On June 7th, 2022, the Carrboro Town Council adopted the Carrboro Connects Comprehensive Plan. The plan is the town’s first ever Comprehensive Plan, and came complete with an Implementation Chapter of strategies, policies and actions to advance plan priorities.
What’s notable about the top ten towns in the list is that most of them have some type of rare natural amenity – the beach, the mountains, a lake, etc. Only three towns in the list do not have such an amenity. Two of the towns are Marvin and Weddington, some of the most expensive suburbs south of Charlotte, where the median home is more than $1 million dollars.
The other beachless, mountainless, lakeless town with soaring prices – is Carrboro.
To state this plainly: our current policy environment is so unsuited to bringing smaller, denser, lower-cost per home multifamily housing into being that we’ve created the price escalation of resort communities WITHOUT needing a beach, mountains, island or lake to raise prices as if we had one of those amenities. (with gentle apologies to University Lake; we see you, but you’re not Lake Norman)
Meanwhile, on Tuesday evening, the Town Council received a presentation on the results of the 2024 Town Community Survey, the most valuable, scientific picture of community opinion data available to the town. The free response comments paint a vivid picture. In response to
Q29. What do you think are the MOST SIGNIFICANT issues facing Carrboro today?
This is what the free responses that begin with A look like :
Page 1 of 10 for answers to this question
Page 2 of 10
Page 3 of 10
This is what the free responses that begin with H look like :
Page 6 of 10
This is what the free responses that begin with L look like :
Page 8 of 10
Finally, there is a set of maps of town opinion by Census Tract. Most of them are blue and dark blue, signifying ratings of “Very Satisfied” or “Satisfied” for the Town. Here’s the map of opinions on affordability:
Basically the only neighborhoods that reach “Neutral” on housing affordability are the wealthiest neighborhoods in town with the highest home values. And even they’re not happy.
We know this already, don’t we? What’s the point of another affordability blog post?
Most residents in town are either concerned about the cost of their living situation or know one or more people who are worried about it. But sometimes the data starkly illustrates how much change is needed.
At the two year anniversary of adopting the Carrboro Connects plan, only one substantive land use policy change (the abolishing of residential parking requirements) has been brought to the Council table. In that time the size of a standard down payment for a home in Carrboro has risen by tens of thousands of dollars. Rents have also risen substantially.
Go BIG When Funding the Work of Replacing Carrboro’s Broken UDO
It’s clear that the current policy change isn’t going to happen without a surge of people and expertise. Fortunately, the Town Council is looking to hire a consulting firm to augment the Town Staff’s capacity.
What the data in the news report above and our neighbors’ 2024 survey comments tell us that is the risk of Carrboro underfunding the work of creating a new UDO is much greater than overfunding it.
The current budget has an initial number of $225,000 for this work in FY 25, with a note from the budget director that additional investment in the new UDO in FY 26 is also likely.
I encourage the Town Council to see if they can push that FY25 number to something closer to $350,000 to $400,000, to see if more work on replacing the UDO can happen in the next 12 months. If we do this and can figure out a way to advance the work with a different cadence than our current processes, I think we will likely spend a similar amount of funds on the work over 2 years, but we will do more to meet our housing challenge sooner by getting more work complete and getting to policy adoption faster.
If you’re a parent of a child under age 18 in Carrboro like me, I have some weird news to share: Carrboro has a plan to make our kids move away. Nobody thinks of it that way, and I don’t think anybody really intended to make this the plan for our town, but make no mistake – this plan has existed for some time, and it is WORKING.
First: We Need to Have Empathy for Our Children as Young Adults
Think of your favorite pictures of your children. No matter their age, you likely have some pictures of them under age 10 that absolutely make you melt. The joy on their face the first time they ate an ice cream cone. A loving hug with a grandparent. Our kids will always be our babies, and it’s both fine and loving to think of them that way.
But now use your imagination a bit and try to picture them at ages 19, 20, 23, 26 and 28. What is their life like? What are their hopes and dreams? Do they have a job doing something that speaks to them? Where do they live? Do they live close enough that you see them as much as you’d like to?
That last question is going to be partly answered by this election. But let’s unpack the plan to make our kids move away first, and then talk about voting.
Carrboro Runs On A “Send The Kids Packing” Operating System
Maybe your phone is an Apple device with iOS. Or perhaps it’s an Android OS phone. Carrboro’s operating system for building homes and businesses is called the Unified Development Ordinance (UDO). When you see the word UDO, think “BuildingOS.”
Here’s how it works: the Research Triangle Region of North Carolina, where we live, has been one of the fastest growing metropolitan areas in the country for a long time. This creates a ton of demand for housing as new people move in and those already here have children who grow up and move out on their own.
Most of the UDOs communities in the Triangle, from big cities like Raleigh to small towns like Hillsborough and Clayton – have allowed a lot of housing to provide homes for newcomers, and importantly for parents – new households formed by those who grow up here. But not Carrboro.
2: Of the housing that has been built in Carrboro, 84% of it has been for the wealthy
In the last four years, the Town has allowed only two residential buildings that are NOT single family homes to be built. One is the CASA affordable housing building, which has 23 apartment homes in the Town Limits (most of the project is just over the town line in Chapel Hill); the other is a single duplex somewhere in town. 84% of all homes built were single family homes. From a building permits perspective, 98.5% of building permits were for single family homes.
With such limited buildings, housing prices in Carrboro rose by over $200,000 for a single family home in JUST THREE YEARS. Notice by how much less prices rose elsewhere in Wake and Durham counties, which built more housing. Even the non-Chapel Hill/Carrboro portions of Orange County had much smaller price increases.
And in the period where barely any apartments or duplex homes were built, look what happened to rents from 2019 to 2023. Up $327 per month:
When housing gets so expensive so quickly, who moves in and who does not?
In the past decade, while only 25% to 35% of growth came from retirement age residents in Wake, Durham, and Alamance counties, nearly two-thirds of all population growth in Orange County came from retirees.
This means that if our children want to try to live near us as young adults after high school or college, it’s going to be economically VERY DIFFICULT for them to do so. Look at the comparative resources of different age groups in our society:
The Carrboro UDO “BuildingOS” is Working Effectively to Move Young People Away
In addition to not building much housing, Carrboro has created very few job opportunities for young people in town, and the chickens are coming home to roost. Even while Orange County’s population has grown by nearly 15,000 residents in the past decade, we’ve lost 33% of our young workers under age 29 in that same time period.
So Our Town’s BuildingOS Stinks – Is There Anything We Can Do?
YES! The great news at this moment in Town history is that for the FIRST TIME ever, the Town has a comprehensive plan called Carrboro Connects that is designed to repair and replace our broken BuildingOS or UDO with new, improved and updated regulations that will make it possible for more people and jobs to call Carrboro “home,” INCLUDING OUR CHILDEN, if that is what they want to do.
How Will the Carrboro Connects Plan Help Our Kids Stay Local?
First, the Carrboro Connects plan aims to remove barriers to building housing in general, and promote a greater variety of smaller homes such as apartments, duplexes, triplexes, and other buildings that are most likely to be affordable to our children when they are in their 20s.
Second, the plan recommends things like removing parking requirements, which could make it easier for us to create new job opportunities downtown and in the parking lots at Carrboro Plaza and the Shoppes at Jones Ferry shopping center. Got a kid who’s interested in STEM? Wouldn’t it be great if there were STEM job opportunities in wet lab buildings in Carrboro, and not just in Durham and RTP?
These positive outcomes will become our more likely future when the Carrboro Town Council makes enough changes to the Carrboro UDO so that it promotes the goals of the plan, and not the trendlines in the charts above. We probably need to make at least 50 to 100 changes to the UDO to get the outcome we need. The current council has adopted the Carrboro Connects plan, gotten started, and made the first two UDO changes last week.
Okay, This Sounds Great! But It’s Election Season – Are There Candidates Running Who Support Implementing the Carrboro Connects Plan?
YES! Four candidates out of the six running for public office support the Carrboro Connects plan instead of sticking with the send-our-kids-packing status quo. Those candidates are:
For Mayor: Barbara Foushee
For Town Council:
Catherine Fray
Jason Merrill
Eliazar Posada
Each of them either directly participated in the development of the Carrboro Connects plan, voted to approve it, or supports its completion.
Each of these candidates understand that we have this fundamental choice in front of us:
Our status quo accepts changing the PEOPLE who live in town to be older, wealthier and whiter – to avoid adding new buildings in town.
