The Property Tax Revolt Could Make Housing More Expensive

Closer to Home:

Raleigh Legalizes Minor and Exempt Subdivisions Unanimously

What to Do Next:

Invite a Student to Our Policy Talk on Sep 22!

CITYBUILDERs in training: Our virtual policy talk on Tuesday, Sep 22nd will explore more of the Triangle’s incredible programs that teach how to build better cities. If you know a high school or college student who’s interested in architecture, engineering, planning, or design, then please share this opportunity with them.

🕛 Tuesday, September 22nd at 12pm (virtual on Google Meet)

RSVP for Policy Talk

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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.

Asheville’s housing reforms make national news

Closer to Home:

Durham passes resolution supporting tenants unions

What to Do Next:

Sign up to speak in support of exempt plats by 3pm today

Sign up by 3pm on Friday, Sep 11th to speak at Raleigh’s public hearing on Tuesday afternoon, where council will consider an ordinance that would legalize exempt plats.

Signup to speak

Exempt plat ordinance: Raleigh City staff has prepared a draft ordinance (TC-4-26) to update the City’s subdivision regulations and legalize exempt plats. Read that draft ordinance here!

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California Could Allow Two ADUs Per Lot Statewide

Closer to Home:

Raleigh City Council Unanimously Approves Heritage Park Redevelopment

What to Do Next:

Come Learn How to Speak at City Council Sep 10th

Join CITYBUILDER and Yes! In My Triangle on Sep 10th for this free training to learn how to speak at City Council and public meetings. We’ll be joined by local leaders and advocates, as well the Duke University Improv team!

🕰️ Thursday September 10th • 6:30pm - 8:00pm
📍 Residence Inn by Marriott Durham McPherson • 1108 W Main St, Durham

In this this training we will:

• Learn how to sign up to speak at meetings

• Practice composing and delivering messages with impact

• Gain public speaking confidence through improv games

This training is FREE and open to the public, but spots are limited!

RSVP for How to Speak at City Council

See You Next Week!

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

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Hello! My name is Andy Lowe. I’m a Durham resident, Chapter lead for the Raleigh-Durham New Liberals, and regular character at Durham City Hall. I’m also a devout YIMBY, pro-housing citizen, and lover of all things missing middle. I’m excited to help lead the upcoming CITYBUILDER training on how to speak in support of housing at city council meetings!

Here’s my advice for how YOU can get started speaking up, as well as how I began my own pro-housing advocacy.

How I got started

I moved to Durham in 2021 because my employer told me to. At the time, I didn’t realize just how lucky I had gotten! Durham is awesome, and my now-wife and I quickly fell in love with the Bull City! In June 2025, I decided that I wanted to be involved in local politics, and so I attended my first Durham City Council meeting.

At first I just observed. YouTube makes most council meetings convenient to watch, but it’s different being in the room, where you can tell who’s reacting to what. How council members regard each other. Who talks to who during a recess. My first tip is always to go in person. It may seem redundant in the age of livestreaming, but in reality it sets you apart when you choose to speak.

At my second meeting, a rezoning case came up that was bread and butter upzoning. There happened to be limited opposition. The moment I stated my proponent position, most of the council perked out of half a slumber to listen. Proponents of rezoning cases (other than the applicant) were basically unheard of in Durham.

Since then, I’ve attended every council meeting I can, and recapped them on my Substack. I regularly speak in favor of housing. Generally, this consists of picking a worthy rezoning case, signing up, and speaking for 2-3 minutes.

Speaking at City Council

So… how can YOU also speak at your own city council meetings?

First, attend the September 10th training hosted by myself, CITYBUILDER, and YIMBY Triangle!

If you can’t quite make that, my first recommendation to anyone starting this journey is to attend and watch a few council meetings prior to ever approaching the podium. Listen, learn who is influential, understand how the flow of meetings work. There’s nothing worse than hearing your name, getting up to the podium, and not knowing how to work the microphone.

After that, pick a low-risk entry point. My first rezoning case was a slam dunk that had little opposition. This is ideal, since you’ll have the lowest possible pressure for your first time at the podium. In your speech, stick to good fundamental YIMBY talking points. Less is more, don’t go into every weed possible. Pick a good rhetorical point and make it well. If you don’t use all the time given, that’s ok. It is more important to state what you want well, than it is to speak a lot. I personally like to prepare bullet points to speak off of. That way, I have a short list of beats or themes I want to hit in the beginning, middle, and end of a talk.

Once you know what to do with the microphone and how the meetings run. Pick a case, prepare, and go speak regardless of the opposition. Are there 40 people lined up to oppose? That just makes your single pro position more notable. Myself, YIMBY Triangle, and CITYBUILDER are full of resources to help you prep.

Always, and I mean always, be polite. Say thank you for the council’s time. Be gracious with those you disagree with on and off the dais. It is tempting to fight with and bicker with NIMBYs in the crowd. But remember, your goal isn’t to influence them, it’s to represent your position well to the elected body. Being a voice of reason and calmness goes a long way.

And finally, be consistent! It sounds simple, but don’t just show up once every couple months. Elected officials notice who is there consistently. If you’re a regular, and every time you speak is productive and thoughtful, you will start to win hearts and minds. The YIMBY movement began as a dedicated local government advocacy group, and it is still most effective (in my humble opinion) as a movement focused on local government.

Anyone with the will and knowledge can make a difference at their local city council. I hope that this advice helps you take action, become more involved, advocate for pro-housing positions, and make a positive difference in your community.

RSVP for How to Speak at City Council

🕰️ Thursday September 10th • 6:30pm - 8:00pm
📍 Residence Inn by Marriott Durham McPherson • 1108 W Main St, Durham

Join CITYBUILDER and Yes! In My Triangle for this free training to learn how to speak at City Council and public meetings. We’ll be joined by local leaders and advocates, as well the Duke University Improv team!

In this this training we will:

• Learn how to sign up to speak at meetings

• Practice composing and delivering messages with impact

• Gain public speaking confidence through improv games

This training is FREE and open to the public, but spots are limited!

RSVP for How to Speak at City Council

Andy Lowe is a Durham resident who is passionate about local politics and land use. To keep up with him and the Durham City Council, check out his Substack. He serves as chapter lead for the RDU New Liberals.

A very wet July (more rain in one month than the entire first half of the year!) thankfully rescued Triangle-area drinking water reservoirs just in time for National Water Quality Month. However, future droughts and population growth may have less of an impact on Triangle-area water resources thanks to new water recycling efforts that are already underway.

Durham, Orange, and Chatham counties are already collaborating to build a Jordan Lake Water Supply Program that will pump water upstream from Jordan Lake to a new filtration plant in Durham. Currently, Durham and Orange counties, as well as Raleigh, draw almost all of their water from reservoirs whose headwaters are northwest of the Triangle’s three cities. Unfortunately, the recent drought has been most severe in exactly that area, leading to water restrictions across much of the Triangle.

Read more

Happy September, CITYBUILDERs!

This month, we have several opportunities to learn, connect, and get involved in shaping the future of our Triangle!

Thanks to everyone who came out to CITYBUILDER events over the summer. We were thrilled to see so many of you in Raleigh last week as we wrapped up our Summer Film Tour. Thanks to everyone who came out to learn more about housing and urbanism! And thanks to Maywood Hall at Trophy Brewing for hosting us in your space.

First up, we’re partnering with Yes! In My Triangle for How to Speak at City Council on September 10th in Durham. Whether you’ve never spoken at a public meeting before or you’re looking to sharpen your advocacy skills, this free training will give you the tools and confidence to make your voice heard. We’ll learn how to navigate public meetings, practice delivering messages with impact, and even have some fun with the Duke Improv team! We hope you’ll join us, and bring a friend who wants to get more involved locally. Please RSVP.

RSVP for How to Speak at City Council

We’re also continuing our special two-part series on the local programs that are training the Triangle’s future city builders. For our September Policy Talk, we’ll hear from Adam Walters of NC State’s Pappas Real Estate Development Program about the education and work happening right here in the Triangle to prepare the next generation of planners, designers, developers, and advocates. If you know a high school or college student who is interested in cities, architecture, planning, development, or public service, please share this free conversation with them!

