Raleigh Aims to Create 1,345 Affordable Housing Units, Reduce Unsheltered Homelessness to “Functional Zero” by 2030

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Good morning, readers.

When it comes to tackling Raleigh’s housing crisis, the target is constantly moving. Land is scarce and coveted, the cost of building keeps rising, and the city’s population keeps growing. Every few weeks, I hear a new statistic that quantifies the shortage: 30 percent of Raleigh’s households are “cost burdened”; Wake County has 60,000 fewer affordable housing units than it needs.

Against this backdrop of acute need, City of Raleigh staff are in the process of drafting an affordable housing plan for the next five years. By 2030, the city aims to create or preserve 1,345 affordable housing units and reduce unsheltered homelessness to “functional zero” so that instances are “rare, brief, and non-recurring.”

Achieving those goals will cost tens of millions of dollars. Among many other decisions, the city will need to decide whether to bring forward another affordable housing bond (the last one passed in 2020) or add a new penny tax for housing. 

“There’s no single solution to this issue,” Emila Sutton, director of the Department of Housing and Neighborhoods, told the Raleigh City Council last week during a work session. 

In that spirit, the (draft) 2030 affordable housing plan offers up a smorgasbord of tools and strategies—some familiar, some new—to bring down the price of housing and add more affordable units. 

Read more below, and have a good Thursday.

 —Chloe

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Durham

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ICYMI: The Durham Association of Educators is asking the school board to hold off on approving a budget request to the county until after DAE gets more clarity on what the budget means for staff. INDY’s Chase Pellegrini de Paur reports three board members at a meeting this week said no.

Wake

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Orange

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North Carolina

Republican legislators want to create committees of parents and school employees who could ban books from libraries, WUNC reports.

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