More housing gets built when people show up to support it, at public hearings and at the ballot box. This week, we’re watching housing and childcare in Raleigh and housing decisions across the Triangle.

As usual, in this rezoning watch we’ve sorted through the agendas so you don’t have to.

+ Don’t forget to vote! Tuesday Nov 3 is Election Day.
The people we elect will help shape the housing decisions we follow here every week. Before you head to the polls, check out our Raleigh Candidate Housing Report Cards to see how candidates were graded on their approaches to housing affordability.

📣 This Week’s Call to Actions:

Raleigh

City Council Regular Meeting . November 4 at 7:00 p.m.
222 W. Hargett St

There are two public hearings this Wednesday, Nov 4 that can use your support!

The deadline to sign up to speak have passed, but you can still show up. YIMBYs will be there wearing green and holding green “vote yes” signs. Look for Jenn and Hannah outside the chambers at 6:45pm

If you can’t make it, you can email everyone on city council to let them know you support these cases!

> Text Change TC-5-26 Daycare Amendments
A citywide text change to make it easier to open and operate childcare facilities in Raleigh.
💡 Increases enrollment limits and allows nonresident employees at home daycares.
💡 Replaces the special use permit requirement for daycare centers in residential districts with clear, objective standards.
💡 Families need childcare close to home, and providers need a workable path to opening their doors.

These changes would reduce regulatory barriers to an essential neighborhood service. Ask Council to support the amendments!
📄 Link to staff report.

> Rezoning Z-22-26 Bragg Street & South East Street Assemblage
A 0.93-acre rezoning to remove the South Park Neighborhood Conservation Overlay District from ten parcels, allowing up to 50 homes through the Frequent Transit Development Option on a site with five existing duplexes.💡 Planning Commission recommends approval 7–3, and staff finds the request consistent with Raleigh’s Comprehensive Plan.
💡 Keeps the underlying R-10 zoning while removing the overlay’s restrictive height limit. Conditions retain street-facing entrances and standards for setbacks and parking placement.
💡 More neighbors should have the opportunity to live near downtown, transit, and parks. Opponents want to keep the NCOD intact everywhere, so Council needs to hear from people who support allowing more housing here.

📄 Link to staff report and case materials.

Housing decisions are made meeting by meeting. If you want a region where more people can afford to live, this is where it happens.

Show up. Speak up. Bring someone with you.

These are this week’s immediate calls to action.

The rest of this week’s Rezoning Watch continues below with upcoming meetings, rezonings, and planning updates from around the Triangle. Read our regular Rezoning Watch series here.

Remember to join us at an event this month too!

YIMBYtown is just around the corner!
Housing advocates from across the country are coming to Raleigh November 17–19, and we want plenty of locals in the room. We’ve added one-day tickets to make it easier to be part of the conversation.
Check out the program and grab your ticket!

Read more

Happy November, CITYBUILDERs! We have a HUGE month ahead!

After months of planning, we’re welcoming the national pro-housing community to Raleigh for YIMBYtown 2026! We’re incredibly excited to bring more than 1,000 housing advocates, policymakers, planners, developers, and community builders to North Carolina for three days of learning, connecting, and sharing ideas about how to build more homes and stronger communities.

But YIMBYtown isn’t the only thing happening this month. Our friends at WakeUP Wake County are hosting two opportunities to learn about accessory dwelling units (ADUs), and HOPE NC is bringing people together for its annual Inclusive Housing Summit.

Plus, the midterm election is this Tuesday, November 3rd! If you didn’t vote early, Election Day is your last chance to cast your ballot in local, state, and federal races. Unsure how to vote? Check out CITYBUILDER’s Housing Report Cards for Raleigh candidates. If you’re outside of Raleigh, there are important candidates on your ballot as well. And across North Carolina, we urge everyone to vote against the constitutional amendments that are on the ballot.

Whether you’re interested in housing policy, neighborhood design, affordable housing, or simply meeting others who care about the future of our communities, we have an event for you! If you’ve been holding out to get your tickets to YIMBYtown, or you think you may be too busy to attend, we hope you’ll take advantage of our one-day passes for folks who can’t commit to the full three days. We also have student tickets available (only $75!); please share this opportunity with students in your life who are curious about housing and building a better future for all.

We hope you’ll join us!

Charlotte Chapman
CITYBUILDER

YIMBYTOWN 2026 in Raleigh!

Tuesday, November 17 – Thursday, November 19
Raleigh Convention Center | Downtown Raleigh

It’s here! The nation’s largest pro-housing conference is coming to the South for the first time, hosted right here in Raleigh by CITYBUILDER and our incredible coalition of local partners.

Over three days, we’ll welcome more than 1,000 people from across the country for inspiring speakers, practical workshops, strategic conversations, and plenty of opportunities to connect.

This year’s theme is Y’all in My Backyard; bringing a little Southern hospitality to the national pro-housing movement. We’ll explore everything from housing policy and zoning reform to transportation, grassroots organizing, housing stability, and the real-world work of getting more homes built.

Whether you’re a longtime housing advocate or just getting started, come be part of the conversation!

Register for YIMBYtown 2026

EVENTS WITH CITYBUILDER

Single-stair Construction: More Safety, Less Cost

Thursday, November 5 | 12PM - 1PM
Virtual Panel: RSVP here

Did you know that people across the country are working with local governments to re-legalize single-stair construction? North Carolina might be the next state to allow this great form of housing. Join our expert panel to learn how single-stair construction can decrease housing costs while improving safety for residents.

Panelists:

• Alex Horowitz – Pew Charitable Trusts and Single Stair Researcher

• Chris Wells – NC Fire Marshals

• Ben Cappellacci – Builder and Single Stair Advocate

Facilitator:

• Nicole Quick – Director of Government Relations at Building NC’s Next Chapter

EVENTS WITH FRIENDS

Small Scale Development Workshop with the Incremental Development Alliance

Friday, November 20 | 8:30 AM – 5:00 PM
Junction West | 310 S. West Street, Suite 110, Raleigh

Ever wondered what it takes to become a small-scale real estate developer? Join the Incremental Development Alliance for a full-day, hands-on workshop exploring how to create financially viable development projects that strengthen our neighborhoods.

Designed for aspiring developers, neighborhood leaders, and city staff, this workshop will cover how to identify promising projects, understand the financial realities of development, and navigate the network of professionals who help bring projects to life.

Whether you’re interested in building something yourself or simply want to better understand how small-scale development works, this is a great opportunity to learn from national experts and connect with others working to create better places.

Breakfast and lunch are included.

Register for the workshop

YIMBYtown attendees receive a special discount! Contact rquednau@incrementaldevelopment.org for the discount code.

ADU Community Workshop & Tour

Community ADU Workshop

Thursday, November 12 | 5:30 – 7:30 PM
John Chavis Memorial Park Reception Hall
505 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., Raleigh

Curious about accessory dwelling units (ADUs)? This workshop is for Wake County residents interested in learning more about ADUs and how they can create additional housing options in our communities.

The evening will include general ADU education, informational sessions, and opportunities to connect with qualified architects for design consultations.

This event is hosted by WakeUP Wake County in partnership with BLWall Consulting, with support from the AARP Community Challenge Grant and the City of Raleigh Impact Partner Grant.

Get tickets to the ADU Workshop

Community ADU Tour

Saturday, November 14 | 1:00 – 3:00 PM
Raleigh, NC

See accessory dwelling units in action! WakeUP Wake County and BLWall Consulting are hosting a community tour showcasing five ADUs around the area.

It’s a chance to see how these smaller homes are designed, built, and incorporated into existing neighborhoods, and to learn more about the possibilities for adding housing choices throughout Wake County.

Get tickets to the ADU Tour

A SOBERING CENTENNIAL TO END HOUSING MONTH

100 Years of Zoning: Village of Euclid v. Ambler Realty Co.

Sunday, November 22

November also marks the 100th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Village of Euclid v. Ambler Realty Co., the 1926 case that established the constitutionality of exclusionary zoning in the United States.

It’s a fitting moment to reflect on how a century of zoning has shaped our neighborhoods, housing choices, and communities… and what the next hundred years could look like.

LOOKING AHEAD

CITYBUILDER BOOK CLUB - DECEMBER - MEMBERS ONLY EDITION!

In December, our monthly book club will be for paid CITYBUILDER subscribers only. If you’re only seeing CITYBUILDER’s free content, now is a great time to upgrade to a paid membership (for less than $10 a month) and get the members-only info for this event. Paid members also get access to our Bigger Picture series, plus important news and information we publish only for our paid subscribers. Support our work with this contribution today.

Durham Rents Drop 8% In One Year

Closer to Home:

Raleigh Breaks Ground on 200 Affordable Apartments

What to Do Next:

Vote Early or In Person On Tuesday Nov 3rd

Early voting: In-person early voting ends on Oct 31 at 3pm. Read our assessments of candidates for Raleigh races, as well as our thoughts on proposed bonds and constitutional amendments here. Find an early voting location near you here!

Election Day: Didn’t have time to vote early? No problem! On Election Day polls are open from 6:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m; find your nearest Election Day voting site here!

See You Next Week!

This new CITYBUILDER Brief series brings short and shareable housing news straight to your inbox. Thanks for being a subscriber!

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The following piece is a republication from the Oct 18th edition of Raleigh Forward’s biweekly newsletter, the RaleighForward Roundup.

