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Affordable Housing


bikwillie

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I'm wondering what the economics of building affordable housing are.

Could a developer get a decent return by building one or two 5-10 story buildings filled with condos that go for 150-300K? Nothing fancy - just decent, 1, 2, and maybe 3-bedroom units. Maybe on one of the blocks south and west of the Reynolds tower?

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I know a newly rennovated house for sale for less than most condos, a few blocks east of Moore Square. But no one here is interested in that, so I'll stop bringing it up.

This is the answer right here, end of story. If you really want to live downtown, there are options. I think a lot of people would rather use the lack of affordable condos directly in the center of downtown as an excuse. People who really want to live in the area will make it happen. This is how funky, vibrant neighborhoods are started. The area may be a little more gritty, and yes, there might even be a slightly higher crime rate.... but think about any trendy neighborhood in NYC and I'll bet you could have said the same thing about it at one time.

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Well, to be fair...

One of the big things about living downtown is to be within walking distance of things. Right now the ends of downtown with the most stuff going on is Glenwood South and Warehouse District and Seaboard...and living a few blocks east of Moore Square is hardly walking distance to those (not to mention at night).

(Maybe he just needs to find some people who spend most of their time in city market & Artspace?)

I personally may consider someplace like the new Carlton Place...but anything further east or south than that is just not on my personal radar. But I'm sure others are out there that want that area. :thumbsup:

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For me, from the east 600 blocks, it is a 10-15 minute walk to Fayetville Street, and about 20-25 minutes to Flying Saucer. By bike, F Street is 5-10 minutes, depending on lights. I can run/jog to Peak Fitness near Glenwood South in 20-25 minutes and bike it in less than 15.

Glenwood South is a nice entertainment option, but is hardly the only one. I feel most "removed" from downtown by City Cemetary and the back side of the Federal building/courthouse. But it is nothing compared to when I used to have to drive into downtown from the west side of Cameron Village.

Haywood Place, a series of houses on Bloodworth Street north of MLK, sold pretty quickly. The Cooke Street area east of Oakwood is a little removed from downtown, but is a straigt walk across Jones Street to Glenwood South, and is closeish to North Blount/Person and Seaboard.

I feel more connected to the neighborhood and city where I live now than anywhere else. At first I was a little scared to even bike at night, but now I'll walk home just about any time of day or night. I think there was some neighborhood resentment/resistance to a white boy a few years out of college coming in, but by paying the neighborhood its proper respect, it has respected me back. Some people who appear to be "unsafe" characters will say hi. Others are still not friendly, but they won't mug me either.

A lot of Brooklyn, Harlem, etc. in NYC and large areas of SF were "unsafe" but like downtown Raleigh and Durham, the more people out on the street, the safer an area feels, and by extension becomes.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Elsewhere in the Triangle, I'd note that the avg new single home sold in Orange County for $453,000, with only one of the new homes sold in the county last year selling for less than $120,000 - according to a little article in today's News & Observer. There will be condo projects with affordable units coming online in future years, which may or may not affect that avg price - I suspect that avg will soar faster than the numbers of affordable units will be able to alleviate, though I hope I'm wrong. It does deserve mention that the percentage of the population living below the poverty line in Orange Co is slightly over 12% (2004 census bureau estimate), which is one of the higher rates in the Triangle.

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  • 2 weeks later...

The subheadline "The last affordable living downtown?" is a joke. Mr. Geary's article completly ignores the redevlopment of Chavis Heights a mere three blocks east of Carlton Place. Or is that not "downtown"? The Prarie buliding, Capitol Park, Eastwood, and other affordable units already downtown don't count because they're not new? Is Gateway Park not new enough? Do Shaw dorms not count as "affordable" because only students live there?

Heritage Park or the housing project bounded by Wilmington, MLK and Fayetville Road will be the next to get a redevlopment makeover. The land for both neighborhoods owned by HUD or another housing agency, and won't be sold to make room for "million dollar condos" any time soon.

The lack of Gregg Warren's involvement does not signal the end of new affordable housing constructed downtown.

How much affordable housing is there in downtown Chapel Hill? Downtown Durham west of Roxboro?

I understand that being on disability is difficult, but only paying $134 for a new three bedroom unit two blocks from Moore Square and four blocks from Fayetville Street seems a bit excessive.

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^ Yeah, the subheadline was a real bad choice of words. :huh:

And the example tenant was an extreme case, I'm sure. I think WRAL did a story about the place and they used a much more likely example tenant to interview--a single woman who was a bus driver.

Otherwise the article has some good points and it brings the issue out in the open for folks to see, which is a good thing.

