Hall

North Carolina has 77 pages of gun laws on its books. But can they be enforced?

A panel of 16 high school and college students discussed gun violence at a reverse town hall organized by the UNC Institute for Politics. The IOP invited four legislators from the N.C. General Assembly to pose questions to the panel of politically active young people from around the state.

Rep. John Torbett, a Republican from N.C. District 108; Rep. John Faircloth, a Republican from N.C. District 61; Rep. Cynthia Ball, a Democrat from N.C. District 49; and Sen. Jay Chaudhuri, a Democrat from N.C. District 16, asked questions and listened without rebuttal to the insights and experiences of the student leaders, who have never known a time when school massacres didn’t happen. Columbine happened 19 years ago.

The students came from urban and rural areas. They differed in gender, race and party affiliation. And they knew their stuff. When asked about specific steps the legislators could take to make schools safer, one student asked for their support in repealing the Dickey Amendment, a rider added to a federal bill in 1996 that prevents funds appropriated to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for injury prevention to be used to promote gun control.

Another student suggested opening the NCIS (National Criminal Intelligence Service) system to private individuals to do criminal background checks of a buyer in a private sale. (At present, the seller must voluntarily go to the police station and have police run it.)

Still another student explained that in North Carolina, gun permits were introduced to prevent African-Americans from owning firearms.

Consider simplifying the laws and removing the discrepancies between state and county laws, some students suggested.

“Fix gerrymandering” received hearty applause from the audience.

The students weighed in on finding a balance between being safe and being over-policed, and the impact on their learning environment. All students knew the lingo of “campus carry” — bringing a gun onto school grounds — but only two of the 16 supported it. One defended it for elementary schools, citing the inconvenience to parents who would have to go home and lock up their guns before coming to school to pick up their children.

The urban/rural divide played into the conversation. Rural counties are more violent than urban ones and often get left behind by state legislators. Schools in areas with a high percentage of minority residents tend to spend more on policing than on educating students.

Students were not of one mind on the impact of the school walkouts. One student thought it made young people more politically engaged; another countered that too many students treated it as a joke. “You shouldn’t be happy-go-lucky [during a walkout],” she said. “You should be uncomfortable.”

When one questioner pointed out that people who carry guns are four times more likely to be killed by a gun, one student flipped the construct: “People more likely to get shot want to bring a gun to a gunfight.”

“Why don’t you trust people who carry guns?” another asked.

Students and legislators agreed that the conversation had been helpful. The moderator wrapped up by reminding us: “It’s our responsibility as human beings to listen to one another.”
— Nancy Oates

by on April 23, 2018  •  Permalink
Posted in Community life, Lifestyle, Police, Schools, Spending, UNC
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Posted by Nancy Oates on April 23, 2018

https://chapelhillwatch.com/2018/04/23/reverse-town-hall/

Fear trumps finances

Last week Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents swept through the Triangle and snatched up more than two dozen Latinx residents suspected of being in the U.S. without proper documentation. An ICE spokesman claimed that the majority of those taken into custody had criminal convictions. But anecdotally, those in Chapel Hill were law-abiding, gainfully employed men, including one Chapel Hill restaurant owner.

The raid left many workers who had come from Mexico feeling panicked. Some were afraid to leave their homes, even to go to work.

Ironically, on Wednesday of that week, town staff presented to council a proposal to allocate up to $5,000 to reimburse El Centro Hispano clients from Chapel Hill who needed help covering the $500 fee to apply for or renew their Deferred Action Child Arrivals (DACA) status.

The DACA program began in 2012 as a way to assist those who had been brought to the U.S. as children by their parents and once they turned 18 were subject to deportation for being in the country illegally. Most DACA recipients are teens or young adults at this point, as they had to have arrived in the U.S. before June 15, 2007, before they had turned 16. Those who are accepted into DACA can obtain a legal driver’s license, work permit and Social Security number. They must renew their status every two years.

The application and documentation required are arduous. Applicants are strongly urged to hire an immigration lawyer, because even if an applicant meets all the requirements, the federal government decides on a case-by-case basis whether to grant DACA status. Those turned down are subject to immediate deportation. It’s the immigration version of Russian roulette, and the Trump administration has loaded more bullets in the chamber.

No wonder out of the estimated 3,000 people eligible for DACA in Orange County, only three from Chapel Hill have applied.

Town staff had found $5,000 in its Housing and Community Services budget, enough to cover 10 financially impoverished applicants, and El Centro Hispano said that would be sufficient. Fear deters more people from applying, not lack of money, El Centro Hispano said. A council member spoke eloquently to underscore that point, and I supported that with more stories of what I’d learned from people wrestling with whether to apply.

And yet, when we made the motion to approve the $5,000 allocation, a council member doubled it to $10,000, without specifying what program would be shorted its allocation to come up with the extra money.

I voted for the amended motion because I knew the council member meant well, and because I knew El Centro Hispano would not tap the additional $5,000.

Sometimes our compassionate hearts can work against us. While the council member made a generous gesture, my heart sank because it showed a lack of understanding and a mistaken belief that more money would help.