The Carrboro Connects Plan accepts adding buildings in town, making them more numerous and varied – to avoid changing the PEOPLE who live and work in those buildings, allowing more people who already love Carrboro to stay here, and making it easier for our kids to stick around.
Barbara Foushee, Catherine Fray, Jason Merrill and Eliazar Posada have swept every endorsement of consequence because they understand this is our principle challenge as a community. I give them my unequivocal, most enthusiastic endorsement! See the other endorsements they have received below.
Meet the Carrboro Better Together slate!
Please support these excellent candidates by voting for them early ahead of Election Day! Information on early voting in Orange County can be found below. Remember – this year, for the first time, a photo ID is required to vote!
There are several positives here worth celebrating.
Most substantively in Carrboro, these arbitrary parking requirements deter potential housing projects in Town, and force developers to over-provide parking that they may not consider necessary simply to meet the ordinance code. When developers over-provide parking, they have less financial capacity in their projects to address more important public policy goals like including some percentage of affordable housing in a project. Carrboro has seen very little new multifamily housing in the past five years, and rents for a 2-bedroom apartment have soared by nearly $400 per months since January of 2020. (source:rentometer.com)
Removing residential parking requirements supports building denser on the same piece of land, which can create more small-size units that are more likely to be affordable to a wide range of individuals. Projects with higher Floor-to-Area Ratios (FAR) consume less land than lower-density housing on the edge of town, and house more individuals and families per acre, reducing each household’s carbon footprint, and building a market for locally-owned businesses.
Finally, Dr. Donald Shoup and others have documented that parking requirements are little more than pseudoscience, with most communities drawing on old, poorly executed studies in suburban Florida, in an environment very different from present-day Carrboro.
How Different Parking Reforms Represent Different Levels of Climate Action
Carrboro’s action last night represents a strong step forward past Climate neutrality to positive Climate Action by introducing parking maximums, which encourage developers to think about how to deliver projects with as little parking as needed while still being financially feasible. Both Shelton Station and the recent 203 N Greensboro Street project had developers asking to provide LESS parking than the presumptive standard. In their discussion, the Town Council and staff could not recall the last time a developer asked to provide MORE parking than the minimum in town. The table below helps delineate how much specific parking reforms advance Climate Action and Climate Change mitigation, and also how flexibility the approach affords developers.
Which Additional Reforms Are Still Needed?
While Carrboro did a great job with its residential parking reforms last night, the Council discussion made it clear that to meet its goals of Climate Action and Racial Equity, the Town Council will also need to reform commercial parking requirements as well.
The Town Staff were initially instructed to address residential text amendments only, and commercial text amendments could be brought to Council in early 2024.
Key Lesson Learned: We Can Make Policy Choices In a Four Month Timeframe
The Carrboro Connects plan was adopted on June 7th, 2021, and as of June 7th, 2022, no new policies had been adopted. However, this parking item first reached the Council table on May 16th, 2023, returned to Council on June 27th, 2023, and was approved on October 23rd. This a five month period from first policy draft to final approved policy. However, considering that the Town of Carrboro does not typically meet in July and August, one could say that this was closer to four-month process in terms of active Council meetings.
In that timeframe, the Town was able to share information on the proposed change at several public events, and circulate the proposal to each of the town advisory boards. This should be the working schedule for policy changes going forward – four months from first policy draft to a final vote.
The Carrboro Town Council Should Take a Victory Lap
In closing, I want to commend the full council: Mayor Damon Seils and Councilors Susan Romaine, Eliazar Posada, Randee Haven-O’Donnell, Barbara Foushee, Danny Nowell, and Sammy Slade for embracing this opportunity to act, and to plan for continued conversations about commercial parking requirements in January.
This is the leadership on housing, racial equity, and climate we have been waiting for, and it is is marvelous to see it in action.
Now that we’re several weeks into election season, we’re getting a clearer picture of the priorities of each of the Carrboro Town Council candidates.
What’s also clear is that while there are five candidates running, there are functionally two groups of candidates aligned around two different sets of priorities.
The first group includes incumbent Town Councilor Elizar Posada, former Planning Board chair Catherine Fray, and the former owner of Back Alley Bikes, Jason Merrill. Merrill also previously served on the Transportation Board when he lived in Chapel Hill. They have named their slate “Carrboro Better Together.”
The second group includes legal firm Client Relationship Executive and Triangle Red Cross Board Member April Mills and former UNC-Chapel Hill Systems Analyst and Meals on Wheels volunteer Stephanie Wade. While they have not named their slate (to my knowledge) they are campaigning together with joint advertising and canvassing. For this article, I will refer to them as “The Newcomers” since this appears to be their first time running or seeking to join a Town Board.
All of the candidates running are personally and professionally accomplished, and demonstrate a high level of engagement in the campaign.
How to Evaluate Candidates In a Campaign
The longer I follow politics at any level, the less interested I am in someone’s experience, and the more interested I am in how a candidate defines and understands various issues and ultimately, how they will vote on key issues before the community.
Fortunately, all the campaigns have provided a lot of information in this regard through published platforms, social media, and questions answered in public forums. We’ll get to that shortly. But first, what are the priorities of Carrboro residents?
The 2021 Carrboro Community Survey: What People All Over Town Want
Carrboro surveys its residents every few years using a telephone and mail survey, with scientific demographic sampling and follow-up designed to ensure that those responding to the survey are representative of the town, which is:
“Based on the sum of their top two choices, the transportation services that residents thought were most important were: 1) ease of walking in Carrboro, 2) availability of greenways/multi-use paths, and 3) ease of driving in Carrboro.”
“The most important aspect of housing to Carrboro residents was the availability of housing options by price.”
and, in the body of the full report:
“Today, community leaders have limited resources which need to be targeted to activities that are of the most benefit to their citizens. Two of the most important criteria for decision making are (1) to target resources toward services of the highest importance to citizens; and (2) to target resources toward those services where citizens are the least satisfied.”
Only 26% of Carrboro residents are satisfied with the price points of housing in Town. The survey recommends this be the #1 issue that the Town seeks to address.
The Candidates On Two Timely Topics In Town: Affordable Housing and the Bolin Creek Greenway
On housing, as on many issues, Catherine Fray brings their planning board experience to offer precise policy actions they would support: (from frayforcarrboro.com/platform/)
And at the NEXT/IFC/CEF/EMPOWERment candidate forum, a question was asked if candidates would support the 34 affordable housing units proposed for town-owned land on Pathway Drive. The forum was recorded (links go to YouTube comments of the candidates) and here is the summary portion of Fray’s detailed answer:
Let’s unpack this a bit. To recap, Fray, Posada, and Merrill support building affordable housing on the Pathway Site. All three of them are focused on the broad affordability challenge in the community, and how it makes it hard for people across the income spectrum to remain in Carrboro.
Mills would not commit to nor outright oppose affordable housing on the site, and says that the [storm]”water and how it impacts others is just as important.” There is no development plan for the Pathway Site yet; it is early in a screening process to see what the site can accommodate in terms of housing while also meeting environmental rules. It’s entirely possible that a site plan can be created that adds no net new stormwater to the neighborhoods beyond the site. Building taller and more densely on some of the land may leave more of the land available for drainage. But Mills also raises the prospect of aesthetic criteria, putting a taller building on less land strategy that could help on stormwater in conflict with her “match the neighborhood” criterion. While not saying an outright “no,” Mills is making it clear that her priority is the perceived concerns of the neighbors (stormwater, aesthetics) and that housing for low-income residents is important, but perhaps a lower priority. (as another indicator, see Mills’ door hanger below, which mentions stormwater but not affordability)
Stephanie Wade did not attend the forum above, but has made it clear through instagram that she opposes affordable housing on Pathway Drive, and perhaps any housing anywhere else in town.
There are several policy implications of this post. Wade stated:
“One of the things I am very passionate about is tackling the affordable housing problems in Carrboro that come from being an area that has high demand.”
Then:
“Adding homes, apartments and other dwellings isn’t the answer.”
Interestingly, Wade later edited the post and the italicized sentence was removed. Here’s the current post:
Even if one ignores the deleted “no adding homes” comment, Wade’s remaining prescriptions face potentially insurmountable challenges for legal, functional and financial reasons. Those reasons are:
Rent control is illegal in NC, and there is no legislative lever that the Town Council can pull on existing housing to prevent any landlord, corporate or local, from raising the rent by a certain amount.
