The city’s efforts to bridge the affordability gap have been swamped by the rise in housing costs and the teardowns of older, affordable homes. Two months ago, Livable Raleigh presented a plan to do better.
May 12 City Council Meetings
Work Session covered Energy Usage. Public comments focused on Z-43-25 rezoning, trees, public safety, solid waste services, and bike lanes.
May 5 City Council Meeting
Highlights from May 5 City Council meetings
Nicole Bennett, Former Planning Commission Chair – It’s Not Just a Rezoning
Why does “the greater good” so often require loss from the same communities? Why are the people who already rely on transit the ones most at risk of being displaced from it? What does it mean to build a transit corridor that the current riders might no longer be able to afford to live near? if the greater good keeps requiring that the same communities lose everything, perhaps we need to ask ourselves what “good” really means.
APRIL 21 CITY COUNCIL MEETINGS
Highlights from the April 21 work session and afternoon council meeting
It’s time to step back and evaluate if Raleigh’s growth framework is being applied as intended.
Neighborhood Conservation Overlay Districts were adopted as legislative tools to guide growth while preserving established neighborhood patterns. If the City believes these overlays require revision, that conversation should occur through a comprehensive, citywide process—not through the incremental removal of protections on individual parcels.
Developer Welfare
Raleigh adopted a carefully thought-out and comprehensive rezoning of the entire City just 10 years ago which was and is designed to handle the growth we are now experiencing. But, Raleigh incentivizes speculators and hustlers to find cheaper and less densely zoned land not in the core of downtown and then rezone it because the city will rezone almost anything so long as you commit to building more density whether affordable or not.
Growth is inevitable, it doesn’t have to be destructive
Growth is inevitable, it can be transformative; it’s up to us to see that it isn’t destructive. Zoning and land use planning are the tools we use to meet this challenge.
Why Hide the Truth About Raleigh’s Affordable Housing Crisis?
Some City Councilors are tireless boosters of discredited supply-side affordability theories: They cheer when the market ticks up , and they cheer even more when the market ticks down.
Raleigh’s Affordable Housing web pages are Unnavigable
Navigating Raleigh’s affordable housing webpages feels like a frustrating maze. There’s good information, unfortunately, it’s buried under confusing web design, esoteric labels, scattered across too many disconnected pages or missing altogether in outdated reports.