Some 3,000 residents and their families live in a heightened state of anxiety due to the Trump administration. No amount of money will make that go away.
— Nancy Oates

by on April 16, 2018  •  Permalink
Posted in Budget, Community life, Council Members, Spending, Town staff
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Posted by Nancy Oates on April 16, 2018

https://chapelhillwatch.com/2018/04/16/fear-trumps-finances/

Real Diversity

People celebrate with music and dance all over the world. And that takes many forms. We got a taste of that variety this past Sunday afternoon at the Near & Far festival on the plaza at 140 West.

Dancers from Colombia sashayed and stomped to a drum-heavy arrangement. Women from Korea swirled in colorful silks as they performed Hwa-Gwan Mu. UNC students of Filipino heritage clapped and slid horizontal bamboo poles in rhythmic patterns on the ground while dancers hopped in and out to do the traditional tinikling dance. The Cane Creek Cloggers brought their own squares of wood so the sound of their clogging would reverberate through the plaza.

Drummers from the Democratic Republic of Congo saved the crowd a 15-hour flight by bringing Congolese drums and songs to Chapel Hill. The Tae Kwon Do academy students and teachers performed their acrobatic moves in another part of the plaza. Food trucks ranged from Mr. Mongolian to Tacotopia and Bruster’s “real ice cream.”

The crowd packing the plaza spanned the range from singles to families, from newborn (and not-quite-born) to young adult and old adult. I had never seen such diversity congregated in one small space in town.

It did my heart good, because it showed me that Chapel Hill has a future.

Numerous studies have shown the benefits of diversity in teams and small groups. One study recently conducted at N.C. State showed how a diverse workforce boosts a company’s bottom line. Better decisions come from a diversity of ideas, in part because diverse groups are more creative.

But simply hiring a mix of employees, checking off the “diversity” box, isn’t enough. For a company to reap the benefits of diversity, it has to be a place where people from different backgrounds, races, ethnicities, gender, age and sexual orientation want to work. They have to feel that the company values their contributions.

Last November, Chapel Hill voters elected a diverse group of Town Council members. Several boxes have been checked off that set us up to potentially see the benefits that diverse companies enjoy.

But before we can reap the rewards of better decisions and creativity, we have to welcome our differences. We have to be open to learning from one another. We have to be willing to look at a problem through a different lens. We have to value the unique perspectives and ideas that all council members bring to the table.

I hope the Near & Far festival launches many more events that showcase and celebrate our differences. And I hope council will make the most of the diversity that voters put in place.
— Nancy Oates

by on April 9, 2018  •  Permalink
Posted in 140 West, Community life, Council Members, Downtown Chapel Hill, Food Trucks, Lifestyle
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Posted by Nancy Oates on April 9, 2018

https://chapelhillwatch.com/2018/04/09/real-diversity/

Master Fleecing

When I read the editorial by Chapel Hill-Carrboro Chamber of Commerce head Aaron Nelson proposing what he called “master leasing” as a solution for high housing prices, I had to double-check the byline. Was this the same Aaron Nelson who stood before Town Council in 2014 swearing that Berkshire Apartments (then called Alexan) would be affordable housing? And, after the behemoth in the middle of the Village Plaza parking lot opened, and I pointed out to him that $1,800 a month for a one-bedroom wasn’t affordable, he declared, “It is if you have two people.”

The same Aaron Nelson who believes that the more luxury apartments council approves, the faster rents will plummet all over town?

Now, several months after Berkshire has opened and is struggling to find tenants, Nelson is exhorting taxpayers to guarantee developers, including those in the Ephesus-Fordham form-based code district (now known as Blue Hill) who avoided making any contribution to affordable housing, market-rate rents for their vacant units. Nelson proposes that middle- and low-income households rent the units at a discount, and taxpayers will fork over the difference so that developers will still get full profit on their overpriced units.

Nelson claims that creating home ownership opportunities for middle- and low-wage earners is “too slow.” What he doesn’t mention is that home ownership is the most reliable path to building wealth. Buying a home is a forced savings account. The home owner builds equity with each mortgage payment. And when the home owner sells, he or she gets the equity back in a lump sum that can be used to lower the cost of the next home he or she purchases.

In all the years I rented apartments in New York, never once did a landlord say to me at the end of the lease, “And here’s a pile of money you can use toward your next home.”

Renting has its benefits for individuals who need flexibility because they don’t know how long they’ll stay in an area, or who don’t have the down payment or reliable income needed to buy. But renting does nothing to build wealth.

Nelson’s plan of taxpayer money to protect the profits of developers who refuse to lower their rents in an over-built market advances the rich-get-richer philosophy of Donald Trump, not only by picking the pockets of taxpayers but by reducing the opportunities for modestly paid wage earners to build wealth.

Master leasing? No. More like master fleecing of taxpayers, who will go to the polls in November to decide on a tax increase to enable the town to borrow $10 million for genuine affordable housing.

In the next couple of years, hundreds of luxury apartment units will flood the Chapel Hill market. Let’s give the supply-and-demand theory that Nelson has long advocated a chance to prove itself, rather than paying developers now to keep housing prices artificially high.
— Nancy Oates

by on April 2, 2018  •  Permalink
Posted in Business, Ethics, Housing, Spending, Taxes
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Posted by Nancy Oates on April 2, 2018

https://chapelhillwatch.com/2018/04/02/master-fleecing/

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