Sneak Peek: What Residents Think About Housing Affordability

As Raleigh continues to grow, housing affordability remains one of the most defining issues facing our city. With the upcoming November City Council election just around the corner and an initial draft of Raleigh’s new Comprehensive Plan slated for release this coming Spring, understanding how residents across each Council District view the City’s housing market is more critical than ever.

To capture a true snapshot of public opinion, RaleighForward commissioned a survey of more than 1500 residents across all five City Council districts. The survey was conducted between September 29 and October 7, 2026, with a citywide margin of error of ±2.5 points. Today, we are excited to offer a limited first look at the results!

High-Level Takeaways: A Resounding Public Consensus

While Raleigh residents widely celebrate the City’s investments in quality-of-life amenities like parks, dining, and transit service, the data reveals a powerful, Citywide consensus around housing availability and affordability:

• Affordability Anxiety Crosses Every District: Nearly 88% of respondents express concern about housing affordability in Raleigh today, with 62.8% reporting they are extremely or very concerned.

• The Impact Hits Home: More than 71% of respondents report that a shortage of affordable housing has impacted them personally or affected a family member or close friend.

• A Demand for More: Over 67% of respondents state the City simply does not have enough housing options to meet the needs of residents across different income levels and family sizes.

In Their Own Words: What Residents Are Saying

Behind the percentages are the real, lived experiences of Raleigh neighbors:

“Many friends are unable to afford buying a home in Raleigh despite above average incomes due to high costs, high interest rates & other expenses like student loans.”

— Raleigh Survey Respondent

“2 of my adult sons still live with my husband and I in order to save money so that they can afford to get out on their own. Cost of rentals and housing is unattainable for someone just starting out in employment.”

— Raleigh Survey Respondent

“Many friends have to live far outside of town and commute to Raleigh.”

— Raleigh Survey Respondent

What Comes Next?

While the upcoming November election will decide who sits on City Council, the real policy work lies ahead in shaping Raleigh’s future. As City staff prepare to release an initial draft of Raleigh’s next Comprehensive Plan in early 2027, these polling results provide a roadmap for building momentum behind thoughtful, pro-housing solutions.

We will release the full, granular polling analysis, including district-by-district breakdowns and detailed policy crosstabs at upcoming events hosted with WakeUp Wake County and CITYBUILDER featuring expert presentation and analysis directly from the polling firm.

This piece was originally published on Raleigh Forward, and is republished via content sharing agreement.

Eric Braun is a retired land use attorney dedicated to advancing equitable housing policies in Raleigh. He continues to serve the community, and currently sits on the Raleigh Housing Authority, and has previously chaired the Raleigh Planning Commission. Eric writes thoughtful commentary on housing, transit, and local governance at RaleighForward.

Homelessness is a Housing Problem by Gregg Colburn and Clayton Page
Aldern is a must-read for anyone working in the housing continuum
space. Since stepping off of Raleigh City Council in 2022, I became
heavily involved in our community's homeless response system. Having
this book as my guide made it easy to rebut anyone who thinks it's
impossible to end homelessness, and instead offer them a sensible
solution.

As a total spoiler, the thesis of the book is in the title: to solve
our homelessness problem in this country, we need to address housing.
In the first half of the book, Colburn and Aldern set-up and knock
down every individualistic and landscape argument for why certain
communities have high rates of homelessness. Think homelessness is a
problem of poverty, unemployment, mental illness, drug use, or race? Wrong. Think homelessness is a problem of weather, politics, or an
abundance of services? Wrong. And their arguments are all backed up
by data, charts, and specific examples.

Homelessness is a problem of housing supply. The good news is
that it's a problem we can solve. Colburn and Aldern
argue that housing has to keep up with growth and that growth doesn't
happen in a vacuum, it is actively stimulated or restricted by
governmental policies and programs. Which means people can change zoning and development ordinances to allow for more housing and
more housing types.

Finally, the authors end the book with how communities can address
homelessness, which includes: changing the perception of the problem
(see the first half of the book), ensuring sufficient resources
(dollars at all levels of government), and fixing our systems (so
individuals move more quickly out of homelessness or avoid it in the
first place).

Eric Braun and I are hosting this month's CITYBUILDER book club. We
hope you come for the book review and conversation, and stay to explore how
our local communities are responding in real time.

RSVP to Book Club

Join CITYBUILDER Book Club

📘 Homelessness is a Housing Problem by Gregg Colburn and Clayton Aldern
📅 Wed Oct 28th 12:00pm - 1:00pm
📍 PRESS Coffee Crêpes Cocktails
400 Hillsborough St suite 108, Raleigh, NC 27603, USA
👉 RSVP here

Nicole Stewart has built two decades of leadership across
Raleigh's civic, philanthropic, and nonprofit sectors. She served on
Raleigh City Council as an At-Large member and Mayor Pro Tem, directed
engagement at the A.J. Fletcher Foundation, and spent eighteen years
at NC Conservation Network, ultimately as Development Director. She
co-founded The Beehive Collective, which put $200K+ into Raleigh
nonprofits over a decade, and currently serves as Past Chair of the
Wake Continuum of Care.

San Francisco Rents Rise 25% in 1 Year

Closer to Home:

See Where Raleigh Candidates Stand on Housing

What happened: CITYBUILDER released our 2026 Raleigh City Council Housing Report Cards, evaluating candidates on their support for more housing, affordable housing investment, zoning reforms, and their voting records. We’ve also included candidate questionnaire responses and videos from our candidate forum.

Why it matters: The next City Council will make decisions that shape Raleigh’s housing choices for years to come. Not every candidate approaches housing the same way, and what they say about affordability doesn’t always match their positions on building more homes.

The bottom line: Early voting is underway through October 31, and Election Day is November 3. Before you vote, read our housing report cards, watch the candidates, and share them with a Raleigh voter you know.

Share

What to Do Next:

Come to a Housing Month Event!

From October 22 to November 22, we’re joining the North Carolina Housing Coalition to celebrate a month focused on housing!

Events galore: Housing policy affects everyone, and building a better housing future takes all of us. This month is packed with opportunities to learn, connect, advocate, and get involved, from early voting and local workshops to CITYBUILDER Book Club and closing with YIMBYtown!

Get involved: Pick an event (or three!), bring a friend, and learn how we’re building a North Carolina where everyone has more housing choices.

👉 Find events and get involved at events.citybuildernc.org.

See You Next Week!

This new CITYBUILDER Brief series brings short and shareable housing news straight to your inbox. Thanks for being a subscriber!

Share

On a corner lot down the block from Method Community Park, a nonprofit developer transformed a deteriorating 1960s triplex into nine units of permanent housing for young people aging out of foster care, all without a single rezoning hearing. To get there, the project leaned on a text change to Raleigh's Unified Development Ordinance, a transit-area density allowance, and a stormwater loophole tied to the parcel's pre-2001 origins. Here’s how it got built, what it cost, and what challenges the team encountered along the way.

The site and the challenge

CASA owned the site at 601 Method Road since the early 1990s, which consisted of a triplex built in the 1960s that had aged out of its affordability restrictions and was in poor shape. Two residents had already moved out and a third needed to transition into assisted living. Given this, CASA was preparing to sell.

Then Raleigh’s Missing Middle 2.0 text changes landed in summer 2021. The parcel was zoned R-4, which on its own offered no real options, but its location in a frequent-transit area meant CASA could build up to nine units as a multifamily apartment building instead. The lot was a flat, 0.43-acre corner parcel with a dedicated right-of-way, walking distance from Method Community Park and a bus stop. Since the parcel had been created before 2001, it was grandfathered out of the city’s stormwater control requirements as long as the impervious surface stayed under the applicable limit. By dropping the parking that would otherwise have been required, CASA stayed under that ceiling.

The original vision was simple: work through the Unified Development Ordinance to figure out how many units the site could support, then build an apartment building. The design team with Tightlines and civil engineers at Swift Partners ran concept plans to confirm what could fit while staying below the impervious limit. A tenth unit was carved out as community office space, which under the ordinance, doesn’t count against the unit cap.

The financing stack

The $2.7 million total development cost came together from a mix of local, county, and federal sources:

• City of Raleigh contributed $700,000 in bond funds

• Wake County provided $760,000 in HOME funds through its CHDO set-aside — the maximum available, capped at $95,000 per unit for units serving households at or below 30% AMI

• Congresswoman Deborah Ross championed the project and secured a $1 million Community Project Funding (CPF) grant

• Additional $250,000 in grants rounded out the stack

CASA did not draw on the 10% construction contingency and had no change orders. There was also no deferred developer fee.

The deal’s most serious threat wasn’t local. Instead, it was Congress. Federal funding depended on Congress actually passing a budget, but the project moved forward anyway, with a construction loan put in place that ultimately never had to be drawn. On the compliance side, timing worked in the project’s favor: a Part 58 environmental review was already underway for the Wake County HOME funds, and the CPF grant qualified for a categorical exclusion (CENST) rather than a full environmental review, which kept the schedule from stalling before construction could start.

The partners

The project’s most consequential partnership was the Hope Center at Pullen, a supportive-service nonprofit that CASA connected with through Raleigh’s Continuum of Care. Hope Center built its programs around homeless services, and over time recognized that its clients were disproportionately young people aging out of foster care. Over 40% of youth aging out of foster care experience homelessness by age 21. Hope Center runs programs both for youth still in foster care and for those transitioning out, offering housing support, life-skills training, an employment-focused internship program, and a doula program.