Apartment construction is THE primary method that created MOST of the affordable housing built in the area, particularly in the last ten years. That includes non-profit development projects like Greenfield Commons in Chapel Hill and Perry Place on the Chapel Hill/Carrboro town line. It also includes Shelton Station, built by for-profit developer Belmont Sayre, which includes 20 affordable and 74 market rate apartments. Another for-profit developer built The Landing at Winmore, where Wade had just visited prior to posting. It’s going to be hard to build affordable housing for individuals below the Area Median Income (AMI) without building apartments.
3. Our Transit funds are fully committed for some time. Chapel Hill Transit, GoTriangle and Orange Public Transportation have all made investments in recent years. The planned Hillsborough Train Station has funding reserved in our county transit plan. Between these investments and construction funds reserved for the crucial North-South Bus Rapid Transit project in Chapel Hill, nearly every transit dollar in the county is already committed for the next several years, perhaps as far out as 2030. When Wade says that we must add more transit before adding any more housing, she is inherently implying either:
a)the Town should support a multi-year-long development moratorium on all housing until new bus service arrives, which could be as late as 2030 b)the Town should raise taxes to pay for more public transportation
As a final piece of information to assess how Mills and Wade prioritize affordable housing, I’ve taken a picture of their door hanger literature below. Neither mentions affordable housing in their priorities, despite it being the #1 issue in the Town Survey. Public transportation is also not mentioned on either door hanger.
The Candidates ON TRANSPORTATION & THE BOLIN CREEK GREENWAY
The NEXT/IFC/CEF/EMPOWERment Forum asked if the Town Council should complete the Bolin Creek greenway sections 3 and 4. Here are key excerpts of the answers of the candidates who attended. We’ll start with The Newcomers this time.
While Stephanie Wade did not attend this forum, she recently made the statement below on social media that mirrors Mills’ statement about greenways not being allowed in already-cleared-of-trees OWASA easements.
It’s possible that Mills and Wade have been given misinformation here, as MOST of the greenways in both Chapel Hill and Carrboro have been built in OWASA easements, which Ryan Byars has documented (with photos!) here.
Here’s what the Carrboro Better Together slate had to say on the issue.
The Crystallization of the Election in One Comment
While Merrill was only speaking about the greenway in the comment above, he touched upon the primary axis around which every other issue in the campaign revolves – should public policy decisions should be viewed primarily through the eyes of wealthy homeowners who live near proposed public investments, or should we take a broader view while also parsing those concerns?
Here’s a map showing the median income of the town, the proposed Bolin Creek Greenway Phases 3 and 4, and the proposed Pathway Drive affordable housing site. It’s impossible to miss how the greenway would connect lower-income parts of the community to the south to Chapel Hill High School, Smith Middle School, and Seawell Elementary at the north end of the greenway alignment.
On these two key issues, the Carrboro Better Together slate and the Newcomers slate have clearly different priorities.
The Carrboro Better Together candidates will support the completion of public investments in the Bolin Creek Greenway along the creekside alignment and affordable housing on town-owned land on Pathway Drive. Both will connect residents across the income spectrum to schools, parks, and each other.
The Newcomer candidates, while being less definitive on both projects, are more likely to oppose both the construction of affordable housing on Pathway Drive, and to oppose the creekside alignment while supporting other alignment plans that are promoted by anti-greenway groups such as the Friends of Bolin Creek. The Newcomers’ objection to both is couched in terms of stormwater and environmental management, even though there are plenty of local examples of technical best practies on both of these fronts. (Shelton Station apartments detains stormwater underground to prevent flooding; the Bolin Creek Greenway in Chapel Hill used multiple techniques that have stabilized the creekbed and prevented erosion.)
Does Where We Stand Ultimately Depend Upon Where We Sit?
As we consider these five candidates, it is also worth knowing that the Newcomer candidates both live in census tracts on the north side of town that both have median incomes over $100,000 per year, while the Carrboro Better Together candidates all live in the Census Tract that had a median income of $36,059 in the map above.
So it’s not surprising that the Carrboro Better Together candidates might hear more about housing cost challenges from their neighbors, and that the Newcomers might hear more from their neighbors about stormwater, since their financial basic needs are more likely to be met.
When any of these five candidates say “this is what I’m hearing,” we should taken them at their word.
What is most interesting about these two sets of platforms is that while it’s clear that the Newcomers’ platform is likely to block substantial priorities of the Carrboro Better Together slate, the reverse is not necessarily true. While the Newcomers are talking about stormwater as a problem, Catherine Fray from the Carrboro Better Together slate is as well, and has been identifying actionable strategies the Town can take to work on the stormwater issue, including using the stormwater utility that the Town established in 2017. Watch them break the issue down here in their closing statement from the forum:
The Town Survey, The Comprehensive Plan, The Candidates and The Future
In 2023, we have a very good idea of what is important to Carrboro residents at a large scale thanks to the 2021 Town Survey, and also the Carrboro Connects Comprehensive Plan process, which involved over 1,600 residents in Town and won an award for inclusive engagement.
The Carrboro Connects plan declares its two foundational pillars to be Racial Equity and Climate Action. Addressing these issues in 2023 largely requires TAKING actions and building things to change the course of an inequitable and climate-change-accelerating status quo.
The Carrboro Better Together slate largely supports the direction set by Carrboro Connects plan, and would TAKE action to build low-to-zero-carbon transportation choices like the Bolin Creek Greenway, and TAKE racial equity steps forward like developing affordable housing on Town-owned land, including Pathway Drive.
The Newcomers are less precise in their policy preferences, and express skepticism or outright opposition to the completing the Bolin Creek Greenway or building affordable housing on Pathway Drive. On these issues, the primary policy approach of the Newcomers would be the PREVENTION of actions, particularly construction (of greenways or homes) in the wealthiest part of Carrboro, and perhaps other parts of town as well.
Carrboro’s future will hinge on which of these two directions the electorate chooses in November.
On Tuesday, May 16th, the Town Council will discuss the potential of removing parking requirements in town for the first time.
The Short Story: All of the information the Town Council needs to make a decision about parking requirements is already in the public domain, and there is no additional research that can be undertaken to further illuminate the policy question. To take an affirmative, meaningful step towards the goals of Climate Action and Racial Equity that uphold the Carrboro Connects plan, THE TOWN COUNCIL SHOULD VOTE ON MAY 16TH TO CONVERT ALL MINIMUM PARKING REQUIREMENTS TO MAXIMUM PARKING ALLOWANCES IN THE FOLLOWING LOCATIONS:
Downtown Carrboro zoning districts
All non-residential parcels within ½ of mile of All-Day (J, CW, CM) and Express (JFX, 405) bus routes
AND ELIMINATE ALL MINIMUM PARKING REQUIREMENTS IN THE REMAINDER OF THE TOWN, WHILE REFRAINING FROM ADDING PARKING MAXIMUMS ON RESIDENTIAL-ONLY PARCELS.
Any alternative policy that requires developer negotiation with staff or council to meet a parking number is a version of the failed status quo and should be considered dead on arrival at the Council table.
Before we get into the details, I want to make two key points. The first:
THE ELIMINATION OF MINIMUM PARKING REQUIREMENTS DOES NOT REQUIRE THAT NEW DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS HAVE ZERO PARKING SPACES.
201 N Greensboro street recently got a permit that did not use the town’s minimum parking requirements – they simply proposed a number that made more in line with the actual use they anticipate. The removal of parking requirements allows developers to bring in proposals with a number of parking spaces they think makes sense while meeting other project goals like street trees, affordable housing, and high quality design. It saves time and helps get us good projects faster.
The second key point:
THE PRIMARY GOAL OF ELIMINATING PARKING REQUIREMENTS IS TO MAKE GOOD DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS (INCLUDING THOSE WITH AFFORDABLE HOUSING COMPONENTS) CEASE TO BE FINANCIALLY INFEASIBLE DUE TO AN ARBITRARY NUMBER OF PARKING SPACES IN THE TOWN CODE THAT DRIVES UP CONSTRUCTION COSTS. REMOVING MINIMUM PARKING REQUIREMENTS STILL ALLOWS ANY DEVELOPER TO PROPOSE AS MUCH PARKING AS THEY WOULD LIKE.
The Details:
The Town Staff materials on the policy have several shortcomings we need to unpack to have a healthy community conversation about this. If you read the Staff Materials, you might have the following take-aways:
That we know nothing about how Carrboro residents travel today that could help us think about whether eliminating parking minimums has risks to the town.
That altering policy on parking requirements requires a certain level of transit service or it can’t be done.
