HB 765 is currently under consideration at the NC General Assembly. If passed, the bill would essentially undo everything that Livable Raleigh has worked on the last several years. There will be statewide vested zoning rights in every residential district at much higher density levels with no ability to negotiate citizen-desired changes through conditional zoning. HB 765 was written by the Homebuilders Association and creates statewide density mandates, eviscerates conditional zoning, and bars council from considering residents’ opinions.
You can read the bill summary here: Bill Summaries: H765 (2025-2026 Session)
Livable Raleigh sent the following email to the Wake County delegation at the NC General Assembly. We encourage you to write to them as well in opposition to HB 765. See below for their email addresses.
I am writing on behalf of Livable Raleigh to oppose HB 765. While HB 765 is promoted as a way to increase housing stocks, in Raleigh it will have the opposite effect.
HB 765 would create statewide density mandates, bar local governments from mitigating unwarranted development impacts and subject local government officials to the threat of lawsuits for mitigating development impacts.
More than 100,000 housing units have been approved in Raleigh in the last few years. This would be more than enough to solve our housing crisis if they were all built (and if they were affordably priced). But they haven’t all been built and what has been built tends to be luxury housing rather than much-needed workforce housing. This unprecedented backlog makes it clear that Raleigh’s zoning rules do not restrict higher densities, but rather, it is the surging costs of construction that make it unprofitable to build many of Raleigh’s already approved units.
Taking away the right of local governments to manage their own growth is a one-size-fits-all mistake. The actual effect of HB 765 in Raleigh will be to promote higher zoning densities in cheaper rural areas without water, sewer or road infrastructure. Promoting sprawl densities will only increase the burden on Raleigh taxpayers to fund new infrastructure. Meanwhile, the increased zoning speculation will continue to drive up land costs, making it even less likely that the backlog of approved units will ever get built.
Promoting higher densities in Raleigh without regard for the fundamental problems of escalating costs for land, construction and infrastructure, along with the increasing burden on taxpayers, will only make it harder to reduce the backlog of already-approved housing, putting an even greater burden on Raleigh taxpayers.
Please oppose HB 765.
Wake County Delegation to the NC General Assembly
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- Cynthia.Ball@ncleg.gov
- Maria.Cervania@ncleg.gov
- Sarah.Crawford@ncleg.gov
- Allison.Dahle@ncleg.net
- Phillip.Rubin@ncleg.gov
- monika.johnson-hostler@ncleg.gov
- abe.jones@ncleg.net
- ya.liu@ncleg.gov
- tim.longest@ncleg.gov
- Erin.Pare@ncleg.gov
- James.Roberson@ncleg.gov
- mike.schietzelt@ncleg.gov
- Julie.vonHaefen@ncleg.net
- Gale.Adcock@ncleg.net
- sydney.batch@ncleg.net
- dan.blue@ncleg.net
- jay.chaudhuri@ncleg.net
- Terence.Everitt@ncleg.gov
- lisa.grafstein@ncleg.net
Livable Raleigh Editorial Team
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