CASA owns and operates the Method Road building while Hope Center handles referrals, staffs the on-site office, and provides case management. Eight of the nine residential units house Hope Center referrals; the ninth houses a resident advisor, whose rent and stipend the organization covers. During the design phase, Hope Center oversaw a youth advisory board that chose the building’s name, colors, flooring, and cabinetry.

CASA selected G&G Builders, a longtime construction partner, through a competitive formal bid process. The environmental review timeline meant CASA couldn’t bring a contractor on for pre-construction input, as choice-limiting activities like contractor selection aren’t allowed during that review, so G&G came on once the environmental review closed and a full set of plans was ready.

Who lives here

Method Road’s nine units house young people aging out of the foster care system. The residents are legally adults, but remain members of a population Hope Center and CASA both describe as facing an outsized risk of homelessness during their transition to adulthood. Six of the units are supported by Family Unification/Foster Youth to Independence (FYI) vouchers, and Hope Center covers a below-market rent for the resident advisor’s unit. Since local housing authorities won’t inspect units until a certificate of occupancy (CO) is issued, CASA structured leases in two stages: an income-based lease at move-in, and then a transition to the voucher-based lease once the CO came through. This allowed residents to move in as soon as the building was ready, rather than waiting for the inspection timeline.

The policy lever

The mechanism that made Method Road possible without a rezoning was Raleigh's Missing Middle text change to the Unified Development Ordinance. CASA discovered it almost by accident. While preparing a rezoning pre-application for a different property, city staff pointed out that the text change meant a rezoning wasn't necessary at all. Under the R-4 base zoning combined with the site's transit-oriented development overlay, the ordinance entitles a project to one residential unit for roughly every 1,800 square feet of qualifying area, which is what unlocked all nine units plus the non-counting community office space.

Separately, Raleigh’s citywide elimination of minimum parking requirements meant that CASA didn't need a discretionary parking waiver; it simply built no parking, which most residents don't need given their reliance on transit and the project’s location.

What went well, and what was unexpected

The two decisions the team points to as the reason the project worked are the Hope Center partnership and the Missing Middle text change, with one supplying the population and service model, and the other enabling the zoning capacity to house them. An architect willing to work within a tight, small site, and to design around residents’ lived experience mattered too. Timing helped as well: CASA met Hope Center in December 2022, just before city and county funding applications opened in January, including a City of Raleigh RFP for small-scale rental bond funding. The environmental review already underway for the CPF grant meant that step wasn’t a bottleneck later.

Construction introduced some hurdles to the project’s timeline. The original delivery timeline proved optimistic, and the schedule slipped, which is a challenge for residents dealing with housing instability who need to move in promptly rather than wait out delays. A sewer meter that was supposed to be decommissioned and removed early in the process never was, adding its own delay.

On cost, the team ended up building a freestanding sign displaying the development’s name that wasn’t originally anticipated, and a city-requested right-of-way dedication beyond what the site’s size technically required triggered a cascade of design changes that ultimately shrank the building’s footprint. A related encroachment agreement, needed for a short connecting section at the walkway, took six months to finalize.

On permitting, CASA avoided a full rezoning but still worked through four rounds of site plan review for a parcel under half an acre with no parking and no stormwater requirement, with substantive comments arriving as late as the final rounds.

What CASA would change

If CASA were starting today, they'd prefer to bring the general contractor on earlier before locking in a full funding stack, and hold twice-monthly on-site meetings with the architect to catch construction discrepancies before they compound. They wouldn't agree to the right-of-way dedication a second time. Their broader ask for the housing policy world would be to match density-unlocking tools like the Missing Middle text change with the staffing and review timelines needed to catch design conflicts in the first round of comments, not the fourth. This protects small scale developers from sinking tens of thousands of dollars into plans built around an ordinance that the review process hasn't caught up to.

Rachel Eberhard is an affordable housing developer, planner, and consultant with more than a decade of experience guiding mission-driven organizations through complex development projects. She is the Founder and Managing Principal of Apiary Community Consulting, a Durham-based firm specializing in the full development lifecycle with a focus on expanding access to stable, affordable housing for low- and moderate-income households.

North Carolina is in a housing shortage. As a result, there isn’t a single county in our state where someone working full time earning minimum wage can afford a 1 or 2 bedroom apartment at fair market rent without being cost-burdened (spending more than 30% of their income on housing). Our state is facing a supply gap of over 760,000 units in the next five years, creating an environment in which more than 1.2 million North Carolinians (homeowners and renters) are cost burdened.

These are just a few reasons why the North Carolina Housing Coalition’s 2027-28 Legislative Agenda priorities cover funding, land use & development, and protections for homeowners & renters. Using the results of a statewide survey and expertise from advocates, practitioners, and professionals across the state, the NC Housing Coalition (NCHC) has developed their 2027-28 Legislative Agenda in a way that addresses both needs and solutions that are critical for housing in North Carolina. The agenda has three core policy areas:

Invest in Housing and Infrastructure

North Carolina must invest more in housing supply, infrastructure, and preservation in order to meet the scale of our housing needs.

Create & Preserve Housing Supply

North Carolina must eliminate exclusionary land use practices and implement policies that protect, not hinder, the development and preservation of affordable housing supply.

Deliver Housing Relief & Protections

North Carolina needs targeted housing relief, protections, and intentional coordinated investment in housing preservation, long-term recovery, and resiliency.

Within each area, there are four policy priorities, with a total of 12 policy priorities for the upcoming legislative session. Some of the top priorities include:

• Increase the base allocation of the NC Housing Trust fund to at least $20M per year of the biennium.

• Increase and make recurring the Workforce Housing Loan Program (WHLP), raising it to $50M per year of the biennium.

• Amend the S445 Regulatory Reform bill by removing population thresholds that inhibit the expansion of residential development by right.

• Eliminate or reduce minimum lot size requirements for residential development.

• Modernize existing property tax relief programs to provide true relief for cost-burdened homeowners in North Carolina.

• Pass bipartisan legislation to seal eviction records, sealing records 3 years after judgement, or 1 year if dismissed in the tenant’s favor.

  ---

This Tuesday, October 20, 2026 at 12:30pm, Stephanie Watkins-Cruz, the Director of Housing Policy at NCHC will be dive into the specific legislative priorities within NCHC’s core agenda areas, and discuss why building new and stronger pro-housing and affordable housing advocate relationships and coalitions is a critical piece of accomplishing these wins in the upcoming legislative session.

RSVP for Policy Talk

Housing Month starts on Thursday, Oct 22nd!

Join CITYBUILDER and the North Carolina Housing Coalition for a month of housing events - including NCHC's signature event, the NC Affordable Housing Conference (10/22-10/23), and YIMBYtown (11/17-11/19) — the nation's pro-housing conference, coming to Raleigh for the first time ever.

Join us for all things housing this month!

Stephanie Watkins-Cruz is the Director of Housing Policy for the North Carolina Housing Coalition, where she draws on her lived experience and training in development finance, public administration, and planning to foster collaboration and address community needs. She is passionate about affordable housing and believes in the creativity, commitment, and conviction it takes to get it right.

For the first time ever, half of Raleigh’s City Council will be elected to four-year terms. The next Council will help shape Raleigh’s new Comprehensive Plan, the document that guides how and where our city grows over the next 30 years.

And the Comprehensive Plan is only part of why who is on Council matters. Councilors also vote regularly on housing rezonings, zoning reforms, affordable housing investments, and the rules that determine how difficult or expensive it is to build new homes.

That’s why CITYBUILDER publishes Housing Report Cards.

We believe housing is the measure of whether Raleigh’s leaders are ready to welcome growth and build a more affordable future. So, we’ve evaluated candidates based on their voting records, public statements, housing questionnaire responses, and participation in our candidate forum. We’re looking at whether candidates understand the need for more housing and whether they support the policies and projects that make it possible.

Below, you’ll find report cards for each race, explanations of each candidates housing positions, links to their full questionnaire responses, and videos from our candidate forum so you can hear directly from them.

Housing is on the ballot. Know where your candidates stand.

Here is our deeper look at each candidate and why they earned their grade.

Candidates for Mayor

Janet Cowell

Janet Cowell gets an A grade. She supports increasing housing supply, affordable housing investment, faith-based housing partnerships, and zoning and permitting reforms that make building homes easier. As mayor, she has consistently supported housing rezonings. Cowell did not respond to CITYBUILDER’s housing questionnaire, but her voting record and public positions provide a clear picture of her approach to housing.

Ashleigh Heath Armstrong

Ashleigh Heath Armstrong gets an F grade. She has no campaign website and we could not identify substantive public positions on housing supply, affordability, or zoning and permitting reforms. She did not respond to CITYBUILDER’s housing questionnaire and withdrew from our candidate forum after initially confirming her attendance.

Candidates for City Council At-Large

Clark Rinehart

Clark Rinehart gets an A grade. He supports increasing housing supply and expanding housing choices for Raleigh residents. He supports affordable housing through public investment, private partnerships, and collaboration with faith institutions to create more homes across the city.

Read his full questionnaire answers here.
You can watch him at our Candidate Forum answer what pro-housing means to him below:

Sana Siddiqui

Sana Siddiqui gets a B grade. She supports additional housing but emphasizes neighborhood character and policies focused specifically on affordable housing. Her approach prioritizes affordability and neighborhood compatibility when considering where and how Raleigh should allow more homes.