RSVP for Policy Talk

And finally, CITYBUILDER Book Club is back! On September 30th, we’ll gather in Raleigh to discuss Yoni Appelbaum’s Stuck: How the Privileged and the Propertied Broke the Engine of American Opportunity. We’re excited to welcome Aaron Lubeck of Southern Urbanism to lead the conversation. As always, this is a chance to dig into a big idea, hear different perspectives, and spend some time with fellow city builders.

RSVP for Book Club

There are also a ton of great events happening around the Triangle with our friends and fellow housing advocates, including the Raleigh Strong Towns and Yes! In My Triangle meetups, and Raleigh Rising’s Who Can’t Afford Raleigh? town hall.

And we’re just getting started! In October, we’re excited to kick-off a month of housing programming in coordination with the North Carolina Housing Coalition. If you haven’t already, make sure you’re registered for the NC Affordable Housing Conference 2026 on October 22 & 23. Then, stay plugged in for housing events throughout the Triangle leading up to the YIMBYtown conference.

Building better cities takes more than policies and plans, it takes people like you, who are willing to show up, speak up, and build together. We hope you’ll find a way to join us this month and all autumn long.

See you this fall!

Charlotte Chapman
Program & Operations Manager, CITYBUILDER

EVENTS WITH CITYBUILDER

How to Speak at City Council Training Session

Thursday September 10th • 6:30pm - 8:00pm
Residence Inn by Marriott Durham McPherson • 1108 W Main St, Durham

Join CITYBUILDER and Yes! In My Triangle for this free training to learn how to speak at City Council and public meetings. We’ll be joined by local leaders and advocates, as well the Duke University Improv team!

In this this training we will:

• Learn how to sign up to speak at meetings

• Practice composing and delivering messages with impact

• Gain confidence through improv games

This training is FREE and open to the public, but registration is limited.

RSVP for How to Speak at City Council

CITYBUILDER Policy Talk: How to Build a City Part II with Adam Walters

Tuesday September 22nd • 12:00pm - 1:00pm
Virtual • RSVP at the Link

This fall, we’re launching a special two-part online series highlighting the incredible city-building programs at our local Universities. The Triangle is home to some of the world’s top schools, and right here in our backyard, students are preparing to become the planners, architects, engineers, public servants, developers, designers, and advocates who will shape the future of our communities.

For our second talk, we’re excited to welcome Adam Walters PLA, ASLA, ISA, Associate Director of the NC State Pappas Real Estate Development Program, and Adjunct Assistant Professor of the Practice in Forestry and Environmental Resources. Adam’s work endeavors to create healthy, happy communities through better design & planning.

Please share this free learning opportunity with high school seniors, college students, or anyone curious about a career building better places. These conversations will introduce us to the programs, faculty, and opportunities that can help turn a passion for cities into a meaningful career.

CITYBUILDER Book Club: Stuck with Aaron Lubeck

Wednesday September 30th • 12:00pm - 1:00pm
PRESS Coffee Crêpes Cocktails • 400 Hillsborough St, Suite 108, Raleigh

Join us for community and conversation. CITYBUILDER will purchase your non-alcoholic beverage of choice.

Our discussion of Stuck: How the Privileged and the Propertied Broke the Engine of American Opportunity by Yoni Appelbaum will be led by Aaron Lubeck of Durham, NC.

Aaron is a designer & builder with a career in historic preservation, green building, new urbanism, and affordability. Aaron is the founder of Southern Urbanism.

EVENTS WITH FRIENDS

Raleigh Strong Towns Monthly Meetup

Tue Sep 15th 6:30pm - 7:30pm

📍 Weaver Street Market (Upstairs Mezzanine), 404 W Hargett St, Raleigh, NC 27603, USA

Join local neighbors, advocates, and city builders for the monthly Raleigh Strong Towns meetup! This casual gathering is a great place to talk about building stronger, more resilient communities; from housing choices and safe streets to local fiscal responsibility.

All are welcome to come listen, share ideas, and connect with others working toward a stronger Raleigh. This event is hosted by Strong Town Raleigh.

RSVP for Raleigh Strong Towns

Raleigh Rising - Who Can’t Afford Raleigh? Town Hall Event

Thu Sep 17th 5:00pm - 7:00pm

📍 John Chavis Memorial Park, 505 Martin Luther King Jr Blvd, Raleigh, NC 27601, USA

Wake County is growing faster than almost anywhere in America, but too many of the people who make this community work are being priced out of it. Raleigh Rising is bringing real data, real stories, and real partnerships to the housing conversation, and we want you at the table.

RSVP for Raleigh Rising Town Hall

BEYOND SEPTEMBER

From October 22 to November 22 we’re connecting with housing advocates to create a month of housing, kicking off the with North Carolina Affordable Housing conference on October 22, and ending with YIMBYtown November 17 through 19, and finally the 100th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision on Village of Euclid v. Ambler Realty Co on November 22.

RSVP for NC Afford. Housing Conference

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

Asheville ends single-family exclusionary zoning

Closer to Home:

Raleigh Planning unanimously recommends legalizing exempt plats

What to Do Next:

Sign up by 3pm to support Heritage Park redevelopment

On Tuesday, Sep 1 at 7pm, Raleigh City Council will hear Raleigh Housing Authority’s request to rezone from RX-3 to DX-12 with conditions to provide additional height and flexibility for future phases of the Heritage Park redevelopment. Phase 1 is already beginning construction. Heritage Park is a multi-phase redevelopment expected to add substantially more housing. More zoning capacity gives RHA flexibility to fit more homes into future phases.

The rezoning includes a commitment for at least 122 homes affordable at or below 30% AMI for at least 30 years.

The site is near the planned Western Boulevard BRT corridor, making this an especially good place to allow more housing.

Affordable housing needs YIMBY supporters too.

We recently saw overwhelming organized opposition help stop an RHA affordable housing proposal in Cary. We can’t assume affordable housing will be approved just because the need is obvious.

Sign up here to speak by 3:00 p.m. Friday.
If you can’t speak, please send an email to City Council in support this weekend, or come out in green Tuesday night and help show Council that Raleigh residents support more housing, and more affordable housing!

See You Next Week!

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

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The number of kids in cities is falling

Kids on the decline: According to Wall Street Journal reporters Rachel Louise Ensign and Paul Overberg, “the number of children under 18 living in big U.S. cities is down 6% in the past decade… compared with a 1% decline nationwide. The drop is especially stark among families with little kids: The number of children under 5 in big cities fell 15%, compared with a drop of 7% nationwide. Even cities that are gaining population are losing children.”

Housing for families: This is a clarion call: we need cheaper multifamily housing now. Family-oriented units (quadplexes, cottage courts, small apartment buildings) must be allowed in order for families with children to thrive in urban environments.

NC pulls ahead: By eliminating parking minimums across nearly the entire state, North Carolina has encouraged the walkable, family-friendly housing that every community needs. When housing developers don’t have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to build a parking lot in an urban or suburban center, they pass those savings on to families in the form of lower rents and home prices.

Closer to Home:

Gov Stein Signs Regulatory Reform in Law

What happened: On August 11th, Gov. Stein signed the Regulatory Reform Act of 2026 (SB 445) into law. This bill contains a few housing policy changes, namely that cities with over 50,000 residents must allow ADUs in residential areas (cities can still regulate size and design). We’ll discuss the bill’s other changes in detail in a later piece.

Bipartisan support: State Rep Jeff Zenger (R-Forsyth) said that the bill “removes burdensome regulations, protects property rights, expands affordable housing, and supports businesses, workers, and military families.” With bipartisan support in the General Assembly, this legislative win shows that expanding housing is a winning issue in NC.

What to Do Next:

Comment in Raleigh’s Engagement Portal to Support Exempt Plats

New Raleigh ordinance: Raleigh City staff has prepared a draft ordinance (TC-4-26) to update the City’s subdivision regulations and legalize exempt plats. Read that draft ordinance here!

Comment by Aug 25: Raleigh Planning Commission will be discussing this at their regular meeting Tuesday, 25 August at 9:00am.

This is exactly the moment when City Staff and Planning Commission need to hear your voice. Whether you personally would benefit from this ordinance passing, or you know a project that would. Even if you just want more mid-sized housing and recognize that this ordinance would enable that… let them know!

