If carried out, this effort will destroy established historic neighborhoods and community identities, it will displace residents from existing affordable housing with no realistic hope of replacement; generational wealth will evaporate. It threatens the city’s tree canopy; it is a sickening reboot of the 1960’s and 70’s Urban Renewal projects that decimated neighborhoods and cultural identities in downtown Raleigh.
Highlights Despite previously guaranteeing 3 minutes per speaker at Public Comments and establishing a special meeting to accommodate that, Mayor Baldwin instituted a one-minute limit per speaker because 108 people had signed up to speak. Four councilors voted for...
Counselors: You are the responsible party. The ability and duty are yours. YOU are the key players in insuring that the history of Raleigh, its culture, its communities, its monuments, and its traditions survive for the benefit, edification, and pleasure of future generations.
If you weren’t able to attend our Community Conversation on November 16, 2023 for the discussion of Raleigh’s BRT Promises, the video and slides are now available on our “Community Conversations” page where you can find all of our previous events as well.
Highlights from the November 14 City Council meeting.
In 2016 Raleigh’s Planning Director promised Raleigh’s BRT would serve “some of Raleigh’s lowest-wealth communities .. [and] ensure that these investments benefit rather than displace households and families.” At the New Bern BRT Kickoff Meeting, a senior city planner pledged the city would “make sure the BRT benefits … are shared equitably … so that existing residents of the New Bern corridor … are going to be there to benefit”
In 2017, ‘The Color of Law’ landed like a bombshell in progressive housing policy circles. In Raleigh, powerful development interests saw the opportunity to adopt — some would say co-opt — Richard Rothstein’s anti-segregation message by promoting pro-density zoning rules that not only lifted exclusionary zoning rules, but went much further. By 2020, a new alliance of developer money, self-righteous Council aspirants and their white privileged adherents provided the lubrication to fast track pro-density zoning proposals. Novice Councilors were assured that pesky public input needn’t impede this sweet deal to meld profits and equity.
If their egregious zoning case, Z-92-22, gets a positive vote from City Council, it will usher in the worst kind of Urban Renewal. Affordable homes will be scraped off, to be replaced by luxury apartment buildings that only the affluent can afford to live in. Picture a stretched-out North Hills, replete with restaurants and bars – and parking decks – but with no room for the working-class.
Every day I see good, affordable, multi-unit housing being torn down and replaced with McMansions or “luxury” apartments. This is going on ALL OVER THE CITY and was put on steroids by the Missing Middle policy changes.
Last month’s move to shorten time for public comments was detrimental to the preservation of good governance. Government works best when multiple and diverse stakeholders participate and share viewpoints and ideas with elected officials.