Read her full questionnaire answers here.
Sana did not attend our candidate forum.

Stormie Forte

Stormie Forte gets a C grade. She supports permitting reforms that could make building homes easier, but her voting record includes opposition to townhomes, apartments, and other proposals for denser housing. Forte did not respond to CITYBUILDER’s housing questionnaire.

Stormie did not respond to our questionnaire.
You can watch her at our Candidate Forum answer a question about particular rezonings. In this case she defends voting against a rezoning for higher density on Trailwood Dr (Z-45-25 passed 5-3 with Councilors Forte, Harrison and Silver voting against and includes a condition for 60% AMI affordability rather than 30%).

Joshua Bradley

Joshua Bradley gets a D grade. He advocates for publicly funded and publicly built affordable housing rather than expanding housing supply through a mix of public and private construction. His proposed restrictions on private housing construction could make building new homes more difficult and limit the number of homes Raleigh can add.

Joshua did not respond to our housing questionnaire.
You can watch him at our Candidate Forum answer what pro-housing means to him below:

Candidates for City Council District A

Mitchell Silver

Mitchell Silver gets an A grade. He supports a wide range of housing types and affordability levels, including missing middle housing, small-lot homes, transit-oriented growth, and subsidized affordable housing. He consistently demonstrates detailed knowledge of how zoning rules and city policy affect housing supply, including the reforms needed to make building more homes easier.

Read his full questionnaire answers here.
You can watch him at our Candidate Forum answer what pro-housing means to him below:

Whitney Hill

Whitney Hill gets a C grade. He expresses support for housing affordability and growth, particularly mixed-use projects with denser housing along transit corridors. However, he questions Raleigh’s missing middle reforms and offers limited support for expanding housing choices in existing neighborhoods.

Whitney did not respond to our questionnaire.
You can watch him at our Candidate Forum answer a question about particular rezonings. In this case he discusses how he would approach high density rezonings like North Hills and Peace/West St.

Candidates for City Council District B

Megan Patton

Megan Patton gets an A grade. She consistently supports housing of all types and affordability levels, including missing middle housing, zoning reforms, housing rezonings, and affordable housing investment. As a City Council member, she has demonstrated a strong understanding of housing policy and clearly communicates the reasoning behind her decisions. Her voting record reflects consistent support for expanding housing choices and increasing Raleigh’s housing supply.

Megan is running unopposed. She did not respond to our questionnaire.
You can watch him at our Candidate Forum answer what pro-housing means to her below:

Candidates for City Council District C

Corey Branch

Corey gets a B grade. He supports zoning and permitting reforms to increase housing supply, missing middle housing, and public investment in affordable housing. As a City Council member, he has supported major housing rezonings, but his recent votes against neighborhood infill proposals show a mixed record when it comes to allowing more homes in existing neighborhoods.

Read his full questionnaire answers here.
You can watch him at our Candidate Forum answer what pro-housing means to him below:

Jared Ollison

Jared gets a D grade. He supports affordable housing investment and acknowledges Raleigh’s need for additional housing. However, he has called for revisiting missing middle reforms because of concerns about neighborhood character, homeownership, and displacement. He has also stated that he would have opposed major housing rezonings at North Hills and Peace and West Streets.

Jared did not respond to our questionnaire or attend our candidate forum.

Candidates for City Council District D

Jane Harrison

Jane Harrison gets a C grade. She supports affordable housing investment but has opposed multiple housing rezonings, including proposals for affordable housing. During her time on City Council, she has not consistently supported missing middle housing or additional zoning reforms that would make it easier to build more homes. Her voting record reflects a more restrictive approach to increasing Raleigh’s housing supply.

Read her full questionnaire answers here.
You can watch her at our Candidate Forum answer a question about particular rezonings. In this case she defends voting against cases based on a desire for more conditions. With the specific example of a rezoning for higher density on Trailwood Dr (Z-45-25 passed 5-3 with Councilors Forte, Harrison and Silver voting against and includes a condition for 60% AMI affordability rather than 30%).

Jevon Smith-Cook

Jevon Smith-Cook gets a B grade. He supports housing of all types and affordability levels, including missing middle housing, affordable housing investment, and expanded opportunities for homeownership. His questionnaire responses identify lengthy permitting timelines, complicated site plan requirements, and discretionary reviews as barriers to building more homes. He supports zoning and permitting reforms to reduce those barriers and increase housing supply.

Read his full questionnaire answers here.
You can watch him at our Candidate Forum answer what pro-housing means to him below:

Candidates for City Council District E

Christina Jones

Christina Jones gets a B grade. She recognizes the need for increased housing supply and supports affordable housing investment. While she has a mixed voting record on housing rezonings and has raised infrastructure concerns about zoning reforms, she has also cast important votes in support of new housing, including affordable housing proposals. Jones regularly works to educate residents about Raleigh’s zoning rules, housing policies, and the need for reform.

Read her full questionnaire answers here.
You can watch her at our Candidate Forum answer a question about particular rezonings.
In this case she defends voting for and against Trailwood Dr cases, she voted yes for Z-45-25 which passed 5-3 with Councilors Forte, Harrison and Silver voting against and includes a condition for 60% AMI affordability rather than 30%).

Marc Scruggs

Marc Scruggs gets an F grade. He highlights his opposition to housing proposals near parks and natural areas, presenting those efforts as environmental protection. His campaign materials offer no clear plan for increasing Raleigh’s housing supply or addressing housing affordability.

Marc did not respond to our questionnaire or attend our candidate forum.

Housing isn’t the only thing on the ballot that shapes how our communities grow.

Raleigh and Wake County voters will also consider bonds to fund affordable housing, transportation improvements, public schools, and community college facilities. These investments help determine whether our growing region has the homes, infrastructure, and public services it needs.

The Raleigh housing bond would fund programs to build and preserve affordable housing. The transportation bond would support sidewalks, bike lanes, transit facilities, and street improvements that make neighborhoods more connected and walkable. Investments in schools and community colleges also matter as our region welcomes more families and workers.

There are also three proposed North Carolina constitutional amendments addressing voter identification, state income taxes, and local property taxes.

The two tax amendments could make it harder for state and local governments to fund the services growing communities need. North Carolina already relies heavily on counties to help fund public schools, while cities and towns maintain roads, parks, and other essential services. Limiting state revenue could increase pressure on local governments to fill funding gaps, while restricting local property taxes would make that harder too.

These decisions affect everything from affordable housing and transportation to schools, parks, and trash collection. As our region grows, the need for these services will grow too. Don’t stop at the candidate races!

Flip your ballot over, review the bonds and amendments, and make sure you vote all the way to the end.

If we want a Raleigh that says yes to homes, yes to neighbors, and yes to abundance, we need to show up.

The report cards tell that story at a glance. Read the grades. Share them with a friend or neighbor who cares about affordability and growth. Ask candidates where they stand.

Early voting is October 15–31. Election Day is November 3.

And make a plan to go vote!

Every vote builds a city.

These assessments are based on candidate questionnaire responses to our housing questionnaire, other published questionnaires and public forums. Our pro-housing questionnaire was developed collaboratively with RDU New Liberals, Yes! in My Triangle YIMBYaction chapter, RaleighForward, and Strong Towns Raleigh Local Conversation. Each group may also share candidate recommendations or endorsements.

The nation’s largest pro-housing conference comes to the South for the first time this November. Here’s why North Carolina is the place to be.

YIMBYtown is hosted by CITYBUILDER in collaboration with a broad coalition of local partners: RaleighForward, WakeUP Wake County, Yes! in my Triangle, NC Housing Table, and Southern Urbanism.

For ten years, YIMBYtown has brought together housing advocates and organizers, policymakers and elected officials; all come together to learn and share ideas to figure out how to get more housing built. From Boulder to Oakland to Portland to New Haven, the conference has helped grow a national movement for more housing choices and more affordable communities.

Honestly, it feels fitting that it’s coming to the South now.

Housing affordability isn’t just a coastal city problem anymore. Fast-growing regions like the Triangle are facing many of the same challenges. With the future of American growth increasingly being negotiated in places like North Carolina.

Not in theory. Not in policy papers. But right now, on the ground.

Every month across the Triangle, our local governments are actively making decisions about whether we build up or out. In Raleigh and Durham alone, there are nearly a hundred rezonings each year. Advocates are working at the local and state levels to change the rules that make these projects work. And YIMBYs are winning.

Here, we are still building housing.
A lot of housing. Not enough. But building matters.

Over the last several years, Raleigh has been one of the most active housing markets in the country, ranking among the national leaders in both single-family and multifamily construction. With thousands of new homes and apartments built across the Triangle, rents have started to come down.

People can feel the affect of new housing. We see it in the cranes downtown. In the apartments opening along transit corridors. In the incremental infill projects quietly appearing inside existing neighborhoods, and in the small developers trying to build duplexes, cottage courts, ADUs, corner stores, and mixed-use housing again.

The work is of course unfinished. With real tensions being built with every building, every single council meeting still contains arguments over housing. Even with progress on reforms, with every project, the Triangle is still wrestling with what kind of region we want to become.

That is exactly why YIMBYtown belongs here.

Our theme this year is Y’all in My Backyard, bringing a little Southern hospitality to the national pro-housing movement.

Southern hospitality is about welcoming people, making room at the table, and treating new neighbors like they belong.