Submit a comment!

See You Next Week!

This is the CITYBUILDER Brief series brings short and shareable housing news straight to your inbox. Every week, the brief is available to our paid subscribers!

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Over the past three months, CITYBUILDER has been hosting our Summer Film Tour across the Triangle. Among the six films we’re screening, one stands out for revealing the origins of a residential development movement that has spread across the country. In the Pocket Neighborhoods film, architect Ross Chapin walks us through two Seattle area neighborhoods built at human scale, with small clusters of homes gathered around a shared garden. This style of residential living is a documented, replicated model, and the story behind it starts with eight small cottages in a town of eleven hundred people.

The project that started it all

In 1996, Chapin partnered with developer Jim Soules to build the Third Street Cottages in Langley, on Whidbey Island north of Seattle. The site was zoned for four large single family houses. Instead, working under Langley’s new Cottage Housing Development ordinance, which allowed double the underlying density if homes were kept under 975 square feet, Chapin and Soules built eight cottages, ranging from 650 to 1,600 square feet, arranged around a shared garden with a commons building and a tool shed.

The project sold out almost immediately. The local paper covered it, and the story was picked up by the national press, eventually appearing in more than two hundred newspapers, magazines, and television programs. Planners, developers, and architects from around the country started calling, asking the same three questions: what zoning made this possible, who’s actually living here, and how could this fit into our town.

Chapin and Soules answered by building more of these developments. Danielson Grove in Kirkland. Greenwood Avenue Cottages in Shoreline. Conover Commons in Redmond. Each one tested the model in a different setting: urban, suburban, larger homes, smaller homes. No matter what, every home sold. Chapin went on to write the book that gave this burgeoning movement its name, Pocket Neighborhoods: Creating Small Scale Community in a Large Scale World. The term has since become shorthand for a housing type that keeps reappearing because it keeps working.

Pocket neighborhoods changed the game

It would be easy to file this under “small houses are cute” and move on. That misses the point. Chapin’s design principles are specific, and they are the reason these communities function the way they do.

The five layers of threshold

Chapin designs a graduated sequence of space between the shared courtyard and each front door: a border of plantings at the sidewalk, a low fence, a private front yard, a covered porch frame with a low railing and flower boxes, and the porch itself. All of it happens within about eighteen feet. The effect is that residents can see into the common space from home, while people in the common space cannot see into the house. That’s the whole trick of privacy and community coexisting on a small lot.

A scale of sociability

Chapin’s own description is that a pocket neighborhood is small enough that a six year old can wander past the garden gate and the parents are comfortable with it. This isn’t simply a design metaphor; it’s a literal test of whether the shared space is legible and safe enough for people to actually use it, which is the difference between a courtyard that gets photographed and a courtyard that gets lived in.

Cottages, not just smaller houses

These are one and a half story cottages, not two story houses shrunk down. Chapin is explicit that the difference matters for how the building reads to its neighbors, not just how it functions inside.

Individuality inside a shared pattern

At Third Street Cottages, every cottage got a different exterior color (twenty four colors total) and homeowners named their own homes. Small moves, but that’s what turns a set of identical units into a neighborhood with an identity.

Underneath all of it sits a demographic argument that Chapin makes plainly. Almost 30% of American households are single-person households, and 35% percent are two-person households. A large lot with a large house does not fit a large share of the market anymore, in cost, in space, or in upkeep. Pocket neighborhoods are Chapin’s answer to a household pattern that the standard subdivision was never built for.

Join our film tour and discuss!

Third Street Cottages is not a grand statement about density in the abstract. It is a case study about a specific ordinance in a town of eleven hundred people that made a specific project legal, and a market that showed up for it immediately. That’s the same conversation we’re having in the Triangle right now around missing middle housing and zoning reform. This film sits comfortably alongside the LA’s Forbidden City spotlight, which traces how the duplexes and bungalow courts Angelenos love became illegal to build, one setback requirement at a time. Chapin’s cottages are the other half of that story: proof that when the code allows it, people will build the small scale, community oriented housing that the market has been asking for all along.

We had a blast talking about all of this in Durham and Cary, but it doesn’t stop there. Our Summer Film Tour continues closes out on August 26 at Trophy Brewing in Raleigh, and we want to see you there. Tickets are ten dollars.

Get your tickets

Brought to you by our Gold Sponsor

Sponsorship opportunities

We are grateful to Rocket Shop Design, our Gold level sponsor for the Summer Film Tour, for helping make screenings like this one possible across all three cities.

All sponsorship levels are currently open for Raleigh:

Presenting, $3,000. Logo on the website event page, eblasts, event Substack articles, social media, attendee handouts, and recognition during welcome remarks. Five complimentary tickets to each showing.

Gold, $2,000. Logo on the website event page, eblasts, event Substack articles, social media, attendee handouts, and recognition during welcome remarks. Three complimentary tickets to each showing.

Silver, $1,000. Logo on the website event page, eblasts, social media, and attendee handouts. Two complimentary tickets.

Bronze, $500. Logo on the website event page, eblasts, and attendee handouts.

Sponsorship is paid as a donation through our 501(c)(4), CityBuilder NC. For organizations that would like their contribution to be tax deductible and publicly recognized, we also accept donations through our 501(c)(3) partner, Southern Urbanism. Reach out and we will work with whatever structure fits your organization best.

Hannah Moell is a Raleigh-based visual artist and housing advocate. As Development & Partnerships Director at CITYBUILDER. She leads sponsorship, fundraising, and partnerships, with a current focus on YIMBYtown 2026 at the Raleigh Convention Center.

Her art practice spans encaustic fractals, large-scale watercolor florals, and natural pigment on linen, all rooted in neuroaesthetics — the science of how pattern and the natural world trigger beauty and awe. She holds a BFA from East Carolina University and teaches through Durham Art Guild and the Makery.

Whether building coalitions or paintings, she’s drawn to systems that hold meaning and work that moves people.

The rules governing where we build and how we live were never just about land use. Although zoning is often presented today as a neutral planning tool, history tells us a different story.

While some version of zoning and planning has existed for centuries, modern American zoning was created to exclude. In the U.S, modern zoning is not the descendent of a virtuous ideal that was gradually degraded by bad actors. Rather, since its inception, the purpose of American zoning has been to exclude specific demographics from certain neighborhoods. By outlawing the types of businesses run by immigrants or people of color, and by prohibiting the kinds of housing that low-income families could afford, modern zoning was fundamentally designed to restrict the presence of poor people and people of color.

This is not a radical claim. The origins of zoning are well understood by historians, legal scholars, economists, and urban planners. Many of the regulations that still define American neighborhoods, such as single-family-only zoning, minimum lot sizes, parking requirements, setback rules, and restrictions on multifamily housing, were originally implemented to segregate Americans based on class and race.

Or, as planner M. Nolan Gray explains in his book, Arbitrary Lines, How Zoning Broke the American City and How to Fix It, “Zoning is not a good institution gone bad. … On the contrary, zoning is a mechanism of exclusion designed to inflate property values, slow the pace of new development, segregate cities by race and class, and enshrine the detached single-family house as the exclusive urban ideal.”

And these restrictions have had a consistent, intentional outcome: they have limited the amount of homes available so that housing is scarcer and more expensive. While zoning was created to keep some races and nationalities out of certain neighborhoods, it persists in sorting where people can live by their income.

Protect Property Values and Exclude People

Current American zoning rules have their roots in the early twentieth century. Back then, the nation’s rapidly growing cities faced real public health problems from unsafe extreme overcrowding, and unsanitary living conditions. The need to regulate living spaces to provide safe habitation was real and urgent. In New York City, many of the unsafe housing conditions were alleviated by a series of laws (including the Tenement House Acts of 1867, 1879, and 1901) that outlawed deadly fire-trap building designs, mandated outward-facing windows in every room, and required private indoor plumbing, among other regulations.

But, it wasn’t safety concerns for the poor that led to zoning restrictions. In 1916, both New York City and Berkeley California enacted zoning rules rooted in racist and anti-immigrant fears.