That removing parking requirements raises the risk of a flood of automobiles into Carrboro city streets for on-street parking that will be so substantial that it will block fire trucks and first responders to reach emergencies, and these are potential outcomes even along semi-rural Rogers Rd.
That parking requirements have nothing to do with climate change, which is not mentioned in the document.
That it is not possible for Town Council will take an action any sooner than fall 2023.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly – it presumes that the status quo is less risky and more equitable than the potential policy change. Unrealistic risks that have not happened in other communities that have reformed parking are imagined in the staff memo, and the force that parking requirements apply to make mixed-use and mixed income housing projects financially infeasible – is only obliquely referenced.
The remainder of this blog post addresses each of these shortcomings in the staff materials.
ANALYSIS USING CARRBORO TRANSPORTATION COMMUTING BEHAVIOR DATA
If we care about slowing climate change, we must work to actively reduce the auto-dependency of our communities. However, the staff memo does the opposite, assumes a fully auto-dependent population, and assumes that for each new development, that every developer will underestimate the needs of their building, and that they will not provide enough spaces and produce spillover effects on town streets. But does every Carrboro resident drive everywhere? No. We have lots of data on this.
Nearly Half of Carrboro Commuters Carpool, Take the Bus, Bike, Walk or Telecommute
Here are the 5-Year Average Estimates for Carrboro commuting modes from the American Community Survey, the best publicly available data, for the years 2017-2021:
Drove Alone
Carpool
Transit
Bike / Walk / Telecommute
Total
55.3%
7.9%
10.9%
25.8%
100.0%
Method of commuting to work, Carrboro American Community Survey, 2017-2021
Prior to the pandemic, Carrboro was already one of the towns with the highest percentage of residents who DON’T drive alone to work in the Southeast. The work-from-home revolution has significantly contributed to the expansion of the Bike/Walk/Telecommute number above, and transit use in Carrboro remains at a level equal to or above that of suburbs of major US cities with mature rail systems.
What does this mean for parking use? It means being a two-worker, one car household in Carrboro is much easier than in other communities. It means that when I go downtown on good weather days, I’m much more likely to bike than drive. Our household of three has gone from being a two-car family to a one-car family for the past 18 months, and living in Carrboro makes it possible because we have transportation choices. As we permit new buildings, the new residents will have the same opportunities.
Carrboro literally welcomes new residents and helps them to drive less!
We don’t just see this in commuting data, though. We also see it in traffic counts.
TRAFFIC COUNTS HAVE FALLEN SIGNIFICANTLY IN CARRBORO OVER THE PAST TWENTY YEARS
The only place in town you see counts rising is on NC 54, because that is predominantly pass-through traffic in our growing region. Within town, our residents are driving less and biking, walking, and working from home more.
The final point I want to make here is that between 2000 and 2020, Carrboro also grew from 16,782 residents to 21,295! The town added almost 5,000 new residents and CAR TRAFFIC FELL ALL OVER TOWN.
WHY IS THIS DATA RELEVANT?
What we see in our commute data tells us that if we pick 20 Carrboro residents at random, 12 of them will drive to work alone, two of them will carpool, another two will ride the bus, and four will bike, walk or work from home.
But our ordinance in the staff memo (Attachment B, sections 1.100 through 1.300 of the Part I table) basically assigns one parking space per bedroom, or two parking spaces per unit. This is functionally requiring 20 parking spaces for the 20 random individuals above. We’re requiring too much, and making housing more expensive by requiring the unneeded parking.
THE LEVEL OF TRANSIT SERVICE IS LARGELY IRRELEVANT TO REMOVING PARKING REQUIREMENTS
If finding the “right” level of transit service to safely eliminate parking requirements was critical, we would see parking crises in towns with less bus service than Carrboro that have taken this action. However, towns in NC that have eliminated parking minimums include:
Graham (83% Drive Alone in 2017-2021 ACS)
Mebane (85% Drove Alone)
Albemarle (82% Drove Alone)
Mooresville (84% Drove Alone)
Gastonia (84% Drove Alone)
All of these places have significantly less transit service than Carrboro, and Graham and Mebane grow much faster than Carrboro does due to our restrictive zoning. Even during the bus operator shortage, the J bus still operates 15-minute service on Main Street and 20-minute frequency on the CW in the morning. The CM and JFX supplement with rush hour frequencies of 15 to 25 minutes, and GoTriangle 405 connects us to Durham every 30 minutes. These are excellent transit frequencies at peak times in any southeastern US city. Only the F bus, which only runs four daily roundtrips at this point, has a qualitatively different and noticeably low level of service. It is reasonable therefore to exclude the F but otherwise support parking policy reforms around the remaining All-Day (J,CM, CW) and Express (JFX,405) services.
If the towns above aren’t having parking nightmares with less transit and 30% more drive-alone commuters, why are we contemplating such outcomes in Carrboro? Surely if the votes to reform parking in these five other communities had created significant problems, we’d be able to find news of it. That doesn’t seem to be the case. From a qualitative point of view, if you haven’t been to downtown Graham recently, it’s jumping. Old buildings are full of new businesses and it’s an increasingly lively and pleasant place, and the elimination of parking requirements has been a key ingredient in activating old buildings with new businesses.
If these small towns with fewer transportation choices and greater auto-dependency can make these parking change without crisis, Carrboro, with its significantly larger transit, bike, and telecommuting mode shares, can likely do so without any noticeable impact on our streets, given our reduced traffic counts in recent years.
CLIMATE ACTION IS A PILLAR OF THE CARRBORO CONNECTS PLAN
It’s frustrating to see a document from the Town related to Carrboro Connects that is silent on climate change.
Councilor Slade has made repeated valiant efforts to bring climate action to the Council Table, and I believe that the Council is earnestly interested in taking action. Transportation is the largest source of GHG emissions in Orange County, and therefore is the biggest lever to push to move the needle locally to reduce GHG emissions. Requiring too much parking is fundamentally encouraging further auto use when we need to reduce it. Eliminating parking requirements doesn’t even discourage auto use, it merely stops over-promoting it. Developers can still choose to provide parking at a level that is out of touch with climate imperatives. Parking maximums, however, with their limits on ultimate parking supply, affirmatively discourage auto use, which is why I recommend it as the preferred policy at the beginning of this post.
Greenhouse Gas Emissions in Orange County by Sector
THE USE OF THE RACIAL EQUITY POCKET QUESTIONS IS INCOMPLETE
As a regular reader of Town Council packets, I observe that the Racial Equity Pocket Questions are primarily posed to consider the racial equity benefits and impacts of a proposed policy change, but not the racial equity dimensions of the status quo policy situation.
This is a problem as it assumes that the current state of affairs is inherently more equitable, even though the Carrboro Connects plan identifies many inequities in town that demand action more than additional study. The Racial Equity Pocket Questions are one of the best new practices in local governance, but they need to examine the status quo as vigorously as any proposed policy change for the best outcomes.
SOME OF THE ANALYSIS IS AT ODDS WITH CURRENT LOCAL TRENDS AND BEST PRACTICESIN TRANSPORTATION PLANNING
While several of the answers in the Racial Equity Pocket Questions in the staff memo are well-considered, there is also a good deal of unrealistic speculation that is at odds with most transportation planning best practices and what we know about relative life safety risks in our community. For example, the memo states:
“Unintended consequences include the congestion of small streets that are unequipped for street parking (as residents who live or move into the area still have cars). Congested streets could make it difficult for emergency services to access residences, could make the streets more dangerous for walkers and cyclists…”
First – development in Carrboro is so slow and so difficult due to our development ordinances, that it is not going to be possible to develop quickly enough in most of the town for this to become a problem. Removing parking minimums is usually a necessary, but not sufficient step to unlocking new economic development opportunities, mixed-use buildings that drive tax revenue for equity goals, and new affordable housing concepts. Unfortunately, the town’s development ordinances have many other hurdles embedded in them that will also need to be overcome. But this situation also means it will be impossible for a parking problem to overtake the town with any speed, especially in residential neighborhoods.
Second, this paragraph is embedded with the assumption that ever more car use is inevitable, even as noted above, car traffic on many Carrboro streets has fallen by 50% over 20 years!
Regarding congestion, the Town of Chapel Hill just added parking protected bike lanes to Franklin Street, and car speeds are slower and people walking and on bike report feeling much safer even though motorists might consider the street more congested. Many Vision Zero strategies that municipalities are using to reduce traffic deaths and life-altering injuries intentionally deploy congestion as a tool to slow automobile speeds.
