A ZONING SCAM

Matthew Brown has restored three historic houses in Raleigh, and has assisted with the restoration of many others. He has financed renovation of six houses for affordable housing.

Matthew spoke to City Council on June 9, 2026:   

I know we are trying to ameliorate a shortage of affordable housing. But some of the City’s methods are counterproductive. Case in point: On E. Lenoir Street, across from Ligon Middle School, there were two beautiful historic houses that were affordable rentals for many years. They were small, but they were fine houses. Lenoir Street back in the day was a fine street for the black upper middle class: business owners, teachers, doctors. These houses were on small lots and were zoned R-10. There was no incentive to demolish them.

UNTIL the City put them in a frequent transit zone, with an “affordable housing density bonus,” which allowed a developer to build 21 units on those two lots. This created an incentive to demolish these affordable historic houses.

So a developer demolished them and is building a big black and white box with 21 units. 19 of the 21 units will be condos selling for between 395 and 530 thousand dollars. 2 of the 21 units will be affordable to someone making 60 percent of the area median income for a single person, which is 93K. And these two units will be tiny, half the size of the condo units. They will have no balconies, unlike the condos. And the rent will be about the same as the rent was on the two historic houses they demolished. If I were making $60K, I would rather rent a little house with a yard than a tiny unit in a box full of condos, especially if I had a family.

So this is actually a loss for affordable housing, and it’s definitely a loss for this historic black neighborhood. But it’s a win for this developer. If he is selling 19 units for half a million each, he will do very well.

Some might say this is good because we want density on the bus line. But that is a joke!! Nobody who is paying half a million dollars for a condo will ever set foot on the bus! They will get in their car, which is parked in the parking garage in the building! I’ll bet even the people in the two tiny units making 60K a year won’t ride the bus.

The City is using the excuse of a bus line to allow developers to knock down our neighborhoods.

It is a scam!

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