In New York, the first comprehensive citywide zoning law in the U.S. was concocted by wealthy Fifth Avenue merchants to protect their high-end retail establishments by keeping industrial factories, and the mostly Jewish, low-income workers that would window shop on their lunch breaks, out of their luxury shopping district, by pushing the factories that employed them away. While the law included other restrictions as well, it was the merchant’s association’s fear of immigrants that got the ball rolling.

Also in 1916, Berkeley, California, became the first city in the US to enact single-family-only residential zoning. Planners and white homeowners explicitly crafted their land use law to prohibit Black-owned dance halls and Chinese and Japanese-owned laundries from operating in white neighborhoods.

For the prejudiced and powerful, the promise of zoning as a tool for racial sorting was gaining traction.

With the momentum of these 1916 regulations and others, in 1926 the Supreme Court decided in Village of Euclid v. Ambler Realty Co. to go well beyond the task of separating dangerous industrial uses from residential neighborhoods. In the majority opinion written by Associate Justice George Sutherland, he stated:

[T]he coming of one apartment house, if followed by others, interfering by their height and bulk with the free circulation of air and monopolizing the rays of the sun . . . and bringing . . . the disturbing noises incident to increased traffic . . . and the occupation, by means of moving and parked automobiles, of larger portions of the street, thus detracting from their safety. . . until, finally, the residential character of the neighborhood and its desirability . . . are utterly destroyed. . . the reasons are sufficiently cogent to preclude us from saying. . . that such provisions are clearly arbitrary and unreasonable, having no substantial relation to the public health, safety, morals or general welfare.

The ruling effectively gave municipalities the ability to restrict what could be built based on such amorphous and biased ideals as “residential character,” “neighborhood desirability,” and “morals or general welfare.” These ideals are still invoked today to prevent new housing and exclude people.

With the Supreme Court’s blessing, what came to be known as “Euclidean zoning” steadily divided nearly every city in America into strict districts and assigned each parcel of land a narrow set of permissible uses. Over time, local governments layered on increasingly restrictive rules governing housing type, building height, lot size, setbacks, parking, and residential density. In the abstract, these regulations seemed neutral. In practice, they became powerful tools to limit housing, limit building, and limit who could afford to live in a neighborhood. (Read more about the Euclid ruling, which turned 100 this year.)

Fearmongering and Exclusive Homesites

Many communities openly embraced zoning to preserve exclusivity. New communities and neighborhoods were built on the outskirts of towns and cities, as a way to avoid co-mingling with people outside their group. As Gray notes in Arbitrary Lines, planned communities, new neighborhoods, and even entire municipalities, were constructed “purely to adopt zoning as a way to exclude certain less privileged groups and artificially keep densities low, hoarding lavishly funded public services for affluent residents.”

When, with the Fair Housing Act of 1968, it became illegal to zone and discriminate based explicitly on race, single-family zoning became a way to create economic boundaries where explicit racial covenants or laws to exclude the poor could no longer be used. Attorney Bo Yan Moran states this plainly in her piece for the UC Davis Social Justice Law Review:

“One of the most successful exclusionary zoning strategies was and continues to be single-family home zoning. The facially neutral term of “single-family home zoning,” while devoid of explicit racial language, leverages disparate racial economics: only wealthier individuals are able to purchase such large pieces of land for one family.”

These places, inflexible in their original zoning, are today places without affordable housing options. These are places with minimum lot sizes, bans on building duplexes, and required landscape buffers to hide and protect single-family housing from shopping or apartments. These are places where young families cannot afford to live. These are places where there are no options for single people, or low-income households.

As recently as 2019, around 75% of residential land in American cities was zoned to exclude everything but single-family homes. That means no duplexes, triplexes, courtyard apartments, accessory dwelling units, rooming houses (aka boarding houses or SROs), or small apartment buildings. Not only are multi-unit options prohibited, but single-family exclusionary zoning has been further tightened to require larger (and therefore more expensive) homes on larger (and therefore more expensive) lots. While today’s zoning doesn’t explicitly ban lower-income people, it does ban the housing types that lower-income people can afford.

It’s important to understand that this outcome was not by accident.

Zoning Prevents Affordability

Despite the need for increased housing in places with increasing populations, zoning regulations explicitly limit the amount of housing that can be built. Limiting supply while demand is increasing causes prices to skyrocket.

Zoning restricts building in many ways: by limiting the number of units allowed on a site; capping the height of buildings that can be constructed; and mandating the square footage of new homes as a percentage of the total lot. The same zoning rulebook may also require homes to be situated on a oversized lot of a prescribed minimum size, and require that space be left unused along all lot lines, and the list goes on.

All of these rules work to increase home costs, by restricting our ability to build affordably, and by encouraging the construction of larger, standalone, detached homes. The rules make it harder to build smaller, more affordable units and multi-family housing.

Even in neighborhoods formerly designated as single-family-only, where new multifamily housing construction is legalized, stringent zoning regulations greatly limit the amount of these homes that can actually be built. While many planners and city officials understand that we must allow more multi-family housing in traditionally single-family-only neighborhoods, the bias against multi-family housing that has long been baked into our zoning rules, can mean that code changes are more performative than practical.

Pro-zoning advocates argue that existing zoning rules are critical to preserve neighborhood character, and to protect property values, especially in single-family neighborhoods. And, while neighborhood character is an amorphous catch-all invoked only when it conveniences homeowners, it is absolutely true that zoning protects property values. When the supply is intentionally unchanged while demand increases, prices skyrocket, and those who already own their homes get rich.

Nearly every modern zoning regulation is designed to protect and preserve single family neighborhoods. In most communities, zoning is used to protect the single-family homeowner’s investment by preventing additional housing supply from entering the market. The policy-driven rising home prices decrease housing affordability. Whether or not local officials describe it that way, zoning policies consistently produce the same result: fewer homes, higher prices, and greater exclusion.

In doing so, each line of zoning code works to price out young families, lower-income households, and individuals who cannot afford large, single-family homes.

Undoing the Harms of Zoning

The zoning code books in most municipalities are hundreds of pages long, or more. This is the result of an accumulative effort over time, in which rules are added, and added again. Little is removed, even while the rules become contradictory, confusing, and counter to a community’s goals.

Most municipalities and the people in them now see affordability, walkability, and inclusion as desirable outcomes, but their aims are stifled by their outdated zoning code, which only encourages development that runs counter to those objectives. While this type of malpractice is common in bureaucracy, we deserve better, and we owe better to those in our community who simply don’t have time to become steeped in planning history. Most importantly, we owe better to the people and communities that have been maligned by our zoning practices thus far.

I believe the most prudent approach would be to throw out these overloaded zoning tomes and rewrite them from scratch. Our fresh draft could focus on what we want, rather than what people in the past were afraid of. We could work to protect people’s health by separating noxious and dangerous land uses from schools, homes, and business, and we could stop enforcing restrictions that act as if apartments and shops qualify as noxious uses. With our simplified code, we could refocus city planners’ newfound bandwidth, freed from enforcing arbitrary and antiquated rules, toward improving citizens’ quality of life, incentivizing affordability, and our planners could work to plan our communities and our infrastructure for a future that welcomes growth, and integrates communities.

In Arbitrary Lines, Gray posits that reform alone is not enough, and he makes the case for abolishing zoning altogether. Yet, he recognizes that “back in the real world,” (p. 135) this is not an easy goal to accomplish. Instead, he suggests we aim to move towards a “less bad zoning” (p. 109) through four local reforms:

1. End Single Family Zoning (p. 111)

2. Abolish Minimum Parking Regulations (p. 114)

3. Eliminate or Lower Minimum Lot Size and Floor Area Regulations (p. 115)

4. Decriminalize Inherently Affordable Housing Typologies (p. 116)

The encouraging news is that, across the country, cities are beginning to rethink decades of exclusionary land-use policy, and North Carolina is leading the way.

In the Triangle and throughout North Carolina we are legalizing accessory dwelling units, allowing for new duplexes and fourplexes, eliminating parking mandates, and allowing more homes to be built more densely near transit and job centers.

Because of the inherently exclusionary nature of zoning, and the bad outcomes zoning has produced for our communities, it’s time to consider how we can overhaul the system. Single-family zoning, in particular, that creates and preserves neighborhoods to exclude all other housing typologies, should be no longer be tolerated. This is the path towards integrating our neighborhoods, providing enough housing for everyone, and allowing for flexibility in our communities when growth comes knocking.

