A coalition of community and religious groups in Cary is asking the town to reserve a penny per dollar of property tax revenue for affordable housing and put an affordable housing bond on the ballot next year.
“Every day we see many of our most gifted workers being pushed out of our neighborhoods, because of affordability, further and further from Cary,” Athena Thomasson-Bless, an associate pastor at Christ the King Lutheran Church in Cary, told a hundred people gathered around her in Downtown Cary Park on Tax Day.
The assembled crowd included representatives from the Western Regional Community Advocacy Committee, the White Oak Foundation, Greenwood Forest Baptist Church, the Raleigh Area Land Trust, the Carying Place, and ONE Wake, a collective of religious congregations around Wake County that advocates for more affordable housing. They wore visors and reflective sunglasses to shield against the noon sun, and drew close to hear each other over the whoosh of the Frantz Square fountain (amplified sound is not allowed in Downtown Cary Park).
“We need teachers, first responders, janitors, restaurant staff, medical personnel, and so many more to be able to afford to live here,” Thomasson-Bless said, eliciting a ripple of head nods and murmured agreement.
Cary is one of the most expensive places to live in the Triangle. The median price of a house is $630,000 and the median rent is $2,220. Every town council member has said they favor creating more affordable housing options, but the housing advocates who gathered at the park on Wednesday were dismayed to see that Cary expects to lower its affordable housing budget next year.
During the Cary Town Council’s March 24 work session, town staff shared an early budget draft that included about $1.8 million for affordable housing plus an estimated $743,000 in federal affordable housing funds through the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program. Combined, that’s about $2.6 million—half as much as the community groups are requesting. A penny from each dollar of property tax revenue would equate to about $5.3 million dollars.
This fiscal year, the town’s affordable housing budget is roughly $3.9 million, inclusive of town funds and CDBG funds. Other Triangle municipalities including Durham, Raleigh, and Chapel Hill have already adopted the “penny for housing” standard.
Town staff emphasized during the work session that their FY27 budget estimates are not final and could increase if Cary receives other federal grants.
Asked about the housing advocates’ requests, Cary’s assistant town manager Dana Widmar wrote in an emailed statement to the INDY that the town appreciates their input. She didn’t commit to or dismiss either of their requests.
“The Town greatly values its community partners, including organizations such as ONE Wake, Greenwood Forest Baptist Church, and The Carying Place,” Widmar wrote. “The Town doesn’t speculate on future budgeting actions, and in Cary, the window has closed for us to make any 2026 bond actions. Any decisions regarding funding levels or potential bond initiatives would be made by the Town Council as part of future budget deliberations and community engagement.”
Many if not most of the town council members are already on board with the housing advocates’ Penny for Housing campaign (which ONE Wake has been championing in Cary and other Wake municipalities since 2021). Mayor Pro Tem Lori Bush alluded to it during the March work session.
“What we’ve heard from our residents is they want more of an investment in affordable housing initiatives,” she said. “I would love us to be at about a penny on the tax rate of affordable housing investment, which works out to be about $5 million.”
According to Bush’s calculations, Cary budgeted $5 million for affordable housing in 2024 and $9 million in 2023 (with a boost from federal American Rescue Plan Act funds).
The housing advocates’ second request is for a 2027 affordable housing bond.
The town council put a $30 million affordable housing bond referendum on the ballot in 2024, but it failed narrowly. It was overshadowed by a massive $560 million parks and greenways bond, which failed by a wider margin. Together, the bonds would have raised the tax rate by 9¢ (8.5¢ for parks and 0.5¢ for housing). Cary residents had just seen their property values spike following a county-wide revaluation and were hesitant to approve another tax increase.
During the Tax Day gathering, Wesley Spears-Newsome, an associate pastor at Greenwood Forest Baptist Church and a co-chair of ONE Wake’s strategy team, told the crowd that Cary’s next bond package should better reflect the community’s priorities.
“I love our parks,” Spears-Newsome said. “But now, at this moment in history, we need to put people over parks. After all, who’s gonna be here to enjoy them, if none of us can afford to live here?”
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