Raleigh’s housing plight is a familiar subject for many: whether you live downtown or outside the I-440 beltline, own or rent, earn five figures or minimum wage, stable housing is hard to come by. And while the housing market has recovered somewhat from the skyrocketing costs during the COVID pandemic, the crisis is ongoing.
“The increases that we saw from 2020 to 2022 were unprecedented,” says Pat Young, director of Raleigh’s Planning and Development department. “Since mid- to late 2022, about two years, it’s been pretty flat. Values have not gone down, but they haven’t gone up.
“The main issue now is that interest rates and terms and conditions for financing new developments are really challenging,” Young adds. “We are seeing a little bit of a slow down [in construction], because projects in Raleigh are a little more expensive.”
With the city’s population continuing to boom—up nearly 150,000 people (or 10 percent) from 2020 to 2023—keeping up with demand for affordable housing is a constant struggle. Despite officials’ best efforts, demand continues to outweigh supply, inflating prices and spurring bidding wars.
Building more affordable housing has been a priority for Raleigh Mayor Mary-Ann Baldwin since her election in 2019—she supported the passage of an $80 million affordable housing bond in 2020 and enacted her signature “Missing Middle” policy in 2021. Baldwin faced pushback in 2022, however, with new council members raising concerns about how increased development impacts historic neighborhoods, aging infrastructure, and the environment.
Over the years, community members and activists have also raised concerns about gentrification, the availability of affordable housing for middle-income residents such as teachers and firefighters, and increasing rates of homelessness.
The municipal election in November could determine whether the city council will continue on its pro-development trajectory or face more resistance. Residents will vote in an open mayoral race and for candidates in all seven of the city council’s seats. As Election Day approaches, the INDY took a look at the housing market from the perspectives of Raleigh residents—a young couple looking to buy, a renter in her early 20s, and a mother experiencing homelessness.
Buying a house
On a Saturday afternoon in September, longtime partners Lexy Babcock and Forrest Mattingly roam through a small, two-story house in North Raleigh, quietly assessing immaculate carpets alongside used appliances.
“The floors are nice, you could re-sand them if you want,” Babcock murmurs to her boyfriend. Upstairs, she’s less impressed by the size of the bedrooms, although one could make a nice nursery, she notes. As the couple wander around, they fill in more details, imagining what the now-bare house would look like as their future home.
Babcock and Mattingly are two of the many northerners who’ve migrated south to Raleigh, finding the city more welcoming, less gridlocked, and less expensive than Philadelphia, their former home. The couple moved seven months ago for Babcock’s job, and while they’re currently renting, they’re in the market for a new house.
“We’re definitely looking for a single-family home and probably something we could grow in,” Babcock says. “We’re looking to get married, have kids.”
The couple feels like they’re in a good position to buy. They “started early,” Mattingly says, purchasing their first house when both were in their mid-20s. Thanks to low interest rates during the pandemic, the amount of equity they put in, and the nearly doubled value of their home, selling that house has given them an opportunity to upgrade.
While the two are in a good financial position, the Raleigh housing market is still difficult to navigate.
“The pricing is definitely a little crazy. There’s a lot of houses that are 400K and it’s like, ‘For what? It’s a box,’” Mattingly says. “And If you want to be in a really nice area, it’s, ‘All right, do you have a million dollars? No? Don’t look over here.’”
The city’s efforts to increase the supply and variety of housing through “Missing Middle” is going well, according to Young. The number of townhouses, duplexes, and other small homes built under the new zoning rules outpaces similarly sized peer cities like Minneapolis and Portland, he says. And this housing is built specifically with people like Babcock and Mattingly in mind.
“[The new housing] soaks up demand from a lot of these wealthier folks that are moving into our region,” Young says. “And it opens up other housing in the market, because there’s less competition. It’s very indirect, and it’s a long-game strategy … but it’s crucially important. If we don’t do it, we’re guaranteed to have no organically affordable housing in 15 or 20 years.”
The housing constructed under “Missing Middle” is definitely within the couple’s price range, but Babcock and Mattingly may be the exception to the rule. They aren’t looking for a $400,000 duplex downtown (like the new ones at Millbank Village Court), or a $280,000 townhouse on the outskirts of the city (like those off Rock Quarry Road). The couple’s old townhouse wasn’t really big enough for their 100-pound dog, Mattingly says. Now, they’re excited to find a quiet place with a big backyard.
Ideally, the two would prefer a house with some historic character, Mattingly says, which rules out many of the more affordable, newly built single-family homes outside the beltline. What’s left are million-dollar homes in Oakwood or older houses outside the city center that fall into the category of “naturally occurring affordable housing,” which is becoming increasingly rare.
Still, with more houses going on the market this year—listings are up 10 percent as of August compared with August 2023—the couple feels like they have options as the market cools down.
“It feels like it’s getting better,” Babcock says. “If you asked us a year, even six months ago, it would have been like, ‘I don’t know if we’ll be able to get a house here.’”
The life of a renter
Meanwhile, in downtown Raleigh, 24-year-old Jenny Cheng is getting a cup of coffee. Unlike Babcock and Mattingly, she’s in no position to buy. The graduate student has rented a one-bedroom apartment in an older complex for the past two years.
When Cheng first moved to Raleigh, she didn’t have a lot of time to find a new place. She heard about her current apartment complex from her sister, who had lived there when rents were a lot cheaper. Cheng was surprised to see the higher rates, but she was on a timetable, so she went ahead and moved in.