We Can’t Stop People from Moving Here (and We Shouldn’t Want to)

If we want housing to become more affordable, we must build more housing. As someone who has watched my hometown of Durham grow and change over the decades, I understand how hard it is to see a place you love become different than how it was before. But preventing building to meet demand is to guarantee that we price-out everyone out of our cities and towns, other than the most well-off who will be able to afford home and rent prices as they rise. And when we prevent building in our developed areas, we guarantee that homebuilding will sprawl endlessly into rural and natural areas.

Zoning restrictions that prevent building in our communities result in old and new residents getting priced out, while enriching those who already own their homes. In places that are desirable to live, home prices do not lower while new construction is stagnant. When the housing supply remains at the same level, even while new people move in, home prices rise. Yet, we cannot prevent price increases by simply shutting out new residents. We must alleviate price increases by building the supply to meet the new demand. Furthermore, we must reject anti-newcomer rhetoric, and remember the harm that is done to people when communities exclude other people.

We must stop treating new neighbors in new housing as a threat, and start recognizing that every regulation preventing new homes has real human consequences. In tandem, we must stop treating single-family neighborhoods as sacrosanct, and understand that to provide for both newcomers and long-time residents, we must build housing that goes beyond the limits of the single-family home.

BIO

Charlotte Chapman was born and raised in Durham, NC. She has an undergraduate degree in Architectural Studies, and a Masters in Urban Planning. She has worked in real estate, development, and in non-profits, including management positions at a national criminal justice reform organization and a local food co-op. She currently serves as the Executive Administrator at CITYBUILDER.

Meeting schedules are starting to fill back up after the summer lull.

This week, we’re watching Raleigh’s proposed subdivision reforms, a pair of rezonings in Apex, and several other planning and development discussions across the Triangle. We’ve sorted through the agendas so you don’t have to.

📣 This Week’s Call to Action: APEX

Raleigh and Durham are both off this week, so our attention shifts to Apex. Link to Agenda.

There are two interesting rezoning cases in Apex this week, neither of which are expected to be controversial, but they highlight an important lesson: every municipality has different development rules.

🏡 Rezoning Case No. 26CZ04 – 2913 Evans Road

A 0.46-acre rezoning to allow an existing single-family lot to be subdivided into two single-family lots.

💡 Staff and the Planning Board both recommend approval.

💡 Conditions include extending curb and sidewalk, along with additional architectural standards.

🏘️ This is exactly the kind of small-scale infill that arguably shouldn’t require a rezoning at all. If you have a few minutes, consider emailing Town Council to support the request AND remind them that projects like this should be allowed by right rather than requiring a legislative rezoning.

📄Link to staff report. 📄 Link to Planning Board summary.

🎓 Rezoning Application No. 26CZ03 – Veridea SD Plan Amendment / Wake Tech Conlon Campus

This request would amend the approved Veridea Sustainable Development plan to accommodate the future Wake Technical Community College Conlon Western Wake Campus.

💡 A good example of how rezonings aren’t always about housing. They also help communities adapt to changing civic needs including placing campuses near mixed use housing and job centers.

📄 Link to staff report.

RALEIGH

📝 Opportunity to Comment: Raleigh Minor & Exempt Subdivision Regulations

Not every housing decision happens at a public hearing. Sometimes the biggest changes happen while the rules are still being written.

Raleigh is proposing updates to its subdivision regulations that would create a new minor subdivision process and implement state-authorized exempt subdivisions. Together, these changes could reduce review time and costs for small-scale infill, making it easier to divide lots and create more housing choices. Evan Bost wrote about this on CITYBUILDER earlier this year.

💡 Comments are being accepted through August 19, before the Planning Commission Text Change Committee meeting that day.

👉 Take a few minutes to review the proposal and submit comments in support of making small-scale infill simpler, faster, and more predictable.

💬 Read the draft ordinance and Submit Comments

​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.

Read more

This sketch by Abigail Gillin, titled Parisian Rooftops, shows a view from the 6th floor of Paris’ 2nd Arrondissement. These balconies softly open private spaces to the public street 60 feet below.

Abigail’s sketches capture people’s favorite places, most of which are inherently urban and vibrant: lively street corners with chairs and people spilling onto the sidewalk, Parisian rooftops showcasing the city’s ability to tuck housing into every corner, and sports venues that unite people, even if just for a couple of hours at a time.

Discover more of Abigail’s work at her website, hereandtherepaintings.com, and on her Instagram @HereandTherePaintings.

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Read How States & Localities Can Begin Implementing the ROAD to Housing Act

The ROAD ahead: The ROAD to Housing Act contains dozens of sections, most of which have implications for state and local governments. Researchers from Institute for Progress and Pew Research have created a broad set of recommendations for states and municipalities that want to take full advantage of these new federal policies.

Manufactured parity: One of the first steps that IFP & Pew list is certifying to HUD that state policies treat all manufactured homes the same as site-built homes. They write “This certification allows changes to the federal manufactured housing code to take effect in that state, lowering the cost per home by thousands of dollars.”

This is an important step for North Carolina. Currently, 10% of NC’s housing is manufactured/mobile homes (that’s twice the US average). Policymakers, planners, and government staff should think about how to fast-track these changes to allow more, better manufactured housing.

Closer to Home:

Raleigh is Considering Exempt Plats

What happened: Last month, Raleigh City staff prepared a draft ordinance (TC-4-26) to update the City’s subdivision regulations and legalize exempt plats. Read that draft ordinance here! This text change is scheduled for a public Planning Commission Text Change Committee meeting on August 19, 2026.

Why it matters: Modernizing Raleigh’s minor subdivision review process would bring the capital in line with most other NC municipalities, and reduce barriers to building small and starter homes. Currently, it takes 1-2 months to create a small lot subdivision in Durham, while it takes 1-2 years to create the same subdivision in Raleigh.

What to Do Next:

Write Into Engagement Portal to Support Exempt Plats

Comment before Aug 19: This is exactly the moment when Council and Planning need to hear your voice. Whether you personally would benefit from this ordinance passing, or you know a project that would. Even if you just want more mid-sized housing and recognize that this ordinance would enable that… let Council know!

Submit a comment

See You Next Week!

Our CITYBUILDER Brief series brings short and shareable housing news to paid subscribers every week.

Nestled in a half-acre lot beside Frog Hollow Outdoors and Cocoa Cinnamon is the 2024 Triangle AIA Housing Merit Award winner: Bull City Commons Cohousing (BCC). BCC is a very recent cohousing development in the Triangle area, completed in 2023 by withArchitecture.

This past May, I had the pleasure of joining Jim McCraw, one of BCC’s founding members, for an ‘under-the-hood’ tour of the cohousing’s physical design and community dynamics.

Designing for a Society

When it comes to condo and apartment design, site and efficiency are crucial factors. But as Jim explained, BCC was a community-first project from the very beginning. To Jim and his fellow founders, the most important consideration was how to design intentionally for the specific social fabric that they aimed to cultivate. They chose to adopt a sociocratic model of leadership, where decisions from funding to schematics were made in a non-hierarchical fashion.

This piece was written by CITYBUILDER student fellow Lucas Nagel through the Allison Ramsey Architects Intentional Community Research Fellowship. A special thanks to Allison Ramsey Architects for funding research into the importance of design in creating a sustainable, thriving urban future.

Sociocracy is a method of leadership or civic organization comparable to democracy in its attempt to structure power, justice, and decision making. The model suggests organization through circles of governance. Within each circle, appointed and volunteer members operate through consensus, which is feasible due to the small scale of each group. In cohousing spaces for instance, there may be a circle on landscaping, one on maintenance, and another on shared meals. Each circle is committed to demonstrating a high level of expertise and thoughtfulness in every decision. With each member dedicated to at least one circle, power is effectively dispersed amongst the entire community. Finances and policy are two topics that are non-circle specific, and thus require full community consent.

Once I understood the motivations behind BCC’s sociocracy, my tour with Jim began to unpack a layer of intention beyond surface-level design decisions. Moreover, the conversation between built and societal mechanisms became clear through three design elements: outdoor integration, interior public spaces, and apartment design.

