Category Archives: Local Media

Affordable Housing on Town Land Presents an Opportunity for Carrboro – and a Character Test

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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

The Town Council unanimously endorsed this strategy at the meeting on February 8th, and it was reported on by Chapelboro.com on February 16th.

Where are the sites?

  • 106 Hill Street (three homes already being built)
  • Crest Street
  • 1814-1816 Pathway Drive

Community Response

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.

Chapel Hill News Describes Very Typical Carrboro Infill Project as “Unusual Density”

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inara-courtThere are a few rezoning hearings coming up at the Carrboro Board of Aldermen meetings in June. One of them is a project called Inara Court, slated for 102 to 104 Fidelity St, which is right behind the O2 Fitness property, on the same side of Fidelity Street. I am very familiar with the area as I previously lived at two different addresses on Fidelity.

CH News Reporter Jean Bolduc’s description of the project in the paper was strange, stating:

The Board of Aldermen will hear from residents this month about a plan to build six homes on about a half-acre on Fidelity Street, behind the O2 Fitness Club. The infill project offered by Yates-Greene, LLC is classified as an “Architecturally Integrated Subdivision,” which would allow for the unusual density of so many homes on so little land.

The math here is pretty straightforward – six units on 1/2-acre of land yields 6/.5 = 13 dwelling units per acre. Is this “unusual” in Carrboro? I did some quick checking in Google Earth with the polygon tool to measure acreage, then counted units using Google Streetview.

Literally directly across the street is White Oak, a condo complex built in the early 1980s with 96 units on about 6.1 acres, or roughly 16 dwelling units per acre.

Immediately next to White Oak, also on Fidelity Street, is Village Square, with about 26 units on 2.4 acres, or roughly 11 dwelling units per acre.

At the end of Fidelity Street at the intersection with Davie Rd, there is Fidelity Court- with 72 units on about 4.5 acres or again, 16 dwelling units per acre.

Just north of the O2 Fitness and Looking Glass Cafe, there is the 605 West Main building, which if you ignore the two floors of commercial above the parking, sports 7 units in about 0.26 acres, which is about 27 dwelling units per acre.

Nothing Unusual About This Density

At 13 dwelling units to the acre, the Inara Court project fits in very consistently with residential projects in its immediate vicinity, as well as being consistent with density found at places such as Cedar Court or The Flats on North Greensboro Street. While the “Architecturally Integrated Subdivision” may be a new way of delivering 13 units/acre in town, this is a very commonplace residential density in Carrboro, and has been for nearly 4 decades.

Hopefully in the future, the Chapel Hill News will use simple comparative techniques to describe the relative density of a project as accurately as possible.

Carrboro Should Aim Higher for Infill

While I think this project has a nice aesthetic if they turn out looking like the rendering, I’m also somewhat disappointed that there was not a proposal to combine these properties with the O2 Fitness site for a larger redevelopment project. Having vacant land next to a mostly past-its life suburban strip mall that used to be  Piggly Wiggly  [correction: an A&P grocery store] way back when would have been a terrific opportunity to get at least this many housing units, maybe many more on both the market rate and affordable side, **AND** also build some new office and commercial space in downtown.

The rezoning to the higher density is certainly better infill than the two single family houses that have gone in on Poplar just behind the proposed Inara Court project, but I think we could have done even better here for the tax base, for affordable housing, and for economic vitality if we had positioned this site as a true redevelopment opportunity and put appropriate zoning in place. This is another reason Carrboro needs a comprehensive plan.

Chapel Hill News Asks Wrong Questions on Carrboro Parking

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Roberson St Lot by Flickr User Rubyji

Roberson St Lot by Flickr User Rubyji

In Sunday’s (3/24/2013) Chapel Hill News, the second left-hand editorial expressed concern over parking management for Shelton Station and the recent purchase of the Roberson Street lot by the town. The paper suggests that by buying parking in one part of downtown while considering ways to reduce the demand for parking at Shelton Station in another part of downtown, the Aldermen are acting at cross purposes by pursuing both initiatives.

Is Carrboro Talking Out of Both Sides of Its Mouth on Parking?

This editorial lacks context in a few places, and it is worth unpacking them one at a time.

Carrboro’s thoughtful development has made it one of the Triangle’s most livable and entertaining towns.

But the town can’t have it both ways.

Let’s start here.  The town is not having anything “both ways.” As the piece goes on, it seems to portray the issue as if asking Shelton Station’s developers to reduce the amount of proposed parking to be NEWLY BUILT onsite is somehow a REDUCTION in parking downtown while the Town purchasing parking that ALREADY EXISTS and is being used today is an EXPANSION of parking. To clear things up, Shelton Station will definitely add some amount of parking to downtown; how much has yet to be determined.  The purchase of the Roberson St lot does not add a single parking space to downtown.  It moves the control of the property’s destiny from the private sector to the public sector.

Is Shelton Station Significantly Out of Step with Town Parking Requirements, and Is That a Problem?  Or an Opportunity?

The editorial goes on:

As proposed, Shelton Station would have 170 parking spaces – fewer than the town requires.

