At Cape Fear Housing Coalition's annual breakfast, the theme was all about acting local.
With a state government struggling to pass a budget and a federal government slow-walking grants and other programs, the best way forward is to build local coalitions and get creative.
Samuel Gunter from the North Carolina Housing Coalition said things have gotten unpredictable under the Trump administration.
"The chaos in the last year and a half has been significant and is going to have long-term impacts. But for those of you who are frustrated in this space right now, I need you to find where the creative energy is and hang on to that," he said. "Our intermediary for housing counseling agencies, we've lost four in the last four months; they just can't do it anymore."
Agencies like that, he said, are waiting months and months for grants to be released, and are closing up shop as they've been unable to continue the work they've done for years. But Gunter pressed local organizations to be creative.
"So find the places where you have this creative energy, are making new partners that want to understand how they can bring what they have into this work. And I think the faith community piece is ripe," he said.
Gunter suggested organizations should work with churches to use under-utilized land.
"That energy is desperately needed, because we're going to need it coming out the other side," he said.
It's not all doom and gloom, even though things are challenging at the federal level and deadlocked in the state legislature.
One speaker from Wake County came to discuss their challenges alongside all the ways they're working to face them. Wake County has a 60,000-unit affordable housing gap — three times that of New Hanover. But in the past five years, it has made significant strides in addressing the housing crisis.
Wake County Housing Affordability Director Morgan Mansa explained their strategy: they used $118 million in county money to leverage $1.2 billion in outside investment. Over five years, they’ve used that money to preserve or create more than 55-hundred units of affordable housing. Mansa says the leverage came largely from Low Income Housing Tax Credits, but there were others.
“But this number is also representing our philanthropic community and their investment, our healthcare community and their investment. Local businesses who have employees who need a place to live," Mansa said. "And so that third circle for us represents partnership, because it’s not something that any one unit can or should do alone.”
Wake County used innovative practices like forgivable loans for homebuyers below 80% of the area median income, or engaging with landlords to help tenants lease up in affordable properties. They've given out $35,000 grants for rehabbing and repairing homes with low-income owners. And they have a county policy in which county-owned parcels are always evaluated for affordable housing before they are up for disposition. Wake also partnered with the local school district to do the same with school properties that would go up for sale, and apartments built on those sites are often aimed at leasing to teachers.
New Hanover County Commissioner LeAnn Pierce says she liked the landlord program in particular, but also said Wake County isn’t a perfect comparison to our region. She said she’d like to see the Endowment fill in the gaps instead of the county.
“I want them to fill in those spaces. It’s hard for us to budget New Hanover County Government based on all the things that are needed, like that kind of money," she said.
New Hanover County cancelled its $3 million annual investment in housing last year, and seems unlikely to change that in this year’s budget.