Connection with Nature

BCC is well known for its extensive gardens, which were a featured stop on the 2026 Durham Garden Tour. The gardens are possible in part due to the site’s stormwater drain easement. The flora that have blossomed at BCC since completion in 2023 are now a defining feature of the community. The continued growth of the gardens is further invested in by BCC’s “Grounds Circle” which includes two master gardeners.

It’s no accident that all of the apartments at BCC face Southwest, it’s a principle of equality. Balconies are another design element that contribute to the sociocratic ideals at BCC while capitalizing on the verdant surroundings. Each apartment is guaranteed a view of either the dense tree canopy or the gardens below, which can be enjoyed from one’s balcony, or the floor-to-ceiling glass doors.

Finally, because BCC is organized on a single-loaded corridor, hallways receive ample light from morning to midday. To take full advantage of this natural resource, the architects devised a double layer system for light to first penetrate the hallway and then filter into individual apartments through clerestory windows.

Space for Community

Carving out common areas for community gathering was a critical move to facilitate group living while promoting inter-circle dialogue. While many circles may operate independently of one another, finding opportunities for collaboration or external commentary is just as important. Beyond functionality, building space for socialization with shared amenities is essential to the concept of cohousing.

The ground floor common room was the first place Jim brought me to. The space is unique in that it is the only interior communal space that is not located on a residential hall. It functions as a place for circle meetings, friend-group socials, and a visitor welcoming area. It is also directly adjacent to the laundry facilities which increases the likelihood of “random interactions by design” as people wait for their clothes to finish.

At the end of the second floor hallway, the multi-purpose room provides another environment for informal gathering. It’s a nice place to spend time with others without even needing to leave the building.

Bridging off the second floor community room is the kitchen and dining room, which is an extension of the food prep and entertaining amenities available in the individual residences. This space is used as a venue for potluck-style dinners and a place to host guests.

Finally, in what might otherwise have been a mundane space for circulation, the residents of BCC have embraced the generous width of the hallway space, adding bookshelves, puzzle tables, and even personal art installations that give each floor a warm, lived-in character. Additionally, two large storage closets provide overflow space for residents in each hall to store seasonal and non-household items.

The Residences

BCC is home to twenty-three units and just thirty residents. Each unit is also guaranteed a space for car and bike storage either in the on-grade first-floor parking podium, or one of the three outside spaces.

Units vary in size from five-hundred square feet to fifteen-hundred, stacking vertically for mechanical, electric, and plumbing (MEP) efficiency. However, designing the floor plans of these units was not simply a cost-engineered, efficiency-driven procedure. Using circles of governance, early residents were organized based on intended unit size and building location. From there, several “stack circles” were provided an opportunity to meet with the design team to negotiate the optimal floor plan that could accommodate varying lifestyles between floors, while maintaining a cost-effective rigor through MEP alignment.

Unit prices represent an enduring consideration of sociocracy that is built into BCC’s approach to real estate. For context, a standard condominium may determine a base sales price in addition to a scalable unit cost based on size, amenities, and furnishings. In this scenario, unit size is a limited factor in the overall cost. BCC’s approach follows a more egalitarian, equitable access model, in which larger unit buyers help subsidize affordable unit prices. First, the total building cost is divided by livable square footage. Then each unit-buyer is quoted at the fixed rate times their unit-size. Because of this, a 500 sqft unit is approximately one third the price of a 1500 sqft unit, a logical yet rarely practiced financing model.

Vision for the Future

As I was introduced to the friendly residents of BCC along the tour, it struck me that the cohousing population is much more densely clustered toward mid to post-career residents than other cohousing communities I’ve researched. For having such a prime location, I wondered why there’s a lack of young home-owner representation at BCC. However, Jim said that it wasn’t designed to be this way. His hypothesis is that the demographics are simply a result of the initial downpayment strategy. Without a developer, incoming residents were asked to share the risk, contributing a forty-percent down payment to fund the project. Naturally, people with the means to commit financially happened to be those with more years of savings. But this trend is not expected to persist. In fact, Jim surmises that within the coming years, the entire community could see a large shift in age demographics. Perhaps this is a sustainable model for the future. As the demand for homes increases, this intergenerational hand-off may hold the keys to securing better housing for a broader population. The first step is to build more places like Bull City Commons Cohousing.

This piece was written by CITYBUILDER student fellow Lucas Nagel through the Allison Ramsey Architects Intentional Community Research Fellowship. A special thanks to Allison Ramsey Architects for funding research into the importance of design in creating a sustainable, thriving urban future.

Local governments make hundreds of decisions each year that determine where homes can be built, how neighborhoods grow, and whether it’s easier or harder to add housing. Most of them happen with little public attention.

Starting this week, Rezoning Watch will be a regular CITYBUILDER feature highlighting the meetings, rezonings, and land use decisions worth following across the Triangle. We’ll cut through the agenda packets, explain what matters, and point out the cases that deserve a closer look.

Many councils are returning from their summer break, making this a good time to launch. This week is relatively quiet, with one straightforward townhome rezoning in Durham and several communities easing back into their meeting schedules.

Durham

​Andrews Chapel Road Townhomes (Z2500032)​

📍 Tonight, August 3 at 7:00 PM
at Durham City Council Chambers, 101 City Hall Plaza

🏘️ Request to annex and rezone 4.5 acres within Durham’s Urban Growth Boundary to allow 28 townhomes

💡 Straightforward single-family to townhome rezoning in an established area. The site is already expected to develop. This allows more homes on the same land, expanding housing choices in an area already planned for growth.
💡​Inside the Urban Growth Boundary, this is the type of housing Durham needs to incrementally increase housing supply
⚠️ Expect the usual concerns about traffic and environmental impacts, despite the site already being designated for urban development

👉 Speak in person tonight by signing up outside Council Chambers before the meeting begins.

​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.

Read more

Hello CITYBUILDERs and happy August! We hope you’ve been having a wonderful summer.

There’s been a ton of events to enjoy around the Triangle, and maybe you’ve also made it out to other parts of North Carolina! Whether you escaped to the mountains or relaxed at the beach, having both just a short drive away is one of the many reasons we love calling the Triangle home.

Many of you have also joined CITYBUILDER for events this summer.

In July, we continued our summer film series in Cary. Shout out to Hearsay and everyone at The Matthews House for sharing their beautiful space with our community. We had a great turnout and another lively discussion. If you haven’t been able to make it to a film screening yet, you have one more chance to join us in Raleigh on August 26th. More info below.

We’re excited to re-start our monthly Policy Talks with a special series on Training the Triangle’s City Builders of Tomorrow. This back-to-school series in August and September will highlight the incredible wealth of knowledge we have locally at our major universities. Students are a unique and vital part of our Triangle communities. If you know any young or aspiring city builders, please tell them to join the calls! This is a chance for students (and all of us) to learn more about these local programs and opportunities.

If you haven’t already - be sure to fill out our CITYBUILDER survey. We’re building the next chapter of CITYBUILDER, and we need your voice. Take our 10-minute community survey to help shape our programs, events, and advocacy, plus you’ll be entered for a chance to win a copy of our next book club selection, Stuck by Yoni Appelbaum.

Thank you for being a part of building this movement with us.

Charlotte Chapman
Executive Administrator, CITYBUILDER

In Case You Missed It: YIMBYtown 2026

Be an Early Bird for YIMBYtown 2026!

Registration for YIMBYtown 2026 is LIVE! Early Bird ticket pricing ENDS on August 15th. Get your tickets now at yimby.town!

AUGUST EVENTS WITH CITYBUILDER

SUMMER FILM TOUR: Last Stop - Raleigh!

Wednesday August 26th • 7:00pm - 9:00pm
Trophy Brewing at Maywood Hall • 656 Maywood Ave, Raleigh
Get Tickets Here

Join us for the final screening of our Summer Film Tour!

We’re partnering with Better Cities Film Festival and Southern Urbanism to showcase a selection of short, documentary films highlighting housing and urbanism from across the country.

This will be a family-friendly evening, and a great chance to escape the summer heat, sit back, relax, and enjoy thought-provoking and inspiring films. Your $10 ticket to the event includes popcorn. Drinks will be available for purchase.