This is partially true- the town has base-level requirements for various uses, and within certain parts of town, mostly close to downtown, developers can take reductions in parking based on the assumptions that some uses will share parking.  The developers have arrived at the 170 spaces listed above by accurately applying the shared parking reduction formulas of the town to the base parking requirements.

However, this only matters if the parking requirements make any sense, and in the United States, generally, they don’t. What’s wrong with parking requirements, particularly those from the Institute for Transportation Engineers (ITE), which the Town of Carrboro uses? Fortunately, Donald Shoup, the pre-eminent expert on parking in the US, and perhaps the world, has done the heavy lifting for us.

From Shoup’s landmark paper, “The Trouble With Minimum Parking Requirements”:

Where do minimum parking requirements come from? No one knows. The “bible” of land use planning, F. Stuart Chapin’s Urban Land Use Planning, does not mention parking requirements in any of its four editions.1 The leading textbooks on urban transportation planning also do not mention parking requirements. This silence suggests that planning academics have not seriously considered or even noticed the topic. This academic neglect has not prevented practicing planners from setting parking requirements for every conceivable land use. Fig. 1 shows a small selection of the myriad land uses for which planners have set specific parking requirements.

Without training or research, urban planners know exactly how many parking spaces to require for bingo parlors, junkyards, pet cemeteries, rifle ranges, slaughterhouses, and every other land use. Richard Willson (1996) surveyed planning directors in 144 cities to learn how they set parking requirements. The two most frequently cited methods were “survey nearby cities” and “consult Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) handbooks”. Both strategies cause serious problems.

Shoup goes on to point out that the “survey other cities” approach often leads to the repetition of mistakes of other communities.  Carrboro is particularly susceptible to making this type of mistake because very few towns Carrboro’s size possess a level of transit service or cycling usage anything like ours.

Carrboro does, however, use on the handbooks of the Institute of Transportation Engineers in its analysis of how much parking certain uses require in town.  All of the italicized quote below is Shoup’s commentary except for the section in blue, which is a direct quote from the ITE Parking Generation manual:

To base parking requirements on more objective data, planners consult Parking Generation, published by the Institute of Transportation Engineers. For each land use, this publication reports the “parking generation rate”, defined as the peak parking occupancy observed in surveys by transportation engineers.

A vast majority of the data… is derived from suburban developments with little or no significant transit ridership… The ideal site for obtaining reliable parking generation data would… contain ample, convenient parking facilities for the exclusive use of the traffic generated by the site… The objective of the survey is to count the number of vehicles parked at the time of peak parking demand (Institute of Transportation Engineers, 1987a, vii±xv, bold added by Shoup).

The ITE summarizes the survey results and reports the average peak parking occupancy observed at each land use as the parking generation rate for that land use. Half of the 101 reported parking generation rates are based on four or fewer surveys of parking occupancy, and 22% of the parking generation rates are based on a single survey. Because parking is free for 99% of all automobile trips in the United States, parking must be free at most of the ITE survey sites. Parking generation rates therefore typically measure the peak demand for parking observed in a few surveys conducted at suburban sites that o€versample free parking and lack public transit. Urban planners who use these parking generation rates to set minimum parking requirements are making a big mistake.

So what does a page out of the ITE Parking Generation handbook look like? Anybody familiar with statistics and regression analysis who has not seen ITE parking math before is in for a treat. Check out this scatterplot- click to enlarge:

ITE Parking Manual

This is a recommended equation for calculating parking for a fast food restaurant in the ITE Parking Generation Manual, based on the thousands of square feet of leasable space in a restaurant.  It has a R-squared value of 0.038. Put another way, the ITE gives urban planners a chart and equation to forecast the peak demand for parking at a certain type of restaurant in which they admit that over 96% of the variables that explain variation in peak parking demand are not captured by the chart or the equation. I’m ignoring the fact that they have 18 observations and that my grad school faculty said never to conduct regression analysis with less than 30 data points.

The bottom line is that with these equations and 3-decimal point numbers, the ITE manuals look like highly scientific documents, when in fact they are at best alchemy conjured to replicate conditions for single-use buildings that contain all their parking on one site, in places where that is a wise strategy because land is not terribly valuable.  They contain a value judgment that everyday parking should be sized to meet peak demand, which is the philosophy that brings us massive fields of parking for Thanksgiving Day shoppers that sit mostly empty 315+ days per year outside big box stores. These types of analyses were never meant to work in downtowns, and even as a first step prior to shared parking reductions like that which has been contemplated in the Shelton Station application, we should put limited stock in them.

Anyone seeking an informative and entertaining read on the folly of minimum parking requirements should read Dr. Shoup’s entire paper here (PDF 324k). It’s not a long read and there are many graphics. The first 7 pages lay out most of the problems quite well.

Returning to the Chapel Hill News editorial, the piece concludes:

The aldermen may be right to relax the parking requirements for Shelton Station. But if they’re wrong those cars are going to have to park somewhere. Before the project comes back, they may want to figure out just how much parking downtown really needs.

