From CPP: NC law makes mandating affordable housing hard — did Asheville find a solution?

GAME PLAN: In Asheville, officials stopped hotel construction after a years-long boom of developer interest. And while the city didn’t call what happened next “inclusionary zoning,” the game plan did achieve something similar. Art Credit: Mariano Santillan for the Charlotte Journalism Collaborative

By David Aaron Moore, Qnotes

When Asheville put a temporary pause on construction of hotels three years ago, officials seized the moment to address a burgeoning affordability problem in their city.

In doing so, Asheville may have also left a breadcrumb trail that other North Carolina localities can follow to get around a state restriction many routinely cite as the reason city officials can’t adopt more rules to support affordable housing.

Some states, like California, require residential developers to provide a certain percentage of mixed income or lower cost housing in subdivisions. Other locales, like some municipalities in New York and states like Maryland and Connecticut encourage it through certain programs, oftentimes with tax incentives.

In North Carolina, local governments only have the powers granted to them by the state constitution and statutes. It’s known as “Dillon’s Rule.”

How has that affected affordable housing? In Charlotte, for example, City Council members can’t legislate or mandate that all developers or property owners build income-restricted housing or affordable units.

The city (and other taxing bodies) can and does offer incentives, grants and more.

But inclusionary zoning is off limits.

Inclusionary zoning effectively allows local governments to deny permissions to build or use land for residential purposes without a certain mix of affordable units being added.

In Asheville, officials stopped hotel construction after a years-long boom of developer interest. And while the city didn’t call what happened next “inclusionary zoning,” the game plan did achieve something similar.

When Asheville lifted its hotel moratorium, officials did so with more rules in place and established a new hotel overlay district. The overlay district — a zoning authority North Carolina municipalities may exercise — effectively replaced Asheville’s moratorium.

But in order to build hotels in it, developers would have to take steps to earn enough points in a system designed to aid affordable housing.

Points are earned by:

  • Pitching a hotel project that revamps and reuses a historic building
  • Donating to the city’s affordable housing or reparations fund
  • Agreeing to pay workers a higher, liveable wage
  • Contracting with women or minority-owned businesses

To guide the work, the city placed an emphasis on affordable housing points and required that at least half of the developer’s points come from contributing to that bucket.

“For example, a 100-room hotel in downtown Asheville would need to either contribute $400,000 to either the Housing Trust Fund or a Reparations Fund, or build 10 affordable for sale housing units, plus choose from a menu of other benefits such as supporting a Business Inclusion Program or providing living wages in order to get approval at the staff level,” explained a city spokesperson in a news release last year.

Could something similar work in Charlotte?

A Community Benefits Association (CBA) working in conjunction with the Charlotte City Council or the Mecklenburg County Commission could, in theory, create a similar scenario.

“For over a year and a half the city worked very hard at putting together a Community Benefits Association,” explains Jordan Brooks-Adams, the Executive Director of West Boulevard NC, one of the founding members of Charlotte’s Community Benefits Coalition (CBC) that includes more than 30 organizational members from Charlotte’s low-income and minority neighborhoods on the city’s east and west sides.

“I believe in the concept of community benefits programs,” she explains. “They work. We’ve seen them work all over the country.”

The city of Charlotte does have some authority, although it has limits. City Council recently passed source of income protections for renters in government-supported housing, followed by similar protections in Mecklenburg County. They are the first such protections in the state.

The new policies apply only to affordable housing developments receiving local government funds or financial incentives, including vouchers and the conveyance of real estate for affordable housing production. Owners that fail to comply will face thousands of dollars in fines.

Councilwoman Victoria Watlington, who spearheaded the city’s policy, said before voting she understands that there’s going to be more work to do in terms of expanding these protections. Like inclusionary zoning, any broader measure would require movement at the state level and that seems doubtful with the current political makeup of the legislature.

Asheville’s workaround has shown signs of success in meeting community needs. According to the Asheville Citizen-Times, the new hotel policy has resulted in more than $1 million toward the city’s reparations and affordable housing funds, while addressing concerns over infrastructure and design.

More than half of the projects approved have a mixed-use component, adding a total of 164 residential units.

Where state law prohibits requiring community benefits, city incentives became a way of encouraging private companies to be involved.

The CBC believes it’s a roadmap for Charlotte’s affordable housing. The group proposed the creation of overlay districts as part of the Unified Development Ordinance (UDO) to areas of medium to high housing precarity in addition to projects within a mile radius of a light rail station.

Any development built within this area would trigger a community benefits table and developers would be required to choose whether or not to meet the point system or go through a standard rezoning process.

“We believe that community benefits us, and we believe the realization of these policies within the UDO should allow for communities to benefit from economic development rather than be bulldozed by it,” stated the group in its proposal.

The Charlotte City Council voted 6-4 to pass the UDO in August, without a community benefits plan — at least for now.

Carolina Public Press is part of seven major media companies and other local institutions producing I Can’t Afford to Live Here, a collaborative reporting project focused on solutions to the affordable housing crisis in Charlotte. It is a project of the Charlotte Journalism Collaborative, which is supported by the Local Media Project, an initiative launched by the Solutions Journalism Network with support from the Knight Foundation to strengthen and reinvigorate local media ecosystems. See all our reporting at charlottejournalism.org.

SHARE

Thanks for reading through to the end…

We share your inclination to get the whole story. For the past 25 years, Xpress has been committed to in-depth, balanced reporting about the greater Asheville area. We want everyone to have access to our stories. That’s a big part of why we've never charged for the paper or put up a paywall.

We’re pretty sure that you know journalism faces big challenges these days. Advertising no longer pays the whole cost. Media outlets around the country are asking their readers to chip in. Xpress needs help, too. We hope you’ll consider signing up to be a member of Xpress. For as little as $5 a month — the cost of a craft beer or kombucha — you can help keep local journalism strong. It only takes a moment.

Before you comment

The comments section is here to provide a platform for civil dialogue on the issues we face together as a local community. Xpress is committed to offering this platform for all voices, but when the tone of the discussion gets nasty or strays off topic, we believe many people choose not to participate. Xpress editors are determined to moderate comments to ensure a constructive interchange is maintained. All comments judged not to be in keeping with the spirit of civil discourse will be removed and repeat violators will be banned. See here for our terms of service. Thank you for being part of this effort to promote respectful discussion.

3 thoughts on “From CPP: NC law makes mandating affordable housing hard — did Asheville find a solution?

  1. indy499

    Far too generous reporting on our council’s hotel moratorium. The much larger impact which this article ignores, is the hotel moratorium added jet fuel to the str business phenomenon.

Leave a Reply

To leave a reply you may Login with your Mountain Xpress account, connect socially or enter your name and e-mail. Your e-mail address will not be published. All fields are required.