We think that same spirit should extend to how we build our communities.

Y’all is an expression of abundance. Replacing Yes with Y’all in the classic YIMBY is our way of signaling we want a Southern flavor of the YIMBY movement. Complete with front porches, corner stores, apartments over shops, grandparents living near their grandchildren, and kids riding bikes to the park. Places with more housing choices for people at different stages of life and different incomes. Because there’s a long tradition of building these kinds of places in the South.

Y’all in My Backyard is about making room for more neighbors while building the kinds of communities we all want to call home.

Y’all come to Raleigh!

sign up for YIMBYtown

November 17–19, we’re bringing 1,000+ people to downtown Raleigh for three days of housing policy, politics, and practical conversations about getting more housing built. There’ll be five programming tracks covering everything from grassroots organizing and housing stability to zoning reform, transportation, and presentations from real developers who are building housing. Check out all our speakers on the full schedule.

And we especially want our North Carolina people there! Come meet people doing this work across the country, share what’s happening here, and bring home ideas for your own community.

We can’t wait to welcome y’all to Raleigh!

register today!

- Jenn Truman
CITYBUILDER | YIMBYtown Raleigh Host Committee

Jenn Truman is a young designer, leader, and advocate based in Raleigh, she is embedded in the local community through both her professional and volunteer work. Jenn is a regular contributor to and Founder of CITYBUILDER.

Closer to Home:

Durham Approves 200 Multifamily Homes in Rezoning

What to Do Next:

Vote Early Starting Thursday Oct 15

Off to the polls: Early voting in NC begins on Thursday, Oct 15. With local, state, and federal races taking place, this election is an important opportunity to affect the future of our cities and towns. Raleigh’s city council and mayoral elections will determine the authors of the city’s next comprehensive plan, which will guide its growth for decades to come.

Find Your Early Voting Location

See You Next Week!

This new CITYBUILDER Brief series brings short and shareable housing news straight to your inbox. Thanks for being a subscriber!

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Last year, I wrote a two-part article about how zoning reforms in cities like Raleigh, Durham, and Portland have resulted in middle-scale new housing. Luckily, the city of Raleigh’s planning department publishes thorough figures about the “missing middle housing” that’s worked its way through the planning process since City Council legalized several types of middle housing in 2020 and 2021 (Raleigh Forward has a great bibliography and history, including details on pending lawsuits).

First, let’s review some definitions. Raleigh’s zoning divides houses into several building types, and the reforms made it legal to build many of those types on smaller lots – and created new types entirely. “Detached houses” are what most people call single-family houses, and “townhouses” are what they sound like. When the middle housing reforms passed, “attached houses,” aka duplexes, could suddenly be built on pretty much any lot where a detached house could. “ADUs,” or accessory dwelling units, are small houses that can be detached or attached to a larger house, but importantly share a lot. “Tiny houses” are small houses that can be built on small parcels – like an ADU, but with its own yard. “Apartments” are any building with three or more units that isn’t a townhouse; they can be rented or sold (as condominiums).

The great news is that over 4,000 units of housing have been approved that otherwise would have been impossible – all despite ongoing litigation. In a city with 500,000 residents and with fewer greenfield sites, that’s a lot!

Read more

Across the Triangle, there’s never a shortage of public hearings where housing is on the table. This week, we’re watching a few cases in Durham, Fuquay-Varina and Raleigh. We’ve sorted through the agendas so you don’t have to, check out the details below.

+ don’t forget about our Raleigh Candidate Forum
on Wednesday, October 7 at 7pm at Trophy Maywood

📣 This Week’s Call to Actions:

There are opportunities to show up for housing in three different places over the next couple nights.

FUQUAY-VARINA

🏘️ REZ-2026-11 at 417 & 419 Raleigh Street

Tonight, Monday, October 5 at 7pm

This is a small infill project that requires a public hearing and Board commission. The 0.414-acre site currently has two attached townhomes. The rezoning would allow it to be divided into three lots with one row house on each.

💡 The rezoning is consistent with Fuquay-Varina’s adopted land use plan. Staff recommends approval, and the Planning Board unanimously recommended approval.

💡 Since the case first reached the Town Board, the applicant has held additional neighborhood meetings and revised setbacks, roof heights, fencing, landscaping and other design details in response to neighbors because there’s continued opposition. At the end of all that process, we are talking about three homes instead of two.

The public hearing has already closed, but opponents may continue showing up during general public comment. Housing supporters can still make sure Commissioners hear from people who support small-scale infill near downtown. And maybe add a suggestion that projects like this should be allowed by-right, without a hearing, next time.

👉 Come to the Board of Commissioners meeting tonight
or email the Mayor and Commissioners before the meeting.

📧 Fuquay-Varina Board of Commissioners contact information

DURHAM

🏢 Z2400035 at 3815 Wake Forest Road

Tonight, Monday, October 5 at 7pm

A proposed development at 3815 Wake Forest Road would bring approximately 200 multifamily homes to an area that is predominantly single-family, but close to transit and existing commercial amenities.

🏘️ More homes near transit and everyday destinations are exactly the kind of growth Durham needs to be able to accommodate.

👉 Come out tonight to support housing, you can sign up right before the meeting or email City Council ahead of time.

📄 View the Durham City Council agenda and case materials.
Look for the case and then Attachment F for full details.

BTW - you can meet up with YIMBY’s before the meeting at Queeny’s.

RALEIGH

💚 Three housing cases Tuesday night

Tuesday, October 6 at 7:00 p.m.

Raleigh City Council has three housing rezonings worth watching this week.

🏡 Z-43-25 – 6309 Litchford Road
Would allow up to 47 homes on 3.79 acres. The project has already been scaled back during the rezoning process and has faced sustained neighborhood opposition.

🏙️ Z-50-25 – 2233 & 2321 Capital Boulevard
Would rezone nearly 20 acres from three-story industrial mixed-use to allow substantially taller commercial mixed-use development, including housing.

🚍 Z-07-26 – 3911 Western Boulevard
Would increase allowed height from three to seven stories on a small mixed-use property along Western Boulevard within Raleigh’s Transit Overlay District.

The deadline to sign up to speak has already passed, but you do not have to speak to show Council that Raleigh has a constituency for more housing.

💚 Come Tuesday night. Wear green. Sit with us.

🪧 We’ll have our new green VOTE YES! signs to hold up when these cases are heard.

📄 View Tuesday’s Raleigh City Council agenda

Raleigh will also hold a public hearing Tuesday on the proposed Data Center Moratorium, at the front of the meeting, which they announced will have a maximum hearing time of 30 minutes.

📅 AND WEDNESDAY: Raleigh Candidate Forum

After two nights of watching current elected officials make housing decisions, Wednesday is a chance to hear from the people asking Raleigh voters to put them on City Council.

CITYBUILDER and our partners are hosting a Raleigh City Council Candidate Forum focused on housing, growth, planning for the future and the choices Raleigh faces as it continues to grow.

​How to Show Up

You don’t need to be an expert to speak. If you care about housing, that’s enough. Arrive early to sign up, wear green or any pro-housing gear so supporters can find each other, and keep your comments simple. Even 60 seconds makes a difference.

“I support more housing choices in this area. We need more homes, and this is a good place to add them.”

Housing decisions are made meeting by meeting. If you want a region where more people can afford to live, this is where it happens.

Show up. Speak up. Bring someone with you.

Thanks for taking the time to email a Councilor, show up, and speak for housing!

- Jenn Truman
and the Yes! In my Triangle and CITYBUILDER teams

Read more

Hear Raleigh Candidates Talk About Housing

Join us for an evening with Raleigh candidates to talk all about housing in our city: what it should look like, where it should go, and how we get more of it! CITYBUILDER is hosting a Housing Forum to hear what candidates running for office in Raleigh think about the city’s housing shortage, and how to solve it.

RSVP to Raleigh Candidate Forum

🗓️ Wed Oct 7th 6:00pm - 10:00pm
📍 Trophy Brewing & Taproom, 656 Maywood Ave, Raleigh
⏰ Doors will open at 6pm; the forum will last from 7-9pm, and the event will end at 10pm.

Thanks to Trophy Brewing for providing the space for this important event, sponsored by CITYBUILDER and Yes! In My Triangle.

On the National Radar:

Austin Rents Decline by 18% in One Year

Closer to Home:

Cary Approves 625-unit Mixed-Use Housing Development

See You Next Week!

This new CITYBUILDER Brief series brings short and shareable housing news straight to your inbox. Thanks for being a subscriber!

Share

Happy October, CITYBUILDERs!

This month is all about housing. From conversations with elected officials and architects to our Policy Talk on the North Carolina Housing Coalition’s legislative agenda, there’s plenty of ways to get involved.

We’re also looking forward to the NC Affordable Housing Conference, October 22–23 at the Raleigh Convention Center. It’s a great chance to connect with people working across the housing field, and learn about the challenges and opportunities that come with making housing more affordable.

The Housing Conference is the official kick-off of NC Housing Coalition and CITYBUILDER’s Housing Month. From October 22 to November 22, we’re connecting with housing advocates to create a month of housing, culminating with YIMBYtown on November 17 through 19, and ending with the 100th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision on Village of Euclid v. Ambler Realty Co on November 22.

And of course, October is a huge month for local elections. Raleigh’s candidate forum on housing is October 7, and early voting begins October 15. Whether you’re attending a forum, joining a discussion, or heading to the polls, we hope you’ll participate in the conversations shaping the future of our neighborhoods and cities.

