The New Hanover County Commission withdrew from two major committees at its meeting yesterday (Monday), including one dedicated to creating workforce housing. WHQR News Director Ben Schachtman and Reporter Kelly Kenoyer explain.
Ben Schachtman: So, Kelly. The Republican members of the county commission made some major changes on Monday, leaving the Workforce Housing Advisory Committee - or WHAC, and the Community Relations Advisory Committee.
Kelly Kenoyer: It was a really volatile meeting, honestly. There were some raw moments as Democratic commissioners were arguing to save the committees, and the Republicans arguing that the changes were bringing policy in line with their recently passed party-line budget. But I really just want to focus on the WHAC.
BS: Yeah, you’ve covered the WHAC, which was a joint committee between Wilmington and the county, a lot. What was their work all about?
KK: Ben, they’re the reason we know how bad the housing crisis is in this region. They got the Bowen study done that showed we’d be short 16,000 units by 2032. They helped draft policy changes that allow more granny flats in the city and county. They pushed to give voters a shot at a housing bond, which never came to a vote. And they’ve advised the county on how to spend $3 million annually, as part of a five-year affordable housing program.
BS: That $3 million is now defunct - it was cut in the last budget cycle. And the decision to end the five-year program after just three years was part of why County Manager Chris Coudriet argued the county should leave the committee.
KK: Even though, as Democratic Commissioners Rob Zapple and Stephanie Walker noted, WHAC predates that program by several years. It was chartered for broader reasons – basically, coming up with the best ways to address affordable housing.
BS: Right – and to that end, Commissioner Dane Scalise, voiced some skepticism about the ways the issue has been addressed. During the meeting, Scalise really seemed to spearhead the move to leave the WHAC – and said the county needs to pause and reevaluate its funding, because the outcomes of what they’ve spent already is unclear.
KK: That’s not necessarily true. Scalise never attended a WHAC meeting, according to the committee chair, so he doesn’t seem to know what the committee did: the outreach and education for developers and the community, the research. And the spending.
As Commissioner Rob Zapple pointed out, the $9 million invested over the past three years has leveraged $150 million in outside investment, mostly private funding. That’s created more than 400 units of workforce and affordable housing – housing that’s rented or sold below market rate, allowing people who make less money to afford to live here.
BS: Scalise also noted that The Endowment has directed $20 million or so to affordable housing and, between that and the county’s money, I think some people would like to have seen more progress – because some of these projects have yet to break ground, let alone start leasing.
KK: Some of them have, some of them haven’t. Development takes time to build, and this funding mechanism only started a few years ago – and I’ll say it’s more fiscally cautious than the $50-million housing bond that the five-year program replaced. So it’s a smaller scale, by design.
BS: That’s true – and we’ll have some links online if people don’t remember that saga. Ok, so one other point Scalise made was broader concerns from the public about overdevelopment, saying he didn’t think we can “build our way out of this issue.”
KK: I mean – we certainly see pushback on major multifamily developments pretty much every time they’re introduced. I think a good part of what the WHAC was working on was how to get more units online – which can drive down rents – while managing uncontrolled density and its impact on traffic and greenspace. One solution was actually pivoting from new development to adaptive reuse and restoration of existing property – but also thinking about smart places to put new homes and apartments.
BS: Ok, I want to shift to something Commissioner LeAnn Pierce said, which was that constituents have told her and her colleagues that they don’t want to see public funds used to help developers make more money. And we actually heard similar concerns from Wilmington City Council a couple of years ago, when they voted down a proposal to send a grant request to The Endowment that would’ve helped provide affordable housing as part of the massive Gateway project on the north side of downtown. So, what’s the argument to step in with that kind of funding?
KK: For one, the financial instruments often used to create affordable housing, notably the Low Income Housing Tax Credit Program, never provide quite enough funding to pencil out. And, more generally, adding affordable housing to a project can often require some kind of support – whether that’s gap funding, density allowances, water and sewer hookups. Even developers who want to make affordable units often can’t get them to be viable without the community helping them make up the difference in some way – so those developers will just go to one of the many cities in North Carolina that do have revolving funds for this kind of thing. That’s the argument I’ve heard from advocates, at least.
BS: Okay, another part of the conversation was when Pierce asked how many police, firefighters and teachers – the types of jobs that are often used to put a face on workforce housing – were in these units, and staff couldn’t give a clear answer.
KK: Housing advocates definitely argue that public employees should be able to live where they work – but I’ll point out that workforce housing is also supposed to serve people who work service jobs, nurses, and other non-government employees. But she made a different argument: That the government should just raise salaries for its staff to make up the cost difference.
LeAnn Pierce: “Let's just pay our teachers and our police officers and our our firemen more money so they can afford to live in the county that they represent. And then we know we're hitting the target audience that we're trying to get in our workforce housing endeavors.”
BS: I’m sure the roughly 5,000 county employees and teachers would appreciate that! But by some estimates there are over 100,000 employees in the county, many of whom are struggling to afford housing – and this wouldn’t help them. So, it feels like that argument is kind of stepping away from the affordable housing issue.
KK: Not to mention retirees, or those on a fixed income- a lot of folks are left out when you only focus on government workers. That is what I heard from the Chair of the WHAC, Tom Gale, when I interviewed him ahead of the meeting.
Tom Gale: “for us to, you know, just be washing our hands of it now is really disheartening for me, as somebody that's really tried to work hard to prevent this from being an issue. But all of a sudden, when we can't get anybody putting out a fire at our home, we can when we have a crime issue, because we don't have enough cops, when we don't have, you know, people educating our children, when we don't have people working in the restaurants: that affect everybody in the community, it affects the employers. It obviously affects the individuals themselves.”
KK: He said a lot of these workers may start moving out of the area, and then looking for work closer to where they can afford to live. That process of gentrification has already started in this community.
All in all, the advocates I’ve talked to are devastated. This feels like a step backwards, to them. Going back a decade in progress to a time when the government took no hand in solving the affordability crisis. And a time when the city and the county didn’t work together at all on anything.
BS: That was something Zapple and Walker argued when it came to the Community Relations Advisory Committee – that, basically, it signalled a withdrawal from that kind of public engagement – or, at the very least, that was kind of the symbolic messages it sent.
But, as far as housing goes – Chairman Bill Rivenbark didn’t say much during this heated part of the meeting – but he did note that the WHAC would continue on the city side. That seemed to frustrate Zapple, who argued that city residents are still county residents. Right now, as we’ve reported, the city is still really invested in workforce housing, but it’s a heavy lift.
KK: It is a tough prospect, since much of the undeveloped land in the county is in the unincorporated areas. The way that land gets built will really shape the future of this community going forward.
BS: Well, Kelly, thanks for coming in.
KK: Thanks Ben.
Disclosure notice: Commissioner Rob Zapple is a member of the WHQR board of directors, which has no role in editorial decisions.
