Tim Niles is a founding member of Livable Raleigh and has been a resident of Raleigh for over 30 years.
Tim submitted a Letter to the Editor of the N&O in response to an Op-Ed from the Director of WakeUP Wake County on the topic of the New Bern Avenue upzoning proposal. The LTE wasn’t published so we are printing it here:
I’m writing in response to “Raleigh must protect residents along New Bern line from gentrification” Jan 29, 2024.
The writer, Denzel Burnside, the Director of WakeUP Wake County, makes 3 glaring errors.
He quotes a Zillow study claiming Raleigh is short 17,000 homes.
The Zillow study is for the Raleigh Metro Area which is the 3-county area including Wake, Franklin and Johnston counties. Zillow notes housing shortage
Placing that entire deficit on Raleigh is disingenuous at best. The 3-county metro area has a population over 3 times Raleigh’s.
Raleigh’s City Council, from December 2019 thru March 2023, approved zoning cases for OVER 70,000 housing units. More than four times the entitlement needed to cover Zillow’s housing shortfall.
Burnside employs a strawman argument saying the status quo will lead to worse displacement than the upzoning proposal. But opponents aren’t advocating for doing nothing; they’re advocating for policy requiring and/or incentivizing affordable housing and disincenting gentrification of existing bus-riders and residents on the New Bern corridor, which has the largest ridership in the city.
Burnside mentions the effects of Raleigh’s exclusionary zoning. Raleigh’s City Council eliminated its exclusionary zoning with the implementation of Missing Middle housing policies.
It’s fine to disagree. But you should support your position with facts, not misinformation and strawman arguments.
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