From an overall life safety perspective, many more residents in Carrboro are injured each year by traffic violence than by fires in homes or businesses. Making streets fast for first responders mostly makes them fast for all other drivers, which puts everyone in town at greater risk every day, even if it gets a fire truck to a house a few seconds earlier on a much less frequent basis.
A second excerpt states: “Spatial analysis…—indicates most of the parcels in Carrboro’s two qualified census tracts (QCTs) as well as historically Black neighborhoods near Rogers Road and Alabama Avenue would be impacted by changes identified in this project.”
Again, this statement seems to be embedded with the notion that removing parking requirements will lead developers simply not to provide parking, leading to congest the sides of streets like Rogers Rd with parking on the shoulder of the street. Whether they are private developers or mission-driven ones such as a church, both have self-interested incentives not to do this. Private developers have profit at risk, and want to meet consumer preferences. In places that have a semi-rural built environment, such as Rogers Rd, the expectation will very much be for off-street parking, and developers will likely cater to that expectation to sell or rent their homes. Similarly, if a church or other mission-driven organization like Habitat for Humanity proposes a development, they will likely propose parking locations that work for their stakeholders, not those that straddle the road right-of-way. This is a significant amount of discussion for a risk that is unlikely to materialize.
WHAT’S THE MOST PRO-CLIMATE ACTION AND PRO-RACIAL EQUITY POSITION POSSIBLE?
On climate, sustaining minimum parking requirements is 100% in conflict with all climate goals, and is Anti-Climate Action. This consensus spans all kinds of publications, from Bloomberg to Mother Jones, and international transit advocacy organizations:
Maintaining minimum parking requirements is the bad-for-the-climate status quo that Carrboro must move on from on Tuesday night.
As mentioned at the top of the post, eliminating parking requirements still allows a developer to propose as many parking spaces as they would like for a project, even if that number of spaces encourages auto dependency. So eliminating parking requirements is progress from a bad status quo but is still only climate-neutral.
With required parking maximums that cannot be exceeded, the Town is explicitly directing developers to take positive Climate Action to bring forth concepts that double down on Carrboro’s strong mode share performance for biking, walking and transit, and to de-emphasize car use as much as feasible while still bringing new jobs and economic development to Carrboro.
Relative alignment of Parking Requirement approaches with Climate Change Mitigation Action
Regarding racial equity, BIPOC homeowners, particularly black residents, have been negatively impacted by systemic racism that discouraged bank lending and wealth-building through homeownership in minority communities over many decades. While adopting maximum parking requirements is a stronger climate policy than simply eliminating minimum parking requirements, applying maximum parking requirements only to commercial properties in Downtown Carrboro and within ½-mile of all-day and express bus services allows commercial landowners to lead on parking supply innovation while ensuring that BIPOC homeowners (and all homeowners) have the freedom to build as much or as little parking on their land as suits their needs. Taking the climate neutral approach of Eliminating Parking Requirements on residential-only land in Town is therefore positive movement on climate while also being a pro-Racial Equity position that does not add regulatory burdens to homeowners, including BIPOC homeowners.
IN CLOSING: CARRBORO CONNECTS CAN BE A COMPREHENSIVE PLAN OR A COMPREHENSIVE WISH
Most of the data in this blog post is old. We know a lot. A plan is something you do and we have enough information to give us the wisdom to act.
Adding density to land in town on transit routes in small units offers one of our best chances to expand the stock of small multifamily homes that will have some legally binding affordable units, and others that will be attainable to 1 and 2 person households near the median income. But our parking requirements are probably the #1 barrier to making this happen.
So the land use reform vs affordability debate is on the table again Tuesday night, as it has been at every Town Council meeting since the Carrboro Connects plan was adopted on June 7th, 2022. The median home price has risen about 5% (~$21,000) since plan adoption. Waiting has consequences.
Carrboro Connects plan is a great document informed by the most inclusive planning process the town has ever done. But without policy action, it’s a comprehensive wish, not a plan.
The Short Take: Carrboro Town Council passed the Carrboro Connects plan over 5 months ago. To date, no significant land use policy changes have come to the Council Table for action from the plan. Meanwhile, sites that could have held more diverse housing options continue to be converted to large homes that only millionaires can afford.
How Neighborhoods Can Support Different Stages of an Individual or a Family’s Life
Our family has lived in Central or West Carrboro for the last 21 years, despite moving several times. One of the things that has made this possible is that as our lives have changed, there have been different types of housing in the neighborhood available to suit our needs. I lived in a small apartment before getting married. DW and I bought a townhouse a few years later. As we became a family of three, we moved to a house.
Age and Size of Housing Stock and Affordability
Living here for twenty years, you can distill the neighborhood down to three kinds of housing choices and price points for each:
New and any size – expensive
Old and large – expensive
Old and small – more affordable
My apartment had one story, 2 small bedrooms, and about 600 square feet. It rented for $600/month in 2002. It was built in 1962, 60 years ago.
The townhouse, about 950 square feet, rented for about $780 in 2006, and was built in 1982. Our house was newer, a little larger, and nearly double the townhouse rent for the mortgage.
Every property in our neighborhood is getting older. But we haven’t built many small units in the neighborhood in a long time. What that means is that if we’re not building more small units today, even if they are new and more expensive now – we have fewer opportunities to have the “old + small = more affordable” units of the future.
A Significant Missed Opportunity on Gary Rd
Earlier this summer, our neighbor Cristobal Palmer published this great piece about how he thought a significant assemblage of land that had gone on the market would be a great place for a neighborhood coffee shop or bodega. His closing statement proved prescient. He said:
“I don’t have the capital or skill set to make my dream happen, but I hope there are folks who share this dream and will be loud about it. If we aren’t loud, developers will do what is fastest or easiest to finance and get approved: more single-family detached homes. Let’s dream bigger.“
Sadly, the most likely (and zoning-encouraged) future unfolded. There is no zoning that allows anything other than large lot single family housing to be easily built here, and the other day I saw this on a walk:
I popped over to Zillow and found Cristobal’s (and my own) fears confirmed.
That’s one household living in 3,150 square feet. Zillow estimates the monthly mortgage payment for the million-dollar house to be roughly $6,600 per month. To meet the standard that your mortgage payment must be no more than 30% of your income, this house is targeted at a household earning $264,000 per year. Only millionaire households will live there.
Go two blocks east up West Poplar Avenue and you’ll find four households living in 3,161 total square feet in a quadplex.
The going rent for 2 bedroom apartments in the area ranges from about $1200 to $1500 per month. At $1500 per month, an individual or couple making $60,000 per year can rent these quadplex homes at a reasonable percentage of their income.
The Quadplex Above: Naturally Occurring Affordable Housing at 80% Area Median Income
The median income for Orange County in the 2016 – 2020 American Community Survey was $74,800. A household earning $60,000 per year is at 80% of the Area Median Income (AMI) and can spend 30% of their income on $1500/month rent. This level of affordability, approximately 80% to 100% of AMI, is the level of income that programs like the Community Home Trust target for buyers in their programs.
What this example shows is that despite all the challenges for housing here, especially for those at 60% AMI and below, which will require public subsidy to address, there is a portion of the below-median income market that may, in the long run, be served by older, smaller units without public subsidies — but only if we build it, and let it get old.
How Long Until the Next Missed Opportunity?
While we wait for policy changes, the real estate market moves along. Someone else will sell a significantly sized parcel, and if the only thing allowable is a large lot single family home that costs $1 million, that’s what we’ll get.
The Carrboro Connects plan can’t wait for years of study to take its next steps. We need two actions from the Council to begin moving as soon as possible. Those actions are:
We need to update our Single Family Zones to be Single Family + Missing Middle Housing Zones. On this one, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel. Chapel Hill has already done a significant amount of heavy lifting by drafting this model text to enable Missing Middle Housing. The Town Council should direct the Carrboro Planning staff to bring a draft version of this ordinance to the Council in this calendar year. It shouldn’t take that long to adapt this language for our town.
In taking these two actions, the Town will at least open the door to the possibility that the next building on a parcel like the one on Gary Road will house more people in smaller units, and help us prepare for a more affordable housing future.
So how can we get these things moving quickly?
Carrboro’s Pre-Carrboro Connects Public Input Process for Land Use and Zoning Changes Was Deeply Flawed
For many years, Carrboro planning decisions have been subject to the worst kind of public participation processes – those that privilege wealthy, older, whiter, retired homeowners who have the time to spend 3 hours sitting in a room to speak for 3 minutes at a podium on a weeknight. These engagement methods encourage a “pack the room” strategy that allows every person with an opinion to speak at a podium ALWAYS favors those who are retired and done working, those who work daytime hours, and those who are not responsible for caring for young children in the evening.