As far as Chapel Hill, we know there's currently pretty much none, although the new Greenfield (or whatever it's called) will be a first. As for Durham, they could use more, yes.

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Walnut Terrace is closer to central downtown than Heritage Park, and is close in apperance to the former Halifax Court and Chavis Heights communities -- brick and cinderblock, bad layout, etc. But it is also closer to the Cargill processing plant, which could be a hard sell to redevlop. It could help eastern Carleigh, the Wilmington corridor, and maybe Person/Blount south of MLK.

Heritage Park is newer relatively, but has not aged well. It is closer to the warehouse district, and could spur development north to Cabarrus and along the Saunders and Lake Wheeler corridors.

I don't know which would be easier and/or get the most "bang for the buck", but one of them should start rolling when the Chavis construction is close to finished.

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  • 5 weeks later...
Some Durham housing advocates are pushing for a 1 cent property tax increase for affordable housing. Seems like a decent enough idea, although given Durham's affordability and current market housing prices in Chapel Hill and Raleigh, I think those cities probably need some affordable options much more than Durham at this point. My two cents.
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  • 1 month later...

I'm slightly off topic with the intent of this post, but it's really something people need to read about.

BTB post #1 & #2 about the Oak Hill neighborhood and PROP, the ordinance that regulates landlords. They're right when they say, it really does speak to the values of a community when something like this and the incidents with some of the other slumlords are allowed to happen under the law. :angry:

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The city of Raleigh is damned if they do -- concentrated code enforcement east of down was stopped because the inspectors found too many things that needed to be fixed, homeowners couldn't afford the repairs without financial assistance, and slumlords could tell the inspectors to get lost.

And damned if they don't, as evidence in Oak Hill, various public housing projects, and some apartment complexes near NC State.

PROP is nothing other than a "keep those kids from having parties on Brent Road". The "Probationary Rental Occupancy Permit" doesn't care how many times the police are called to your rental property. Or if it burned down and has been condemed for over a year. The only thing that seems to matter is noise -- coming from the house in question, or the property's neighbors.

Yet on the city's website, the ordinance behind PROP mentions

(a) Reduce the likelihood that these residential housing accommodations will become public nuisances in violation of G.S. 19-1
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  • 3 months later...

I noticed the following item on the Raleigh city council agenda today:

2. Analysis of Impediments to Fair Housing Choice

At the City Council meeting on July 25, 2006, Council approved the issuing of a Request for Qualifications and the hiring of a consultant to produce an Analysis of Impediments to Fair Housing Choice update for the City of Raleigh. Ken Weeden and Associates, Inc. were selected to undertake the study. The basic elements of the housing study include the following issues required for the City

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  • 6 months later...

Bringing this thread back based on miamiblue's post from the comp plan topic:

The City adopted a new Downtown Overlay District in 2006 which contains a density bonus for developers who include affordable for sale or rental units in their projects. To date, none of the residential developments constructed within the Downtown Overlay District have used the affordable housing density bonus.

The affordable housing inventory in the City of Raleigh also includes market rate, privately owned rental and for sale units. These units include older apartment complexes as well as older single family homes. Some of the apartment complexes have been demolished in the last five years due to private infill redevelopment or have been converted to condominiums. In most instances, apartment complexes are being replaced with for sale housing units with price points starting at $400,000 and above. Table 5.9 below provides information on the complexes that have been or will be demolished as well as complexes that have been converted to owner occupied units. To date, 594 affordable rental units have been demolished and another 348 are planned to be demolished in the near future. There have been 116 rental units converted to condominiums adjacent to Joyner Elementary School. In sum, there are over 1,000 units of affordable market rate units that will be removed from the City

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Not sure if this is a 100% fit for this thread.

There was an article in the Fayetteville Observer a couple days ago about how Hope VI has affected the housing projects in Raleigh. I've not checked out Chavis, but if it's anything like Capitol Park, hopefully it's a nice decent place to live.

Evidently RHA applied for a Hope VI grant for Walnut Terrace last year, but was turned down.

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^Interesting article...thanks for sharing.

From what I hear, the new Chavis is certainly nice, but I fear it may have a bit more of an uphill climb than Capital Park.

Once Halifax Court was gone, the majority of the "bad elements" from that specific corner of town went with it, thus making Capital Park as nice as it is now (complete with new upscale Pilot Mills next door to really make the area nice).

I'm not sure you can say the same for Chavis....it'll be a nice renewed complex but still with some less-desirable areas next to it.