We hope to see you this month!

Charlotte Chapman
Executive Administrator, CITYBUILDER

Events with CITYBUILDER

Move-A-Bull City!

Sunday, October 4 | 12:00–4:00 PM
Downtown Durham

Come join CITYBUILDER at one of Durham’s best events of the year!

Move-A-Bull is a big block party where streets are shut down for folks to bike, skate, roll, and walk around while enjoying vendor booths, performances, and interactive activities.

Bike Durham, the City of Durham, and the Durham County Public Health Department’s Partnership for a Healthy Durham are teaming up to make our streets healthier, safer, and more joyful for folks of all ages and abilities.

More information at moveabull.org

Election Forum on Housing! for Raleigh Candidates

Wednesday, October 7 | 6:00–10:00 PM
Doors open at 6 PM; forum runs 7–9 PM
Trophy Brewing & Taproom, 656 Maywood Ave

Join us for an evening about housing with the candidates for Raleigh city council! This is an opportunity to hear candidates discuss housing issues and share their perspectives on the future of Raleigh.

Thanks to Trophy Brewing for providing the space for this important event. Sponsored by CITYBUILDER and Yes! In My Triangle.

CITYBUILDER Carolina Policy Talk: North Carolina Housing Coalition’s Legislative Agenda

Tuesday, October 20 | 12:00–1:00 PM
Virtual - Please RSVP

Join us for a Carolina Policy Talk with Stephanie Watkins-Cruz, Director of Housing Policy at the North Carolina Housing Coalition. Stephanie will discuss the Coalition’s legislative agenda and the housing policy priorities shaping the work ahead.

CITYBUILDER Book Club

Wednesday, October 28 | 12:00–1:00 PM
PRESS Coffee Crêpes Cocktails, 400 Hillsborough St
Please RSVP

Join us for a discussion of Homelessness Is a Housing Problem, led by Eric Braun and Nicole Stewart.

Authors Gregg Colburn and Clayton Page Aldern argue that regional rates of homelessness are primarily driven by structural housing market conditions, specifically high housing costs, rising rents, and low vacancy rates, rather than individual factors like mental illness or substance abuse. The authors show that metropolitan areas with expensive and restricted housing markets experience significantly higher per capita rates of homelessness overall.

Nicole Stewart is a prominent political consultant, community organizer, and former municipal official in Raleigh, North Carolina. She is best known for serving as an At-Large Raleigh City Council Member and Mayor Pro Tem from 2017 to 2022. Currently, she operates as the founder and president of her own consulting firm, Nicole Stewart Strategies.

Eric Braun is a retired land use and litigation attorney who serves as a prominent civic leader and affordable housing advocate in Raleigh, North Carolina. He is best known as the Chair of the Raleigh Housing Authority Board of Commissioners and the founder and Executive Director of RaleighForward, a nonprofit advocacy group focused on housing affordability and urban growth.

Come for community and conversation as we explore the book’s ideas about homelessness and the role housing plays in addressing it.

Enjoy lunch at PRESS; CITYBUILDER will purchase your non-alcoholic beverage of choice.

Events with Friends

AIA Triangle’s Building Conversations: Breakfast Roundtable with Architects and Local Leaders — Sanford, Oxford & Warrenton

Friday, October 2 | 8:00–10:00 AM
Dennis A. Wicker Civic Center, 1801 Nash St, Sanford

Friday, October 30 | 8:00–10:00 AM
Warrenton, NC

Join us for Building Conversations: Architects and Local Leaders, a morning roundtable bringing together local elected officials and members of the design profession for meaningful dialogue about the future of our communities.

Over a light breakfast, we’ll explore how zoning, housing policy, and planning decisions impact affordability, sustainability, walkability, and civic design—and why architects should be at the table when those decisions are made.

This event is hosted by AIA Triangle and CITYBUILDER, and funded by the AIA NC ACTIVATE Grant.

Durham Yes! In My Triangle Meetup

Monday, October 5 | 6:00–7:00 PM
Queeny’s, 321 E Chapel Hill St, Durham

Join the Durham Yes! In My Triangle meetup and then walk over to the regular Durham City Council meeting to support local housing rezoning cases and hear what’s being said.

Bring a friend!

RSVP here

Raleigh Yes! In My Triangle Meetup

Tuesday, October 20 | 7:30–8:30 PM
Morgan Street Food Hall, 411 W Morgan St, Raleigh

Join the Raleigh Yes! In My Triangle chapter for a casual meetup to discuss local housing advocacy. It’s a chance to connect with others who care about making the Triangle a place where more people can afford to live, work, and flourish.

We hope to see you there!

NC Affordable Housing Conference

Thursday, October 22 – Friday, October 23
Raleigh Convention Center

The 2026 NC Affordable Housing Conference brings together affordable housing professionals for informative breakout sessions and an inspiring opening session.

Topics span tax credits, homeownership, housing counseling, nonprofits, and more. The conference is presented by the North Carolina Housing Finance Agency, the North Carolina Housing Coalition, and Centrant Community Capital.

RSVP for NC Afford. Housing Conference

Election Dates

Friday, October 9 — Voter Registration Deadline
The deadline to register to vote is 5 PM.

Learn how to Register

Thursday, October 15 — Early Voting Begins
In-person early voting begins, and same-day registration is available.

Vote Early in Person

Saturday, October 31 — Early Voting Ends
In-person early voting ends at 3 PM.

Upcoming Election Information

Registration is open for YIMBYtown 2026!

The nation’s pro-housing gathering is coming to Raleigh! Join advocates from throughout the Triangle, across the state, and around the country for sessions on all things housing and YIMBY-ism.

RSVP for YIMBYtown

For close watchers of Chapel Hill politics, July’s release of the town’s revised Land Use Municipal Ordinance draft (affectionately known as LUMO) was a momentous event. When Chapel Hill began working in earnest on these revisions in January 2021, a majority of the council had been endorsed by the anti-growth group CHALT. Three hotly contested elections later, only two of that council’s nine members remain in office, and the 40-year era (1983-2023) in which NIMBYism reigned in Chapel Hill is mostly over. The new council members are generally on board with the town’s Complete Communities strategy, which embraces walkable neighborhoods and a diversity of homes, from townhouses to apartments to ADUs.

This new LUMO is Chapel Hill’s opportunity to enact the many policies, plans, and promises council members have endorsed over the last three elections. It builds on previous council actions, including text amendments adopted in 2023, and those enacted earlier this year that make it easier to add small homes on already developed land in town. Planning staff have summarized the 700-page document by emphasizing the following five goals of the new LUMO:

• User friendliness: Whether it was intentional or not, the current LUMO could be seen as an anti-housing ordinance, as it includes rules that are so confusing and contradictory that it scares away local home builders, and forces large developers to navigate an unpredictable political process just to get permission to build housing. The new LUMO is designed to be easier to understand, with simpler language and graphics that make it clear what can be built where.

• Housing diversity, affordability, and supply: In recent years, the council has supported changes to make it easier to build smaller homes (ADUs, duplexes, etc.) and publicly subsidized affordable housing. The new LUMO doubles down on this approach, with rule changes that will make it possible to build three- and four-home buildings in some residential neighborhoods, along with oodles of subsidized affordable housing.

• Economic development and land use: For decades, planners have preached the mantra of “separation of uses,” meaning that housing and commercial development of any size were not allowed to mix. The new LUMO allows small retail (under 3,000 sq. feet) on major streets, even in neighborhoods.

• Built environment and public realm: Compared to other municipalities in the Triangle, Chapel Hill prioritizes investing public money into public transportation and affordable housing, while spending comparatively less on parks and greenways. Although the new LUMO is not a budgetary document, it will incentivize developers to build parks and greenways.

• Environment and resilience: Chapel Hill has among the most restrictive stream buffers and stormwater protections in the region. This will not change in the new LUMO, which also includes additional tree protections.

Overall, the new LUMO promises to deliver on the plans Chapel Hill has been talking about since 2022, when the council adopted its Complete Communities strategy that marries a commitment to adding more housing in town with investments in walkable neighborhoods (think greenways and grocery stores).

Will Council stick the landing?

Getting to a complete draft of the new LUMO is a major accomplishment. But, as Durham’s recent experience with their land use revisions shows, just having a draft is not enough. In the past few weeks, town council has spent hours closely examining the LUMO draft, asking staff to remove some sections and tweak others. While no official votes were taken, through straw polls and conversation, the council has indicated its concerns with the draft. For example, the original LUMO draft aligned Chapel Hill with the state residential code by permitting up to eight unrelated persons to live in a home. After receiving a flurry of emails opposing the change, the council decided to keep the current cap of four unrelated persons.

In other cases, the council pushed the LUMO in a pro-homes direction. The original LUMO draft allowed for more density along arterial and collector roads, with the theory that such roads could support more housing. After considerable debate, council approved a plan to allow more density along arterial roads, collector roads with sidewalks, and within a quarter-mile of greenway entrances and schools.

