Follow Planning Best Practices: Use BRT to Revitalize Neighborhoods, Not Remove Them.

Dear Planning Commissioners

Over the course of several PC-COW meetings related to the New Bern BRT corridor, you have referred to ‘BRT goals” and “corridor goals”, usually defined in terms of the benefits of adding density in the BRT corridor, especially as a supply-side tool for driving down housing costs. It is important to note that staff’s own reference to this ‘filtering’ effect concludes that it could take “decades” to be effective (Upjohn p.1), and then only in a market without strong in-migration (Upjohn p.2). In the meantime, the near-term loss of existing affordable housing in the corridor – resulting from the $97M BRT investment, combined with the proposed 744 parcel upzoning – will be immediate, but has not been quantified or even estimated by staff. 

At Council’s November 14 Worksession on Equitable Transit Oriented Development, staff noted that the adopted TOD overlay would create real incentives to rezone parcels from existing 3 story entitlements to 5 stories with an affordable housing density bonus, because it could be done economically within the 5 story code limit for wood frame construction. They noted that the economics of steel frame construction above 5 stories would eliminate the advantages of an affordable housing density bonus above five stories. This raises the obvious concern: For any parcel upzoned via Z-92-22 to 5 stories or more, the economic incentive for a developer to take advantage of an affordable unit height bonus is lost.  This concern was described at Livable Raleigh’s November 16 Public Forum on the New Bern BRT corridor.