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It is a shame that no one has taken the city up on the affordable housing density bonus in the downtown overlay district yet. I think the city should offer density bonuses for affordable housing throughout the city *if* the adjacent neighborhood is ok with it. This could lead to spreading out affordable housing to all parts of the city as well.

In the comprehensive plan meeting, I suggested affordable workforce housing for police/fire/EMT/teachers/bus drivers/etc. to be able to live in/close to downtown. This would create economic diversity and not cost as much per unit. I haven't been able to find a link to "Table 5.9" to see which affordable apartment complexes were torn down to lose the 1,000+ affordable units lost. I wonder how many affordable units have been *added* in that timeframe as well.

The Fayetville Observer article is interesting that Hope VI housing has two stipulations attached -- working 35 hours/week and can only live there 10 years -- that the Raleigh Housing Authority can not use. How can they expect public housing residents to work hard to improve themselves when they have neighbors who don't have a job and have lived there for more than a decade? 35 hours a week seems a threshold, but would requiring able bodied residents to work at least 20 hours a week be too much to ask? I know there are some residents with jobs, but they seem to be more the exception than the rule. Walnut Terrace is too large a project for the city to redevlop by itself, so withotu Hope VI help, it isn't going anywhere.

The "new" Chavis Heights looks nice... I need to take some new pictures since the fences are starting to come down. And the revamped Hunter and Ligon schools nearby are nice. But the neighborhood north of Lenoir/south of Davie and south of MLK need serious work, yet have seen little to no rennovation work. Fayetville Street is less than a mile to the east, yet redevelopment of Chavis *and* the CBD have done nothing to spur development in those neighborhoods. There is no Pilot Mill or Seaboard Station-like projects to draw homeowner attention to the area, and litte easily redevlopale land other than what the city owns on Martin Street and the Chavis Greenway.

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Thanks for posting the article. Interestingly, I saw a story on PBS last night (view it here) about public housing redevelopments New Orleans, where they are doing the same thing, but this time it's privatizing the process by letting a developer control the land and make the rules--not good policy IMO. They also talked about how the community reacted negatively because so many people will be displaced. As in Capitol Park, only a fairly small percentage of people moved back into the new complex. Don't get me wrong, mixed-income projects are the way to go, but clearly a few hope VI projects are not the answer. We haven't even addressed the working class families who have full-time jobs (like the CAT bus driver, teacher) who cannot afford to live in DTR or even ITB, but are not poor enough to qualify for special assistance.

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In the comprehensive plan meeting, I suggested affordable workforce housing for police/fire/EMT/teachers/bus drivers/etc. to be able to live in/close to downtown. This would create economic diversity and not cost as much per unit. I haven't been able to find a link to "Table 5.9" to see which affordable apartment complexes were torn down to lose the 1,000+ affordable units lost. I wonder how many affordable units have been *added* in that timeframe as well.
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I was getting timeout errors the other day when I tried to look at that link, but it working now. Thanks!

It is telling that 550 of the 946 tear downs are a result of Kane developments in/near North Hills. Wow. And another 310 have been displaced/kicked out via the Whitaker Park demolition and Northside's conversion to condos. Economic diversity has no place in that part of town.

The "city's inventory of affordable housing" term was kinda misleading -- the city didn't own those private properties, though it did approve of the redevlopment plans. North Hills East's increased tax revenues came at the cost of eliminating affordable apartments the city will pay to recreate elsewhere, all the more reason why TIF was a bad idea there.

Across the city, there may be other, formerly affordable apartment complexes are less affordable now due to increased demand, instead of just being torn down. Or other apartment complexes settling for "affordable" rent due to competition from newer units.

The Central Planning area, even with Oakwood, Mordecai, and downtown condos (not including Glenwood South) still has 1 in 5 units as affordable, either owned by the city or via vouchers. The south and east parts of the central planning district has a large number of houses and apartment complexs rented at affordable rates, so the affordable ratio is probably 40% or higher. One out of every four affordable units in the city are concentrated in the area, even though it makes up less than 5% of the city's land.

It is a credit to the city that there isn't more crime in an area of systematic concentration of low income, and as a result, low hope. I hope the comprehensive plan does a better job of actually implementing the scatter site policy, instead of approving more units next to the already existing ones.

A lot of people did not come back to Capitol Park from Halifax Court because they liked where they were moved to via section 8 vouchers. Or they moved out of the area. Or they didn't want to meet the job/working requirement and/or 10 year limit that came with living in a Hope VI community. Hope VI by itself isn't going to meet the needs for affordable housing, and the 7,906 families on public housing waiting lists will only get larger as the city's overall population rises.

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