Two Better Ways to Take Public Input
The Town of Carrboro would do better to combine public engagement approaches from Chapel Hill and Durham to address and accelerate the timeline to vote on policy changes. For some of Chapel Hill’s recent initiatives, the town used its Public Input website to not only capture opinions, but also to get the demographic characteristics of those participating. Carrboro should use these techniques to gather online data from people who cannot attend public meetings, and should report the results in meetings where decisions are under consideration at Town Council.
In Durham, some council decisions allow for no more than five speakers to speak in favor AND no more than five speakers to speak against any policy change. Each speaker is given two minutes. Twenty minutes of verbal public testimony is combined with data from community surveys and larger, more intentionally inclusive initiatives like the Carrboro Connects process. Indeed, the Carrboro Connects plan recently won the prestigious Marvin Collins Planning Award – one of the highest honors a public plan can receive in North Carolina. The Daily Tar Heel reported in September:
Part of the criteria of the Marvin Collins Awards includes looking for transferability and applicability to other communities, as well as originality, Bynum Walter, a co-chair of the APA-NC awards committee, said. Carrboro Connects was particularly effective in its community outreach efforts, she added.
“We had an unprecedented amount of community engagement and development,” Carrboro Mayor Damon Seils said regarding the plan.
The Carrboro Connects team engaged with more than 1,600 individuals. The plan also recognizes over 4,000 touchpoints – instances of engagement within the community.
There’s no reason Carrboro should not offer a public comment opportunity on these policy initiatives, but it should be reasonably limited like Durham’s process, and recognize the breadth and depth of opinions generated by the much larger, more detailed, Carrboro Connects process, and the 2021 Carrboro Community survey.
Still Waiting for Action Five Months After Plan Adoption
In closing, it’s great that the Carrboro Connects plan reached 1,600 people in town with over 4,000 touchpoints. But if the policy recommendations don’t move forward, that public input is slowly and steadily devalued. The Carrboro Connects plan was adopted on June 7th, 2022 and as of this writing on November 11th, 2022, it is not clear when any policy actions from the plan will be considered on a Town Council agenda.
I am well aware that policy actions don’t always happen overnight, and that anything that comes to the Council table could take up to 6 to 8 weeks to reach a vote. But it’s important to get these processes started. I hope that we’ll see at least one policy proposal from the Carrboro Connects plan reach the Town Council agenda in January 2023. The two policy proposals above are great places to start. If you agree, consider sending an email to council@carrboronc.gov and letting them know you want to see eliminating parking requirements and expanding housing choices on a council agenda in the near future.
Carrboro has a relatively new (and yet deeply experienced) Mayor, a new town manager, and the most progressive town council in recent memory.
This new leadership team has settled into place and Carrboro recently adopted its first ever Comprehensive Plan for the town, declaring that its two overarching principles are making Carrboro a place that advances Racial Justice and takes Climate Action.
Now that the Carrboro Connects plan is adopted, will it move us in the directions described above? Are the strategies proposed to move ahead feasible for a town with budget and staff capacity the size of Carrboro, and will they be designed to leverage our assets, or be more dependent on the goodwill of other partners to be executed?
To answer these questions, we’ve got to start with an accounting of Carrboro’s place in the world, and our challenges and opportunities. Below I present what I see as the lay of the land, what I will refer to going forward as The Fundamentals of Carrboro. Let’s begin.
Fundamental #1: Carrboro is part of the Triangle economy, and except for UNC, it is far from all of the region’s other major job centers.
Traditionally, the Triangle regional economy has centered on employment opportunities in Wake, Durham, and Orange counties. Carrboro sits very close to one of the densest job clusters in the region with UNC and UNC Hospital. Downtown Chapel Hill and Downtown Carrboro could also be considered part of this cluster. But most of the rest of Carrboro is adjacent to low-density suburban Chapel Hill neighborhoods or the Orange County rural buffer. The rural buffer has few to zero job opportunities now and will not likely add them in the future. East Chapel Hill may hold more jobs in the future, but development cycles in Chapel Hill are long and slow. Except for those Carrboro-ers that work at or adjacent to UNC, most Carrboro residents are traveling 10-20 miles each way to work in Durham or RTP, or 30-40 miles to work in Raleigh. Increasing suburban growth across the region and no high capacity transit planned for Carrboro in the next 30 years means that driving to these far-flung jobs will only get more challenging for Carrboro residents.
Unless we figure out how to grow a larger base of jobs here in town, Carrboro residents will have an increasingly difficult time accessing a wide variety of jobs in other communities in the region. If like me, you are a parent who finds Carrboro a good place to raise a child, this situation increases the likelihood that the kids we love to raise here will move away to find work.
Fundamental #2: Our tax base is 86% residential and only 14% commercial.
We have a very high dependence on residential property tax to pay for town operations. If we can’t grow the commercial tax base, the funding for all of Carrboro’s lofty goals will be paid for most heavily through residential property taxes, which…raise the cost of housing.
Fundamental #3: Carrboro is part of, and heavily influenced by, the Chapel Hill real estate market. Both towns have made choices to grow slower than the region, with significant consequences.
Over the past decade, all the other communities surrounding Chapel Hill and Carrboro have grown by at least 20%, while Chapel Hill and Carrboro have grown at less than half the rate of the others. (Durham, while not listed, is also over 20%).
Wikipedia
Growing this slowly is A POLICY CHOICE that has been repeatedly made by both the Chapel Hill and Carrboro town councils.
The scarcity of new housing in both communities for a growing population has a predictable result, nearly half of our renters are cost-burdened:
Carolina Chamber State of the Community Report
This means that since Carrboro is adjacent to another slow-growing town, Chapel Hill’s scarcity of housing also drives up our prices and rents, and the difficulty of building in either of the two towns sends jobs elsewhere.
What does growing slower and becoming more expensive have to do with Racial Justice? Due to a host of systemic discriminatory phenomena, from redlining to urban renewal to hiring discrimination to real estate appraisals, we have a significant wealth gap in the United States between white and non-white households.
Median Net Worth By Race (Federal Reserve, 2019)
This means that when lower-income residents struggle to afford to live in Carrboro, they are much more likely to be black and brown residents. Our current development patterns have us on a glide path to being an increasingly older, wealthier, and whiter town. This outcome is far from the values Carrboro professes to hold.
What does growing slower have to do with Climate Action?
The Cool Climate Network at UC-Berkeley modeled a bunch of policy actions to see how much they would reduce GHG emissions. The data above is for the City of Sacramento. Look at how much urban infill outperforms. The biggest source of GHGs in the US is transportation, and urban infill can convert driving trips to walking, turning the most polluting trips into zero-emissions exercise. That’s why it makes such an impact.
Fundamental #4: Carrboro does not have the capacity to build affordable housing at scale.
Building new affordable housing units is expensive, and while Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill have the financial and staff capacity to do Low Income Housing Tax Credit projects like Willard Street Apartments in Durham or Greenfield Commons in Chapel Hill, Carrboro presently lacks both the resources and staff to produce and fund new affordable housing at this level.
This doesn’t mean Carrboro shouldn’t pursue affordable housing initiatives; we most certainly should. What it means is that we should be thinking about how to increase Carrboro’s capacity to meet our goals just as we define those goals in our Comprehensive Plan.
This capacity expansion will demand financial resources and technical skill, likely through the hiring of new town employees.
Fundamental #5: We are the people we’ve been waiting for.
If you’ve followed state government or federal government policy recently, it’s fair to say that if our plans rely on outside partners to contribute significant amounts of funding to achieve our goals, then we could be waiting for a long time. To paraphrase Barack Obama, Carrboro’s plans should embrace the idea that “we are the people we’ve been waiting for.”
Our elected leaders should certainly try to build partnerships with other levels of government to advance community goals. The soon-to-break-ground 203 Project, featuring a new library in Carrboro, is a great example of the town and Orange County working together. However, excellent outcomes like this are more often the exception than the rule, and while we should embrace those opportunities when they arise, we should not count on them to achieve our goals.
Fundamental #6: Carrboro has assets to pursue its goals, but the town is not taking full advantage of those assets to reach its goals more quickly – YET.