Last week, town council gave staff the go-ahead to begin the legislative process, which means that the LUMO could be adopted as soon as this November. The last date for the public to provide direct feedback on the LUMO document is September 30; after that point, commenters will be able to provide input via public comment at meetings, and through emails to the council. For those following along at home, here are the dates for the upcoming fall meetings on the new LUMO draft:

• Planning Commission legislative hearing: scheduled for October 6

• Council regular meetings: scheduled for October 21 and November 18

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If all goes well, the LUMO draft will pass more or less as written, allowing us to see if it achieves Chapel Hill’s goal of making it easier to build a small home, open a neighborhood restaurant, and add more publicly subsidized affordable housing in town. Unlike Durham’s currently paused effort to reform its zoning code, Chapel Hill’s LUMO draft is at no risk of violating state law, as it uses carrots (upzoning) not sticks (downzoning) to achieve shared goals. But as any land use wonk knows, it’s all too easy to derail a plan by inserting “poison pills” that effectively undo its stated intentions. If there are any poison pills in the current draft, then tell us! We’d love to know about them.

While the LUMO debate in Chapel Hill may be coming to an end, land use politics are forever. Let’s just hope that the council puts this particular episode to bed this fall by passing the LUMO and embracing a new era in Chapel Hill, one that prioritizes community and accessibility, not exclusivity.

Speak in Support of Chapel Hill’s New LUMO Draft

If you support Chapel Hill’s new LUMO draft, then let Council know by signing up to speak at either the Oct 6 Planning Commission legislative hearing, or the Oct 21 Town Council regular meeting. Instructions for signing up to speak can be found here.

Martin Johnson is a housing advocate based in Chapel Hill.

Gov. Stein Nominates New Opportunity Zones

Closer to Home:

Chapel Hill Begins Discussion of Town’s LUMO Rewrite

Tarheels on a tear: After passing the town’s first significant housing reforms in decades, Chapel Hill town council is gearing up to rewrite its 20-year-old Land Use Management Ordinance (LUMO). Council recently released a draft of the new LUMO, which will dictate zoning and development throughout the town for decades to come.

Coming coverage: CITYBUILDER will share more updates on Chapel Hill’s LUMO rewrite as the process advances. Stay turned for more!

What to Do Next:

Come to Book Club on Sep 30

On Wednesday, Sep 30, we’ll be discussing Stuck: How the Privileged and the Propertied Broke the Engine of American Prosperity, with our conversation led by Aaron Lubeck. Whether you’ve read the book, or just read our summary; all are welcome to join!

RSVP to Book Club

📘 Stuck by Yoni Appelbaum
📅 Wed Sep 30th 12:30pm - 1:30pm
📍 PRESS Coffee Crêpes Cocktails
400 Hillsborough St suite 108, Raleigh, NC 27603, USA

☕ CITYBUILDER will purchase your non-alcoholic beverage of choice.

👉 RSVP here

Come for the ideas. Stay for the people who want to build a Triangle where everyone has a place to live. We’ll see you there.

See You Next Week!

This new CITYBUILDER Brief series brings short and shareable housing news straight to your inbox. Thanks for being a subscriber!

Share

Mobility isn’t a foreign concept to me. Growing up, I attended 10 schools in 13 years, following my peripatetic academic mother to opportunities at Harvard, UNC, and Michigan. I’ve always believed that the constant change has both conditioned me to thrive in new situations and left me hunting for tools of rootedness for my family.

Yoni Appelbaum is a senior editor for The Atlantic, and author of the recently published book Stuck: How the Privileged and the Propertied Broke the Engine of American Opportunity. I will be leading a book club conversation about his thoughts in Raleigh next week. I’m a big fan of Appelbaum and this book, and below I review it while also identifying two contrarian views of his that stood out to me.

First, Appelbaum spends ample time critiquing Jane Jacobs with a relatively common critique that, while she is a patron saint of urbanism, she also had a troubling streak of Nimbyism that is worth understanding and unpacking. I’m on record as a committed fan of Jacobs’ work and have published the Jacobs column at Southern Urbanism since its founding. While I believe she is the origin of the New Urbanism and the first major objector to authoritarian American planning, I agree with Appelbaum that some of her strategies in defending Greenwich Village are also the germ seed of American Nimbyism. More on that below.

Secondly, Appelbaum flips the idea that rootedness leads to openness. This was almost shocking to read, as I, like most of you, believe that deep roots in a community (often created by the longevity of its residents) create bonds that strengthen relationships and make it more welcoming to outsiders. Appelbaum uses storytelling to show that this last point is not true and, in fact, the opposite may be true: nomadic people tend to be more welcoming and open, while people who stay and don’t move tend to be more closed, pessimistic, xenophobic, and resistant to others.

In this light, he argues that Americans’ mobility used to be unrivaled in the world, and this ability to perpetually up and move was the engine that drove our great experiment.

The idea that people should be able to choose their own communities—instead of being stuck where they are born—is a distinctly American innovation. It is the foundation for the country’s prosperity and democracy, and it just may be America’s most profound contribution to the world.

More importantly, Appelbaum points out that our mobility has radically declined over the last half century, and this is concerning. He links mobility to the American Dream, and mobility’s decline is also seeing correlating declines in happiness, civic participation, entrepreneurship, and cultural cohesion. And he rightly identifies progressive politics (he himself is often defined as “center-left”) as the problem, not because it is wrong, per se, as much as it is hypocritical:

The exclusion that has left so many Americans feeling trapped and hopeless traces back, instead, to the self-serving actions of a privileged group who say that inclusion, diversity, and social equality are among their highest values.

The American virtue of choice has been legislated out of commission. Appelbaum’s book concludes this harsh fact: “Opposition to mobility appears concentrated in progressive jurisdictions.”

How damning.

HOUSES AS TOOLS, NOT INVESTMENTS

Today, most Americans treat their primary home as an investment vehicle and, secondarily, as a place to raise their family. This has only been the case recently, as a consequence of inflationary monetary policy (among other issues), which encourages investment in appreciating assets relative to the declining value of cash. If homes were depreciating assets, which they had been for centuries, most of the shenanigans around Nimbyism would never arise. Appelbaum describes what this would look like by using the analogy of how we treat our iPhones:

Americans once tended to look at houses the way Americans today look at cars or iPhones. One decade’s prohibitive luxury was the next affordable convenience, and the third’s absolute necessity. A home was less a long-term investment—most people leased—than a consumer good to be enjoyed until the next model came within reach.

Also, since the 1960s, lawyers, politicians, and neighborhood advocates have specialized in bureaucratic lawfare that hijacks planning processes to prevent competition, keep outsiders out, and maximize personal asset value and appreciation rates for their own benefit. Often presented under a banner of “community engagement”, implying the wider community supports the behavior that might not exist, Appelbaum argues that this lawfare functions as the antithesis of equity, largely to rig the system for the elites at the expense of the remainder: “Professionals leverage their training and expertise to mount a challenge to the planning process, a form of bureaucratic warfare unavailable to the great majority of Americans.”

Appelbaum takes the gloves off on Jacobs here—where most urbanists treat her (and her writing) as a sacred cow, he accuses her of starting the nationwide process of exclusionary neighborhood planning (“neighborhoodism”) which dominates land use conversations to this day. I’ve personally witnessed planners go into neighborhoods and tell them “this is your neighborhood” and “you get to decide what goes here.” In a world of private property and public realm, these assertions are neither accurate nor helpful, and I’ve seen it not end well, but it doesn’t stop them from selling the story:

To stave off change, Jacobs and her allies asserted a proprietary right to control their neighborhood. It belonged, they argued, to those who were already there, and it should be up to them to decide who would get to join them. Over the decades that followed, the idea would take hold throughout the United States; a nation that had grown diverse and prosperous by allowing people to choose their communities would instead empower communities to choose their people.

While I might give Jacobs a small pass for staving off assaults from government planners rather than organic incremental development (it was the wrecking ball of a drunk-on-power Robert Moses she was up against), and that Nimbys citing Jane Jacobs often misread her and do so in bad faith, I do agree with Appelbaum that the modern neighborhood Nimby “Culture of No” started here. He argues, “In practice, the new processes turned out to be profoundly anti-democratic, allowing affluent communities to exclude new residents.” These practices were, and remain, profoundly unjust.

WE ARE MOBILITY, MOBILITY IS US

I spend a lot of time thinking about rootedness, a key component of placemaking and new urbanism. Conventional wisdom says that “moving” (or, in the negative, “displacement”) makes us worse, but Appelbaum flips this to suggest that “rootedness” is also synonymous with “being stuck”. It’s not always positive or voluntary. And he points out that this enthusiasm and optimism that is relatively unique to being an American is tied to our ability to move, try new things, experiment, and execute:

The key to vibrant communities, it turns out, is the exercise of choice. Left to their own devices, most people will stick to ingrained habits, to familiar circles of friends, to accustomed places. When people move from one community to another, though, they leave behind their old job, connections, and identity and seek out new ones. They force themselves to go meet their neighbors or to show up at a new church on Sunday despite the awkwardness. American individualism didn’t mean that people were disconnected from each other; it meant that they constructed their own individual identity by actively choosing the communities to which they would belong.

In other words, mobility and abundance thinking correlate. In Europe, immobile lifestyles “had taught them that admitting new members left a community with less to go around, so they treated outsiders with suspicion and hostility.” In America the polar opposite was true: “People who have recently changed residence report experiencing more supportive relationships and feeling more optimistic, having a greater sense of purpose, and increased self-respect. Those who want to move and cannot, by contrast, become more cynical and less satisfied with their lives.”

