Your roundup from RaleighForward

Fifteen Books on Housing Affordability

There is no doubt that housing affordability will continue to be a challenge for Raleigh this year. So, we thought it might be useful to share a few book recommendations that may be helpful to understand the complex nature of the challenge:

1. Arbitrary Lines by Nolan Gray

2. Homelessness is a Housing Problem by Gregg Colburn and Clayton Page Aldern

3. Building from the Ground Up by Kevin Erdmann

4. Birth of a Building by Ben Stevens

5. Golden Gates by Conor Dougherty

6. Fixer-Upper: How to Repair America’s Broken Housing System by Jenny Shuetz

7. Neighborhood Defenders: Participatory Politics and America’s Housing Crisis by Katherine Einstein, David Glick and Maxwell Palmer

8. Sick City: Race, Inequality and Urban Land by Patrick Condon

9. Segregation By Design: Local Politics and Inequality in American Cities by Jessica Trounstine

10. Zoned in the USA: The Origins and Implications of American Land-Use Regulations by Sonia Hart

11. The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein

12. American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass by Douglas S Massey and Nancy A. Denton

13. The Voucher Promise by Eva Rosen

14. Capital City: Gentrification and the Real Estate State by Samuel Stein

15. One Hundred Years of Zoning and the Future of Cities by Ammon Lehavi

Eleven articles we found interesting this week:

1. Harris County is Moving Families into Permanently Affordable Homes Through Community Land Trust. Read more in the Houston Chronicle.

2. Congress’ $1.7 Trillion Spending Bill Includes a baby “YIMBY” Grant Program. Read about it in Reason.

3. The Year Affordable Housing Went Mainstream. More from Dwell.

4. The Homeownership Society was a Mistake, via The Atlantic.

5. Video: America’s Homeownership Gap, via Axios.

6. Was Your Home Once Off-limits to non-Whites? These maps can tell you. From the Washington Post.

7. Job Mobility During and After the Pandemic: Are Pandemic-era Trends in Job Changing Cause for Hope-or Concern? Read the research from the Richmond Fed.

8. Why Metro Atlanta is the Poster Child for the US Housing Crisis, via Bloomberg.

9. November 2022’s Median Price of Wake County Real Estate decreases by $7000 to $453,000, via Wake County.

10. Opinion: The US Can Solve its Housing Crisis. It Just Needs to Start Building. Via Bloomberg.

11. Homeowners Dominate Local Political Leadership. That’s Bad for Renters. Via Bloomberg.

Here is what we will be watching this week:

1. The City is seeking input on budget priorities for its next budget. You can take the survey here.

2. With the recent controversy surrounding the City’s Missing Middle regulatory reform efforts, staff has scheduled various meetings and workshops starting in January to inform residents about how these reforms fit into the City’s overall effort to provide more housing choices and opportunities to all Raleigh residents. If you are interested in learning more or participating, you can find additional information here. The first meeting in the series is scheduled for January 11 from 6-8:00 pm at Durant Nature Preserve.

3. Mark your calendars!  The City Council will hold its annual retreat on Friday, January 27 and Saturday, January 28.  More information will be provided closer to the date of the retreat.

City Council Meets on January 3, 2023

Although there were a number of zoning cases scheduled for public hearing on January 3, 2023, they all had to be postponed due to a public notice error.  

One item worth noting on the agenda is a request for supplemental gap financing for an affordable housing project called The Preserve at Gresham Lake. The City originally agreed to provide $3,275,000 funding to support the construction of 156-unit affordable housing community. However, due to higher material and labor costs, the owner is asking for supplemental funding in the amount of $2,312,118 for a total of $5,587,118. Here is a link to the full agenda item.

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