Carrboro has some powerful things going for it. While far from many jobs in the Triangle region, it is very close to a big job center in UNC, including many well-paying jobs. The University and UNC hospital also aren’t going anywhere, which means that even in recessions, that job base will likely remain present and strong.
Carrboro and Chapel Hill share the Chapel Hill-Carrboro School System, which is one of the highest-regarded and best funded in the state of North Carolina. As a former college admissions counselor, I can tell you that its high schools are well-regarded both in-state and nationally.
We have a downtown that has a strong local business flavor. Our town commons hosts a nationally recognized Farmers Market.
Our fare-free bus system, Chapel Hill Transit, carries a very high number of passengers for a community of this size, and has helped LOWER most traffic counts in town compared to the early 2000s, despite growing population in both communities.
These are just some of the things that make our community a good place to live, and makes the land beneath our buildings quite valuable. But not all buildings are created equal, and on a per-acre basis, our more densely developed buildings provide significantly more tax revenue per acre to pursue our community goals. In 2013, the Chamber hired a consulting firm, Urban 3, to report on the tax productivity per acre in Orange County. The most productive building in Carrboro at that time was the Hampton Inn.
Tax value per acre (Carolina Chamber / Urban 3/ Joe Minicozzi)
Putting it all together – Carrboro can meet a lot of goals by using our valuable land differently, and more intensely. We can build more housing, and make room for new neighbors, while helping current ones stay in town. We can provide space for new job opportunities, so our residents can shorten their commutes, and their emissions. Doing both will also bring in new tax revenue to help pay for the big goals the town wishes to pursue.
Equally important is that how the town grows is mostly controlled by choices made by the Carrboro Town Council.
The 2022 – 2023 Town Council session presents an ideal time to begin making a transition to a greener and more inclusive future. This coming year on the blog will be dedicated to putting forth strategies to make this happen.
This blog post is an overview of a community conversation going on in Carrboro, NC, about the town’s plan to build affordable housing on town-owned land.
The Big Picture: Our Housing Challenge
But first: how expensive is it to live in Carrboro? We need to put things in perspective. Before we grapple with this question, watch this 90 second video from the Raleigh News and Observer yesterday with the volume on. Take a listen to Monique Edwards, who is narrating the scene at a showing for a house that is being sold for $260,000 in Raleigh.
Now that we’ve set the scene, here are the median listing prices for homes in our area from realtor.com as of February 23, 2022:
Let it sink in- the median home for sale in Carrboro is priced 85% higher than the one in this video.
Carrboro’s Strategy to Build Affordable Housing on Town-Owned Land
Here’s what’s happening: on February 8th, 2022, the Carrboro Town Council approved a strategy to create affordable housing on Town-owned land. This approval represents the culmination of several years of work, including:
Town Council adopting Affordable Housing Goals and Strategies (June 2014)
Updating those strategy documents (March 2015)
Affirming via the Town Attorney that Carrboro has the authority to provide affordable housing in general, and on town-on land specifically (February 2018)
The most recent step has been for the Town to review land it owns to see which sites are most suitable for building affordable housing. Building affordable homes on publicly owned land is a common strategy for municipalities in North Carolina, which lacks the legislative support for tools like rent control and inclusionary zoning that are available in other states.
The Town reviewed 47 parcels, and narrowed the list down to three sites with the most potential after excluding other sites in the list of 47 that were any of the following categories:
1) Within a conservation easement 2) Inside a Long-Term Interest Areas (WASMPBA) 3) No water or sewer nearby 4) Within 100 year floodplain 5) Within dedicated right-of-way 6) Parcel completely developed 7) Inside Rural Buffer zoning
After the Chapelboro story, email lists around town began receiving invitations to a meeting scheduled by neighbors of the Pathway Drive site on Saturday, February 19th. As someone with a long interest and professional background in these topics, I attended the meeting. About 50 to 75 people gathered in a cul-de-sac near the proposed Pathway Drive site to share their thoughts and concerns about the proposal with each other, and Councilmember Randee Haven O’Donnell took questions.
While I’m not going to spend time detailing lots of comments, I think it is fair to say that the majority of those in attendance were first and foremost trying to learn what is going on. Beyond that, I think it is also fair to say that there were a few individuals who think that affordable housing at the Pathway site represents a significant opportunity for the community, and several more who have concerns.
But while this story may be new to Carrboro, it has all the ingredients of a disheartening local government controversy that we see time and again in communities that vote in very high percentages for Democratic candidates in national elections.
A Local Story In a National Moment
I was going to write a few paragraphs about this, but then I remembered that the New York Times did a fabulous video on this recently. Start at the 4 minute mark, and go to 7:15. This is a better primer than anything I could write.
This topic has also been addressed in Richard Reeves’ book Dream Hoarders, where he takes a look at how anti-development activism locks lower income children out of better school systems, and limits social mobility:
“…homes near good elementary schools are more expensive: about two and a half times as much as those near the poorer-performing schools, according to an analysis by Jonathan Rothwell. But the gap is much wider in metropolitan areas with more restrictive zoning. ‘A change in permitted zoning from the most restrictive to the least restrictive would close at least 50% of the observed gap between the most unequal metropolitan area and the least, in terms of neighborhood inequality,” Rothwell finds. Loosening zoning regulations would reduce the housing cost gap and by extension narrow educational inequalities.”
So…how similar is this conversation we’re having in Carrboro to the national trend?
I don’t need to review how Carrboro votes in national election. And I think everyone is aware we have one of the top-rated school systems in North Carolina, and that McDougle Elementary and Middle schools are well regarded. But let’s look at Census data. We have two sites up for discussion since the third one is already being built upon.
Here is a map of the Crest Street and Pathway Drive sites, overlaid on median income by census tract from the American Community Survey (ACS):
The Pathway site is in one of the highest income neighborhoods in Carrboro, with a median income over $130,000, which is approaching double the Orange County median household income of around $71,000.
And also percent white by census tract from the ACS tables on race and ethnicity:
The Pathway site is in a census tract that is 81% white, whereas Carrboro as a whole is 62% white. (2020 Census)
On my way home that evening, I counted seven Black Lives Matter yard signs on the way back to North Greensboro Street. It was also hard to miss this larger banner one block from where the meeting was held.So yes, while every college town development tussle has its own nuances, this is a conversation that could very easily end in dispiriting outcomes like Boulder residents opposing affordable housing to protect firefly habitats and limit “pet density.”
Can We Have A Better Conversation In Carrboro?
I sure hope so. With that in mind, I’ve got some suggestions for everybody.
Suggestions for the Town
For the town staff:
1. The clearest take-away from the meeting I attended near the Pathway site is that the process that got from 47 sites to 3 sites is a mystery to everyone. I don’t think the Town intended it to be that way, but I spent some time looking around the town website and digging through 2018 meeting minutes and I couldn’t find what I think a lot of people would like to see – a spreadsheet that lists all of the sites, which criteria they met and failed to meet, and so forth. I think it’s imperative to share that data with the community.
2. Future discussion of these projects needs to have some basic educational content about what is and what isn’t possible with affordable housing in North Carolina and Carrboro. Rent control? Illegal. Requiring affordable units in new development? Not allowed under standard zoning in NC. Can we negotiate with a for-profit developer? Yes, but density bonuses are tricky and when Durham offered 3 bonus market rate units for every 1 affordable unit supplied a few years back, not one developer took them up on it. These are some of the reasons why non-profit developers building on public-owned land are often how affordable housing gets delivered these days.
I’m a professional urban planner and these things are not common knowledge even in our circles. The public shouldn’t be expected to navigate the what-ifs without more background on why other things may not be possible. Please help the community understand why certain things are and are not on the table.
3. Share more information about how our Stormwater Utility (and the money it collects) are designed to help with addressing flooding issues. It’s clear there are legitimate flooding concerns already being dealt with by neighbors, and talking about how the town can address those on a parallel path to any new home construction will be valuable.
Suggestions for Those With Good Faith Concerns About the Pathway Project
4. Most importantly – go look at some multifamily home communities nearby. There are many that are quite beautiful and sought-after places to live. Take pictures of things you don’t like to share with town staff, but crucially, also take pictures of things you DO LIKE so that if something does get built, it is as informed by your goals as much as possible.
There are lots of ways to put 24 to 36 units on a small number of acres, and a sloping landline can sometimes help. Stacked townhomes with a one-floor condo on top of a two-story townhouse (or vice versa) create a three-story building type that makes it easier to build cost-efficiently while preserving more trees.
