North Carolina Needs a Housing Plan

We are at a moment in time when the housing crisis in our country has become widely recognized. Millions of people are homeless. Millions more spend half of their income or more on housing. The cost to build or renovate housing, and what the population can afford, doesn’t match up in most places. Local and state government budgets barely bounced back from the last recession before COVID 19 (and other pressures, let’s be honest) knocked our economy back again. On top of an existing housing affordability and availability crisis, looms the eviction and foreclosure crisis that will result from 2020’s unemployment shock.

North Carolina is no stranger to these housing pressures experienced throughout the United States. North Carolina is one of the largest, and fastest growing states in the country. An estimated additional 1.8 million people will call North Carolina home by 2030. According to a study recently published by the Urban Institute, Housing for North Carolina’s Future, North Carolina will need at least 800,000 additional housing units by then that cost less than $1,500 per month. Most of the needed units will be for households who can afford to pay much less than $1,500 per month, requiring substantial subsidies and economies of scale.

How will housing advocates and developers work their way out of this? What resources are available? Every way we’ve thought about and created housing for low income and ‘working class’ people isn’t going to get us where we need to go. Government housing funds are stagnant or diminishing. Local and state governments will be reeling for years from the budget impact of COVID19 and our fraught political climate. Most large foundations gave up on affordable housing years ago, and the few holdouts are supporting research and large-scale projects carried out by national organizations, not actual, on-the-ground housing development.

North Carolina needs a comprehensive, statewide, long-term housing plan, and a department focused on its implementation, coordinating resources, and harnessing the unparalleled educational and intellectual community we have in this state to find scalable solutions. The recommendations in Housing for North Carolina’s Future are a good place to start. North Carolina’s continued status as one of the best places to live in the United States depends on it.

Lea D. Henry

President

Two Rivers Development Partners, LLC