These films showcase lessons from other places, lessons from the past, and inspiration for the future that we can apply to our local Triangle communities. Thanks to our partners Southern Urbanism, and our sponsor The Rocket Shop for their support.

Interested becoming a sponsor of our Raleigh film night? Email us at citybuildernc@gmail.com!

POLICY TALK: How to Build a City

Practical Programs from the Triangle’s Top Universities • Part I with Eric Maribojoc, Professor of the Practice at UNC Chapel Hill

Thursday August 25th • 12:00pm - 1:00pm
RSVP here for this virtual talk

This fall, we’re launching a special two-part online series highlighting the incredible city-building programs at our local universities. The Triangle is home to some of the world’s top schools, and right here in our backyard, students are preparing to become the planners, architects, engineers, public servants, developers, designers, and advocates who will shape the future of our communities.

For our first talk in this two-part series, we’re excited to welcome Eric Maribojoc, Professor of the Practice at UNC Chapel Hill’s Kenan-Flagler Business School, and Housing Affordability Initiative lead. Eric is a real estate professional, educator and researcher with extensive experience. His focus areas include future trends in design, zoning, and technology, housing supply and affordability, adaptive reuse, sustainability, and resilience.

Please share this free learning opportunity with high school seniors, college students, or anyone curious about a career building better places. These conversations will introduce you to the programs, faculty, and opportunities that can help turn your passion for cities into a meaningful career.

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MORE AUGUST EVENTS FOR CITYBUILDERS

RALEIGH AFFORDABLE HOUSING FORUM

Saturday August 25th 1:00 - 5:00PM
Raleigh Convention Center, 500 S Salisbury St, Raleigh
Learn more and sign up for updates

Raleigh is growing fast. As the population grows and development gets costlier, rents and home prices are rising. The City of Raleigh is committed to tackling housing affordability challenges to ensure every Raleigh resident has a safe, stable, and affordable place to call home.

This event will feature CITYBUILDER Founder Jenn Truman as a panelist.

Study Finds High-Income Housing Construction Creates ‘Moving Chains’ for Low-Income Renters

Multifamily math: Pew research has shed light on a study from 2023 that looked through the address history of 52,000 residents of new multifamily buildings in large cities. The paper by Dr. Evan Mast concludes that “constructing a new market-rate building that houses 100 people ultimately leads 45 to 70 people to move out of below-median income neighborhoods, with most of the effect occurring within three years.”

Moving chains: The pattern described above is known as a “moving chain”, and it illustrates the ripple effect that new high-income housing has across the market. It makes intuitive sense: when new luxury housing is built, the people who move in don’t appear out of thin air. They mostly come from cheaper apartments. Once they move, their old apartments are vacant, and they’re no longer competing with lower-income people for those cheaper units. Thus, lower-income people move in to their apartment.

Closer to Home:

Cary NIMBYs Kill Affordable Housing Opportunity

Read more

Zoning codes, fire regulations, and financing models have reinforced this binary for decades, leaving little room for the smaller, more flexible building types that once defined many walkable neighborhoods. Among these missing forms, the single-stair residential building stands out as one of the most powerful tools for improving housing affordability and small-scale development.

This piece was written by student fellows in collaboration with Single Stair NC.

Each semester, CITYBUILDER provides fellowship opportunities for aspiring student urbanists in the Triangle. This semester we’re focused on single-stair apartments. Single Stair NC is a new publication committed to advancing the pursuit of single-stair buildings in North Carolina.

Small lot zoning creates a regulatory environment in which single-stair buildings can thrive. The places we’re focused on are empty lots between single-family houses, and old vacant houses that could be rebuilt into something more useful. These “infill” lots are cheaper than the land required for large-scale apartment complexes or single-family subdivisions, making the investment feasible for aspiring developers. Single-stair housing fits perfectly in these smaller lots, blending in with existing neighborhoods and providing more affordable housing options for prospective residents.

Single-Stair Has Countless Benefits

A single-stair building is exactly what it sounds like: a multifamily residential building organized around one primary stair serving all units. Typically ranging from three to six stories and four to twelve units, these buildings are common throughout Europe and in older North American cities, but are often prohibited under modern U.S. building codes once a building exceeds a certain size or height.

The requirement for two stairs is frequently justified as a life-safety measure, yet in practice it imposes significant cost and design penalties—especially for small buildings. A second stair consumes valuable floor area, increases structural complexity, and often forces inefficient double-loaded corridors. For small lot developments, these inefficiencies can be fatal to project feasibility.

Allowing multiple dwelling units on modest parcels and removing artificial minimums tied to lot size or building footprint enables a housing typology that is cheaper, energy-efficient, and accessible to small developers.

Construction Efficiency Yields Savings

Affordability is one of the strongest arguments in favor of single-stair buildings. Detached single-family homes are among the least efficient housing types to build, requiring four exterior walls per unit, individual roofs, and fully separate structural systems. Even townhouses, while more efficient, still duplicate many other building elements such as mechanical lines, HVAC units, and water heaters.

Single-stair buildings maximize shared walls, floors, and ceilings, along with the aforementioned mechanical systems. The shared envelope components dramatically reduce the amount of exterior material needed per unit, while also saving time and money in construction. And, of course, eliminating the second stair itself further adds to these savings. Stairs are expensive: they require additional structure, fire separation, handrails, landings, and code-mandated clearances. Removing one stair can free up hundreds of square feet that can instead be used for mechanical or living space… or allow the entire building to fit into underutilized infill lots.

Compared to large apartment buildings, single-stair buildings sit in the sweet spot of efficiency: dense enough to share costs, but small enough to remain comfortable in neighborhoods. In contrast to deep, double-loaded corridor apartments, single-stair buildings usually allow for through-units or corner units with better daylight and natural ventilation. This improves occupant comfort while reducing reliance on mechanical systems.

Single-stair buildings are efficient to heat and cool as well. Shared walls reduce heat loss and heat gain, making these structures significantly more energy-efficient than detached homes. Units typically have fewer exposed sides, which translates to lower heating and cooling loads.

Lower operational costs matter deeply for affordability. Even when rents are similar, reduced utility bills can make a meaningful difference in a household’s monthly expenses. Over time these savings accumulate, particularly for lower and middle-income residents.

Lower Financial Barriers for Small Developers

Perhaps the most transformative benefit of single-stair buildings is who gets to build them. Large apartment projects require large loans, sophisticated financial structures, and institutional investors. This excludes most small developers and local builders from participating in multi-family housing production.

Single-stair buildings, especially when enabled by small lot zoning, dramatically lower the barrier to entry. The total project cost is smaller, the construction is simpler, and the loan amount is more manageable. A small developer (or even an owner-occupant) can finance a four to eight-unit building in ways that are simply impossible with a 100-unit complex.

For small, owner-occupied buildings (four units or fewer), Freddie Mac–backed loans work very differently than commercial apartment financing. Instead of asking the building to “stand on its own” with a debt-service coverage ratio, lenders underwrite the borrower, counting roughly 75 percent of rent from the non-owner units toward qualifying income.

The loan is valued using residential comparable sales rather than cap rates, often allowing higher per-unit valuations, lower down payments, and 30-year amortizations. In practice, this means a household can use its income and partial occupancy to backstop risk, making it possible to build or stabilize small multifamily housing with homeowner-style financing, one of the few rungs on the development ladder for missing-middle projects.

Because the initial investment is lower, the pressure to maximize rent is reduced. A developer can accept modest returns while still operating profitably. In some cases, the owner may live in one unit while renting the others, creating long-term stability and personal investment in the building’s success.

This model spreads out risk, distributes wealth-building opportunities, and keeps housing development rooted in the local community.

Mixed Unit Sizes and Internal Subsidy

Single-stair buildings are uniquely well suited to mix unit types. Because the circulation core is compact, floor plans can be highly flexible. Smaller studios or one-bedroom units can coexist alongside larger family-sized units within the same building.

This diversity enables internal cross-subsidization. Smaller, more affordable units can be offset by larger or premium units with higher rents. The building as a whole remains financially viable, without every unit being priced at a premium.