We have some interesting examples around here – the best may be Village West off of Estes Drive:
The two cohousing communities of Arcadia and Pacifica also offer some interesting, compact building techniques. I like how little land the parking at Pacifica takes up. That said, both of those communities were designed with solar access in mind, so they have very few trees amid the homes, with significant trees at the edge of their buildings. I wonder if some mix of the parking approach at Pacifica and the building type from Village West could meet the town’s goals while leaving more land undisturbed, which seems to be a goal of several neighbors.
5. Accept that while this may have felt like surprising news, the Town did not get to this point casually or without careful consideration. I hope the Town does share their list of 47 town-owned sites and the attributes of those that didn’t make the cut. But be prepared to find out that even after the data is released, that the Pathway site is still probably the best site that the town controls to build the most affordable housing at one time.
Suggestions for the Media
In this conversation, there will be misinformation brought up, and it can’t be put on an equal plane with real technical expertise. I’ve seen reporting in one local outlet that sounds too frequently like this: “The professional stormwater engineer certified that the design can detain all the runoff from a 125-year storm using its cistern and best management practices, but a person with a strongly held opinion said that it will flood just like all the other stuff in the neighborhood [that was built before modern stormwater rules] does.”
6. Don’t do this. If you believe that reporting on an assertion that isn’t supported by technical expertise is crucial to a story, use a truth sandwich when sharing it.
Suggestions for Affordable Housing Advocates
In every local government controversy, our elected officials are besieged with emails about what people are mad about, afraid of, and against, and they rarely get emails about what people are excited about, hopeful for, or supportive of.
7. If you think building affordable housing is important, don’t just watch this process, write in and tell the town council. You can write to council@townofcarrboro.org.
Suggestion For The Town Council: Help Us Pass This Character Test
Sometimes it’s easy to tell what the right thing to do is, and hard to follow through on it. Our town’s draft comprehensive plan is built on pillars of Racial Equity and Climate Action. How do those fare if we miss this opportunity? Well, if lower-income families who were going to live at the Pathway Drive site wind up living somewhere else, it’s probably most likely somewhere with lower housing costs outside of Chapel Hill/Carrboro, and Orange County. The medical staff who check people in at my doctor’s office in Carrboro drive in from Roxboro and Siler City, respectively. The emissions of commute trips that long are a climate issue. I’m sure they’d live closer if they could afford it. From a racial equity point of view, researchers have documented how much the zipcode you grow up in can influence your life trajectory. So many of us live here because we believe this is true in Carrboro for our children. Being generous with that opportunity in 27510 is one of the best contributions we can make to racial equity.
In closing, at the community meeting last Saturday, I was heartened to hear Council member Randee Haven O’Donnell say that we absolutely must avoid pitting affordable housing and environmental goals against each other, and that this project is an opportunity to build a new model for how a community can come together to build affordable housing, and share all that we love about Carrboro with others.
May it be so. I believe this Town Council can lead us there.
On September 17th, the Carrboro Connects committee and planning staff released its preliminary draft of the Carrboro Comprehensive plan. At 196 pages, it is a lot of material to absorb. I hope to take a closer look in the days and weeks to come and share more thoughts on detailed sections.
But there are two key things that I hope the Carrboro Connects committee, town and consultant staff, and elected officials will work to address before the final draft is released for a public hearing in November.
Must-Do #1: Describe Goals in Clear Language That Avoid The Need for Interpretation, and Confront Tradeoffs
What do I mean? On page 151, here is the Vision for the Land Use Chapter:
“Promote equitable and sustainable use of land and natural resources that promote the diversity, values, and character of the Town.”
Let’s unpack this. “Promote equitable and sustainable use of land and natural resources.” So far so good.
Next: “that promote the diversity, values…[of the town]” Good. Diversity’s meaning is clear.
Values? This could be open for lots of conflicting interpretations, but at the beginning of the document, the Plan makes itself abundantly clear about its values: “The plan is built on a foundation of race and equity and climate action.” (page 2, top left)
Finally: “…character of the town.” And now we have a problem.
What constitutes “the character of the town” may vary widely, depending upon who you talk to. The phrase is frequently used in public comments opposing the development of new buildings in town at public hearings, by asserting that the character of the town is best expressed in the heights of existing buildings. Others may find that the character of the town is found in the ability to live a life on foot here, a relative rarity in the United States, and particularly in North Carolina. Others may find the town’s character in its live music venues, or in the lively conversations that happen among groups of friends on the Weaver Street lawn/patio.
What if the working definition of “character of the town” assumed in the plan actually prevents the promotion of equitable and sustainable use of land and natural resources? Does that mean we commit to inequitable and unsustainable use of land if we can’t satisfy this elusive “character” requirement?
“We must change almost everything in our current societies”
It’s not “…we must change almost everything in our current societies that promotes many elements of the status quo that we are used to…”
The Carrboro Comprehensive Plan will only live up to its full potential if it finds ways to evaluate tradeoffs in its Vision statements. Here’s a slightly different version of the land use vision that does more to affirm the plan’s foundational values at the top of the hierarchy of values:
“Promote equitable and sustainable use of land and natural resources that promote the diversity and values of the town, valuing outcomes that are informed by the character of the community, but not constrained by it.”
Must-Do #2: Practice Yoda Planning: Do Or Do Not. There Is No “Consider.”
On page 154, you can find strategy 2.2 : Preserve and promote the availability of affordable housing along key corridors and nodes that are transit-accessible, walkable and bikeable.
Good! Very clear. But then move down to the action step (a):
“Consider proactive rezoning for greater density near transit nodes and Park & Rides, consider the reduction of parking requirements and consider priority growth and redevelopment areas in accessible locations.”
This text is a recipe for not taking action. The Town is years, even decades- behind other progressive jurisdictions with less robust transit than Carrboro on reducing parking requirements. Most thriving places have simply eliminated them; this is a basic best practice at this point. The plan should say things like: “reduce and/or eliminate parking requirements within 1/2 mile of downtown Carrboro by 6 months from plan adoption.”
On “considering” priority growth areas in accessible locations, not affirmatively doing so is almost missing the point of doing a comprehensive plan. The Chapel Hill 2020 plan designated Future Focus areas. The Durham Planning department identified Compact Neighborhoods for development. We certainly should come out of this planning process with priority growth areas. In this case, the plan should make a statement like: “Identify priority areas for growth and update the Future Land Use Map upon adoption of the plan.”
Conclusion
Comprehensive Plans are for setting direction and priorities. The more tradeoffs we address and resolve in the plan, the more clearly decisions will be made later. The more equivocation and planning for future study we do, the slower we move towards the foundation of race equity and climate action that we claim is so important. Wherever possible, we should specify actions over considerations. I hope that when the next draft is almost ready, one of the final things the Carrboro Connects team will do is screen each strategy and sub-strategy to get these two things right.
As we approach the Open House for the Carrboro Connects Draft Plan on Wednesday, September 22nd, it’s clear that Affordable Housing will be among the top topics in the plan. With that in mind, I thought it would be worthwhile to look back and attempt to analyze the long-term trends of housing construction in Carrboro.
The big take-away: Carrboro produced more multifamily homes between 1985 and 1989 than it did in the next 30 years combined.
Why does this matter? In Carrboro, with land as expensive as it is, having several households share the cost of living on expensive land is a way to allow lower-income residents to form a “density team” that gives them access to high-amenity neighborhoods at a lower price than a larger, more expensive single-family home. If Carrboro is going to approach the question of affordability seriously, the comprehensive plan must make it easier to permit multifamily dwellings throughout the town.
For each of the tables below, read up from the bottom to see how the percentages for single family homes change over time. The top right cell of data in each chart shows what percent of housing in that decade was single-family homes. (For example, in the 1980s, 47.8% of all homes in Carrboro that decade were single-family homes)
In the 1990s, only 2 multifamily homes were built in the first six years of the decade. 70.3% of all homes built in the 1990s were single family homes.
In the 2000s, over 90% of all homes built in Carrboro were single-family homes.
In the 2010s, Shelton Station added 93 multifamily homes in 2018, but the decade still had single-family housing as 79% of all housing built.
Looking at 2015 – 2019 Census data, we can see that the neighborhoods with the highest percentage of single family homes are north of Hillsborough Rd, particularly north of the intersection of Hillsborough Rd and North Greensboro Street. The three dark blue areas in north Carrboro are all 98-99% single family homes. As the median price for a single family home in Carrboro was $408,000 as of August 2021, this means we have significant portions of the town that only have housing available to those earning over $100,000 per year.