ZONING MAKES US IMMOBILE, POORER, and LESS HAPPY

Anybody who reads my writing knows I’m a persistent critic of both American zoning and the American planning institutions that create and enforce its standards. It’s because I find both un-American. If you’re skeptical of that thesis, I encourage you to read The Color of Law, which will disabuse you of any doubt.

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Like Richard Rothstein’s book, Appelbaum goes to the historical archives to prove that not only is zoning exclusionary (and often racist) today, but that it was always exclusionary and racist and founded to be precisely exclusionary and racist:

Zoning may have been adopted by well-meaning urban planners, but the process began in 1885 in Modesto, in California, where bigoted local officials were looking for a tool to push out Chinese residents; the federal courts would not allow them to segregate their city by race. They hit on a workaround: confining laundries—whose proprietors were overwhelmingly Chinese and generally lived in their shops—to the city’s Chinatown. Over the ensuing decades, other cities embraced this approach, discovering that segregating land by its uses and the size of the buildings it could hold was a potent means of segregating populations by race, ethnicity, and income.

Worse, a century on, legacy institutions have captured zoning as a tool to prevent newness, change, innovation, immigration, and growth.

Whatever its theoretical aspirations, in practice, progressivism has produced a potent strain of Nimbyism, a defense of communities in their current form against those who might wish to join them. Mobility is what made this country prosperous and pluralistic, diverse and dynamic. Now progressives are destroying the very force that produced the values they claim to cherish.

Discouraging mobility is the Achilles’ Heel of Progressivism in two ways. First, Nimbyism is proving to be an electoral loser, year after year. As the Democratic Party continues to flirt with the ideology, old-school party members lose interest, and moderates drift. Second, Nimbyism is proving to be electoral suicide at the national scale, as Americans are leaving progressive strongholds for red states, which tend to be more welcoming and supportive of traditional mobile lifestyles.

Progressives need to change this quickly, before national elections become completely unwinnable for a generation. To me, the path to national relevancy goes through housing. It’s getting Americans moving again. It’s letting families flourish and live in the most productive metros in the land. It’s celebrating that vibrancy, that optimism, the thrill of packing up and moving cross-country, the euphoria that comes with trying to start a business, a family, a civic institution. I can’t remember the last time the party exuded that kind of vibe.

And it’s because we’re stuck.

Far fewer Americans move every year than at any time in history. And, unlike a century ago, the ones moving are the ones who don’t need to. Appelbaum points out that “it was the working class who traditionally had the most to gain from moving, whereas today the gains are largely available only to the affluent.”

He concludes with three solutions—consistency, tolerance, and abundance—all lacking from today’s policy.

Solving crises often requires great sacrifice, but the simplest solution to this one promises to leave everyone better off. All you have to do is make room for some new neighbors—maybe even new friends—to join you, by allowing other people to build new housing on their property.

The road forward may not be easy, but since it mostly requires us to return to the way we traditionally did things, it need not be complex.

Let’s all commit to getting our communities, and our fellow men, unstuck.

Aaron Lubeck leads a book club conversation at 12:30pm on Wednesday, September 30th at Press Coffee + Crepes in Raleigh. The event is open to CITYBUILDER subscribers. Subscribe here. RSVP to the event here.

Aaron Lubeck is a designer, builder + developer with The Rocket Shop in Durham. He is the author of Green Restorations: Sustainable Building and Historic Homes, and a former adjunct at Duke University’s Nicholas School, where he lectured on sustainable home building. In 2012, Aaron developed Durham’s first net-zero-energy home, an infill project designed to fit seamlessly in its historic neighborhood.

Aaron’s more recent work focuses on zoning changes to facilitate the reconstruction of affordable housing markets, including local efforts to create Missing Middle codes. He recently served as faculty with Incremental Development Alliance in West Atlanta, training fledgling developers, and is host of The Townbuilder’s Podcast, a curated conversation with top new urbanist developers. He is the founder of Southern Urbanism, a non-profit dedicated to better city-building in the South. Follow him at @aaron_lubeck

LINKS

How Progressives Froze the American Dream (The Atlantic, Feb 2025). Most quotes in this essay come from this piece.

Stuck: How the Privileged and the Propertied Broke the Engine of American Opportunity

The Property Tax Revolt Could Make Housing More Expensive

Closer to Home:

Raleigh Legalizes Minor and Exempt Subdivisions Unanimously

What to Do Next:

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The context

Amberwood at Lochmere is a 340-unit apartment community in Cary. It is not subsidized or income restricted. Instead, it is naturally occurring affordable housing, an older development whose rents remain below much of the surrounding market. At the time of the hearing, Amberwood was about 96% occupied, with rents affordable to households earning around 52% of the area median income.

But Amberwood’s owner put the property up for sale.

That created a familiar risk. A private buyer could purchase the apartments, renovate them, and raise rents closer to market rates. The buildings would remain, but hundreds of relatively affordable homes could disappear as current residents face higher rents.

The Raleigh Housing Authority offered another path. RHA proposed purchasing Amberwood and preserving all 340 apartments as affordable housing for at least 30 years.

In other words, the proposal was not about introducing affordable housing into Lochmere. It was about preventing existing affordable housing from disappearing.

Because RHA is based outside Cary, it needed authorization from the Cary Town Council to operate there. The July 23 public hearing was about granting that authority.

There were legitimate questions to ask about the proposal, including its rushed timeline, tax treatment, governance, and what it means for a Raleigh entity to operate property in Cary.

But much of the public opposition went somewhere else entirely.

It became a conversation about the kinds of people some residents imagined affordable housing would bring into their neighborhood.

“Street crime the likes of which Cary cannot comprehend.”

Morgan warned Council about violent crime she associated with Raleigh Housing Authority properties, invoking shootings, rape, homicide, and sexual assault before telling Cary residents that such crime could eventually arrive at their doorsteps.

Nothing about the proposal would suddenly introduce affordable housing to this neighborhood. Amberwood was already affordable, already almost fully occupied, and already home to hundreds of Cary households.

The people being discussed as a future threat were not an abstract population waiting to descend on Lochmere. Lower income people already live there.

“They shouldn’t have to be afraid to walk down the street because we’re going to put in subsidized housing in our backyard.”

Mancino said neighbors should not have to fear walking down their own street because of subsidized housing. Drawing on her experience living near Section 8 housing in Minnesota, she described it as frightening, then warned of drugs, child abuse, and neglect.

Housing assistance is not a character trait.

It does not tell us whether someone is a good neighbor, whether they care for their children, whether they use drugs, or whether they commit crimes. Treating a person’s income or need for assistance as a proxy for any of those things is exactly the kind of stigma that makes building and preserving affordable housing so difficult.

“Is Stormie here?”

One name called during the hearing stood out: Stormie Forte.

Forte is an at-large member of the Raleigh City Council. Her name appeared among the registered speakers, but when she was called, no one came forward. She did not speak.

We do not know from the meeting why Forte registered, what she intended to say, or why she was absent when called. But the presence of a sitting Raleigh councilmember on the speaker list for a Cary hearing involving the Raleigh Housing Authority is noteworthy.

“Please do not put this in my neighborhood.”

Atkins grew up in Lochmere and still lives with his parents about half a mile from Amberwood. He told Council that affordable housing could turn Lochmere into a crime-driven neighborhood. He asked councilmembers whether they would put affordable housing in their own neighborhoods, then pleaded with them not to put it in his.

That sentence gives this piece its title because it distills so much of what went wrong that night.

Again, no one was proposing to put affordable housing into Lochmere. It was already there.

Amberwood’s existing residents were already neighbors. The question was whether their homes would remain affordable after the property changed hands.

That distinction matters. When preserving affordable housing is described as bringing undesirable people into a community, the objection is no longer simply about a government program or a particular transaction. It becomes a statement about who is imagined to belong there.

But the fear and hostility toward affordable housing were not the only reactions in the room.

Some saw affordable housing as something to fear. Others saw it as a source of stability, an opportunity, and something worth preserving.

“It saved our life.”

Carla Liberatore offered a very different story.

Decades ago, she and her husband lost their jobs while raising two small children. They moved into affordable housing in Durham. She told Council that the housing helped save both her family and her marriage.

Liberatore later became a successful financial adviser.

Today, she lives in Lochmere.

Her story should make the danger of these stereotypes obvious.

People need affordable housing for all kinds of reasons. They lose jobs. Their rent rises faster than their wages. They raise children on modest incomes. They teach our kids, care for our families, serve our food, maintain our communities, and sometimes simply hit a difficult stretch in life.

Affordable housing can give people the stability they need to recover.

And sometimes the person imagined as a threat to an affluent neighborhood grows up to live in that very neighborhood.

“We do have an opportunity to preserve a community.”

Councilmember Brittany Richards brought the discussion back to what was actually at stake.

Amberwood was going to be sold either way. RHA offered a path that could let existing residents stay in their homes while preserving hundreds of relatively affordable apartments.

Richards described those residents as teachers, firefighters, police officers, service workers, and young professionals. In other words, people who are already part of Cary.

What the proposal offered was not a way to bring affordable housing into Lochmere. It was a chance to preserve the affordable housing and community already there.

That is what makes so much of the opposition difficult to ignore. Lower income neighbors were repeatedly discussed as if they were a threat waiting to arrive, when they were already part of the neighborhood.

Amberwood was already part of Cary. Its residents were already part of Cary. Preserving affordable housing meant giving them a better chance to remain there.

A community should not become less welcoming simply because the people who already belong to it need help affording their homes.