“I wasn’t expecting to pay as much as I did for the one-bedroom I lived in,” Cheng says. “I did look at a couple of other complexes, but the timeframe of moving was just not flexible. My sister’s place had availability around the time I needed to move.”
Apartments with reasonable rents remain scarce in Raleigh, despite the city and county taking action to preserve affordable complexes, like downtown’s Grosvenor Gardens. The city is also buying land near major transit corridors in an effort to help developers construct low-cost housing with below-market-rate rent.
Wake County offers emergency rental and utility assistance to help prevent displacement, but these programs are more aimed at lower-income renters at high risk of eviction or homelessness. The city (and county) are trying to stretch their money as far as possible, but many residents still fall through the cracks.
Middle-income residents often struggle to find affordable apartments that are close to where they work. Cheng experienced this firsthand. As a former private school teacher, her salary “did impact where I was looking for housing,” she says.
“I got paid more than a first-year public school teacher,” Cheng adds. “But even then, I was still struggling to make rent every month, even though I made a decent amount.”
It’s a familiar refrain for renters, especially as landlords increase rates each year. Thankfully, Cheng was able to move into a different, cheaper unit this summer, she says. She’s locked into a 15-month lease now and overall, her experience has been good.
Since the complex is a little older, she’s occasionally had issues with plumbing or other systems, but maintenance has been responsive, she says. That’s a major point in the “pro” column, as other renters have reported apartment management ignoring serious maintenance issues in aging-but-more-affordable apartment complexes. Cheng doesn’t plan on moving anytime soon, but as always, it will depend on what happens when her lease is up.
Cheng’s experience is in line with data that show that, overall, rents in Raleigh have been on the decline as more housing hits the market. According to recent rental price data from Zumper, a digital marketplace for renters and property managers, median rents in August clocked in at $1,260 for a one-bedroom and $1,560 for a two-bedroom rental. That’s down 9.4 percent and 4.9 percent, respectively, over last year.
Living with homelessness
Kara Sanders, or Kai, is a community activist, former member of a joint Wake County-Raleigh task force, and one-time consultant for NC State University. Day-to-day, she’s usually at the park or public library with her 8-year-old son, Wisdom, or showing up at Raleigh City Council meetings to make public comments. She’s also currently unhoused.
Sanders moved from Connecticut to Raleigh around 2020, looking for support from her family. When that fell through, she found herself with no place to go. Since becoming unhoused, she and Wisdom have had “pockets of stability,” she says. But it never lasts.
“I’ve had people invite us to stay with them, tell us ‘Welcome home.’ And then because they were going to be gone for the holiday weekend, and we didn’t have a place to go, they asked us to leave,” Sanders says.
“We’ve been gifted hotel nights or things of that nature. We panhandled our way and stayed at a hotel for three, four months. Somebody gave us a car last year, and so that’s where we’re living [now].”
Sanders has experienced both acts of radical kindness and persistent unkindness from strangers, she says. People have given her money, resources, and even helped her pay for parenting classes. But when others learn she is unhoused, their treatment of her often shifts, she says. Last month, someone who saw her panhandling outside of Wegman’s called Child Protective Services.
“Somebody was that concerned about my son that when they said, ‘If you’re here calling to report abuse or neglect, click this number.’ They felt that,” Sanders says. “We’ve had a lot of people mistreat us. To be unhoused is very trauma-filled.”
Shelters and nonprofits in Raleigh offer help to residents experiencing homelessness. But after five years of jumping through hoops and shuffling from one program to another, “I realized that nobody was going to help,” Sanders says. “They were just trying to move people from one level of poverty to another.”
Trying to get into programs and access resources created so much stress that it pushed Sanders into fight-or-flight mode, she says.
“They keep you in such a state of, ‘You need to do this. You need to do this now. You need to do this when I tell you. You need to jump,’” she says. “They’re not trauma-informed programs. So, I can’t. I can’t.”
Wake County largely takes the lead on addressing homelessness, but the city has taken some steps forward, particularly in the last year. The city’s ACORNS unit, housed inside the police department, has responded to multiple calls for people experiencing homelessness or mental health issues, connecting them with social workers who can manage individual cases over time.
In May, the Raleigh City Council approved a new, $5 million pilot program to provide direct rent assistance to about 45 households experiencing homelessness, as well as maintain and expand city-owned housing for people experiencing homelessness. More than $12 million from the 2020 Affordable Housing has also been spent to fight homelessness, including:
- $7 million for the construction of King’s Ridge, a 100-unit apartment complex reserved for people exiting homelessness;
- $3 million to renovate and expand Healing Transitions, a recovery center for people dealing with addiction; and
- $2 million for the construction of 27 new apartments by Southeast Raleigh Promise, at least one-third of which must be affordable to people making 30 percent or less of the area median income (AMI), or $25,710 for one person.
Still, some, including Sanders, question the city’s dedication to addressing homelessness. Activists have repeatedly petitioned the city to shift money from middle-class housing to programs that will help the city’s most vulnerable. In Sanders’s eyes, homelessness is “solvable at the rate that we have it right now.”
Officials simply lack the political will to fight it in a more significant way, she argues.
This is the second story in a four-part series on the Raleigh City Council leading up to the municipal election this fall. Read Part One of the series here.
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