This is not necessarily true.  Those cars might not have to park somewhere.  What the CH News staff is missing here is that downtown attracts PEOPLE first, and also, as a secondary derived consequence of attracting PEOPLE, also attracts VEHICLES, which include:

  • BIKES
  • BUSES
  • FOOTWEAR
  • SCOOTERS
  • WAGONS
  • STROLLERS
  • and yes, CARS

 

Travel behavior surveys from around the country and the UNC campus show that most people, when living in a community that provides transportation choices, use several different modes in any given week.  You might drive to work but walk to the Farmers’ Market on Saturdays.  You might take the bus to UNC for work but drive to the movies with friends.  (you might consider taking the bus home from the movies if it ran later, too)

The key point is that people are reasonably smart and if they want to come to downtown Carrboro, and we give them choices, and encourage them to make choices that keep the downtown less congested and allow more access for others to do the same, then many of them will figure out other ways to get downtown than get in a car.  This already happens thousands of times a day, every day- in downtown Carrboro. Some of them will still drive, and that’s fine as long as we don’t do things that makes downtown less vibrant to ensure they have a perpetual supply of free spaces.

If We Shouldn’t Trust ITE Manuals or Other Communities’ Unscientific Standards, How Should We Evaluate What the “Right” Amount of Parking is for Development, Particularly Downtown?

First, we should realize that there is no bureau of Parking Weights and Measures coming to sue us/yell at us/etc if we make unorthodox choices.  We’re on our own, and that’s good.

Second, we should discuss parking policy through the prism of our goals. Vision 2020 aims to double commercial space downtown.  Space for parking competes directly with that goal, which is why we need to focus on providing ACCESS to downtown rather than parking.  I wrote a column on Orangepolitics on this subject five years ago that I think still applies well today. Access will require improving our environmentally friendly mode access to downtown, and probably involves eventually putting a market price on parking downtown.

Third, we should conduct research on how people get to businesses in downtown Carrboro. What the exact percentage is, I’m not sure- but the percentage of people arriving at Weaver Street Market to shop on foot, by bike, and by bus is surely very, very, different than your standard grocery store.

Fourth, we need to recognize that the fragmented parking landscape of downtown with many owners, all trying to reserve parking for their own customers, contributes to congestion and air pollution when people drive from lot A across the street to lot B to avoid triggering a towing policy, even though the individual moving their car across the street is the mutual customer of two downtown businesses.

When Dan Burden visited in 2001, he recommended that we figure out how to get more shared parking arrangements in downtown.  With the exception of Fitch Lumber allowing Weaver Street Market customers to park there for Thursday night and Sunday morning events, I don’t think this has really happened in any tangible way in downtown.

Back to Shelton Station

This last point is where unbundling parking comes in, and remains a key variable for Shelton Station. Technology has improved a lot over the last ten years and may offer us an opportunity to create “virtually shared” parking in town.  If Shelton Station is approved with the 170 spaces that the shared parking portions of the Town parking rules allow, or even some lower number of spaces, then if there is a carsharing vehicle onsite, renting apartments with unbundled parking will maximize the chance of the Shelton Station lot having capacity because lower-car ownership households will have an incentive to rent there that is not present elsewhere in town.

If after unbundling, Shelton Station developers find they have seven empty spaces pretty much all the time, then it would be great if they could put those seven spaces into a “shared parking pool” for downtown.  We could call the system, you guessed it — “CarrPark.”

These spaces would have a special sign letting people know that while most of the Shelton Station property was reserved for residents and businesses on site, that these seven spaces could be used by anyone WILLING TO PAY the market rate for that parking space at that time of day and day of the week.  Surely at some times of the week, that price would likely be zero, but at others, there would be a per-hour charge that would be adjusted by time of day to make sure that Shelton Station’s shared spaces were priced to be 85% full and 15% empty all the time.

Why would any developer do this?  Easy- they could keep any revenue from the spaces after the costs of registering those seven spaces in the CarrPark system were accounted for. Over time, a network of CarrPark parking spaces would be created downtown, on both public and private lots.  The town could put its public lots into the CarrPark system and build the computerized backend, which would include sensors that share real-time information on whether or not a parking space is empty. Visitors to downtown could check a real-time information app before they drove into town to see which lots had the most availability, and what their price per hour is.

This approach would allow incremental changes, one parking space at a time, to yield genuinely shared parking in downtown Carrboro across multiple public and private lots, without necessitating complicated land swaps among parking space owners.

While an electronic shared parking “CarrPark” system is obviously a longer-term idea to discuss for the community, the key point for projects like Shelton Station which will reach the Aldermen’s table soon is this — there are a lot of parking innovation tools we could deploy to make downtown Carrboro even more lovely for pedestrians while making it a lot more convenient to park downtown.

All of them are likely to work better if Shelton Station rents apartments and parking spaces to residents separately in an Unbundled fashion.

The other stuff can come later; but this is a great time to try Unbundling. I hope we can see this happen through a condition in the use permit for the site, or some other appropriate mechanism the town can come up with.