Perez is Senior Advisor to the President for Intergovernmental Affairs. He came to Wilmington as part of a three-day visit to towns and cities in North Carolina. He toured several sites in Wilmington that were beneficiaries of the American Rescue Plan Act, including the Cape Fear Memorial Bridge and an affordable housing development.
Perez noted the severe need for housing in the United States, a problem especially acute in the rapidly growing Cape Fear Region.
“The reality is that there is more housing being built in the United States than ever before; the equal reality is that the demand is unlike it’s ever been before because we just haven’t built enough housing over the course of the last 30 years.”
Perez met with officials from the city and county governments and commended them on their efforts to fund compassionate responses to the homeless, such as the city’s police street outreach team.
The American Rescue Plan Act gave local governments wide latitude in spending federal dollars, and according to an analysis by the Brookings Institute, 11% of the available funds went to affordable housing.
In recent years, the City of Wilmington has invested $19 million in local and federal funds to build 483 affordable housing units.