This approach allows affordability to be achieved within the building rather than through external subsidies alone. It also fosters social diversity, as residents of different incomes and household sizes share the same address rather than being separated by building type or neighborhood.

Developers Respond to the Rules We Set

Developers are not inherently predisposed toward large, expensive buildings. They respond to the regulatory environment. Entrepreneurs will be entrepreneurs: they ask what is legal, what can be financed, and what will pencil. Those questions are answered through very specific mechanisms, rent comparables, appraisals, loan terms, and underwriting standards that translate rules into built form.

To make money, a developer needs three things to align. First, rent comps must exist to justify projected income; lenders and investors will not underwrite hypothetical demand for a building type that is illegal or rarely built. Second, appraisals must support the cost of construction, which requires comparable properties that appraisers can point to with confidence. Third, financing must be available on terms that allow the project to carry its debt without excessive rents or equity. When any one of these breaks down, the project becomes unfinanceable.

When single-stair buildings are illegal or impractical to build, these mechanisms collapse in predictable ways. Without legal precedent, there are no rent comps. Without rent comps, appraisals fall back to single-family or large-apartment benchmarks. Without appraisable value, financing disappears or becomes prohibitively expensive. Developers are then forced into extremes: detached single-family homes which fit cleanly into residential underwriting, or large apartment blocks that can absorb regulatory costs through scale.

In this sense, regulations do not merely shape outcomes; they actively produce them. By prohibiting efficient, human-scale buildings, the rules foreclose the financial pathways that make them viable. Single-stair buildings demonstrate that affordability and profitability are not opposing goals, they are regulatory outcomes. When codes allow smaller buildings to exist, the market can generate the rents, comps, appraisals, and financing needed to support them. When they do not, the market is left with fewer options, higher costs, and less choice.

Aligning Policy, Design, and Affordability

Small lot zoning provides the legal foundation for single-stair buildings to re-emerge as a mainstream housing type. Together, they enable gradual, incremental density rather than disruptive total redevelopment. A single-family lot can become a six-unit walk-up. A corner parcel can support a three-story apartment building that fits comfortably into the existing neighborhood.

If the goal is to produce more affordable housing while maintaining neighborhood character and expanding access to development opportunities, single-stair buildings deserve a central place in housing policy. Small lot zoning makes them possible, and thoughtful code reform makes them viable.

The housing crisis is not a failure of the market; it is a failure of imagination constrained by outdated rules. Single-stair buildings offer a clear, proven, and human-scale alternative. When we allow them to be built, we align entrepreneurial energy with the public good, and unlock a housing future that is more efficient, more diverse, and more affordable.

Julie Powers is a Bachelor of Architecture Student at NC State University, with an LAEP minor.

Additional graphic and illustration support was provided by NC State Undergraduate College of Design in Architecture major Brenna Belcher.

This is ours.

Over the next year, Raleigh will rewrite its Comprehensive Plan, the document that sets the long-term vision for how our city grows over the coming decades.

Most people will never read it. Many won’t even know it’s being updated. But they’ll live with the decisions it shapes.

It’s important to note that the Comprehensive Plan isn’t a law.

Instead, it’s the lens through which the City’s decisions are made.

Future rezonings are evaluated against it. New policies are measured against it. Infrastructure investments, transportation priorities, housing programs, parks, and long-range capital planning all draw direction from it. When City Council weighs difficult decisions about Raleigh’s future, the Comprehensive Plan is one of the first documents everyone reaches for to guide those decisions.

If the UDO is the rulebook, the Comprehensive Plan is the vision those rules are meant to accomplish.

If you’re new to land use planning, Raleigh Forward published an excellent primer a few years back on what a Comprehensive Plan is and how it fits into the City’s planning process.

Earlier this year, we explored how Raleigh’s Unified Development Ordinance shapes what gets built in our city. The UDO determines what can be built on a piece of land. The Comprehensive Plan answers a bigger question.

What kind of city are we collectively building?

Right now Raleigh tests this vision one project at a time, one rezoning hearing after another. They aren’t just singular debates, they are chances to move closer to the city we say we want to become. That’s why consistency with the comprehensive plan is the main question in rezoning decisions.

At first glance, the next Comprehensive Plan might feel like just another plan update. It isn’t.

The Comprehensive Plan has evolved over the years, just like our city. Since the 2030 Comprehensive Plan was adopted in 2009, under Mayor Charles C. Meeker, by the full Council Mayor Pro-Tem James P. West, Councilor Mary-Ann Baldwin, Councilor Thomas G. Crowder, Councilor Philip R. Isley, Councilor Rodger Koopman, Councilor Nancy McFarlane, Councilor Russ Stephenson, Raleigh has changed and grown. The City has adopted a new Unified Development Ordinance (UDO) in 2015. The City completed a citywide rezoning that down-zoned many neighborhoods in 2016. Then in 2019, Raleigh made significant updates to both the Comprehensive Plan and the Unified Development Ordinance that embraced more housing choices, walkable neighborhoods and transit options. Those amendments can only go so far.

With the new Comprehensive Plan - for the first time in over 15 years - Raleigh isn’t just editing and amending individual policies. We’re collectively taking a step back to re-ask the big question.

What kind of city are we collectively building?

Raleigh has always been a growing city. The next Comprehensive Plan shouldn’t simply manage growth. It should embrace growth as an opportunity to welcome new neighbors.

The story of Raleigh’s current Comprehensive Plan is more complicated than many people realize. It wasn’t written all at once, and it doesn’t speak with a single voice. We’ll trace how the plan evolved from its adoption in 2009 through major amendments in 2019. And in a future article, we’ll spend more time exploring the history of Raleigh’s plans because understanding how we got here is essential to deciding where we go next.

Today’s conversations aren’t simply about maps and zoning and policies.

These conversations are about values, about the kind of city Raleigh wants to become. They’re about whether Raleigh’s next vision will ask where growth belongs or how every neighborhood can help welcome it.

the conversation has already begun

Raleigh’s Planning Department has spent the past year or more gathering ideas through its Reflecting Raleigh initiative. More than 12,000 residents participated in community conversations, surveys, pop-up events, and a civic assembly to help identify priorities for the city’s future.

If you haven’t explored the work yet, it’s worth your time.

The engagement reports, community inventory, and recommendations provide an excellent snapshot of where Raleigh is today and the conversations already underway. Whether you agree with every conclusion or not, they represent one of the largest public engagement efforts Raleigh has undertaken.

We encourage anyone interested in this process to check out the City’s summaries of Phase 1: Engage and Assess and the Civic Assembly.

CITYBUILDER’s role is different

The City’s job is to gather input from across Raleigh. City Council’s job is to decide what vision ultimately becomes policy. Which is why this 2026 election matters.

Our job is different.

As a pro-housing advocacy organization, CITYBUILDER exists to organize people around a pro-housing vision for Raleigh. A vision that welcomes growth, embraces abundant housing choices, and builds stronger neighborhoods. This Comprehensive Plan is one of the most important opportunities we’ll have to put those values into practice.

We’ll be advocating for housing choices in every neighborhood. Transportation choices that give people more freedom than simply driving everywhere. Infrastructure that grows alongside our population instead of becoming an excuse to stop it. We’ll champion a Raleigh that becomes greener as it grows and invites many hands into the work of building our city.

And when we say “builders” we mean all of them.

The homeowner adding an ADU.

The family opening a neighborhood coffee shop.

The carpenter restoring an old house.

The nonprofit building affordable housing.

The local builder of a fourplex.

The development teams and construction firms that create the apartments, offices and mixed-use neighborhoods that shape Raleigh’s skyline.

Cities aren’t built by one kind of person. Cities are built by thousands of people making investments, taking risks, opening businesses, creating homes and building the places we all live our daily lives. Everyone of these people helps make Raleigh a welcoming city. Because growth isn’t something that happens to Raleigh, growth is something we create together.

We believe that Raleigh should make it easier for anyone to be a city builder.

The way to build a stronger Raleigh is to make it easier for more people to build it.

So, we won’t pretend to be neutral. We’ll tell you where we stand, advocate for policies that welcome new neighbors and expand housing choices, and explain why. We’ll back our positions with evidence, examples from other cities, and honest reporting on the tradeoffs.

Over the coming months, we’ll explore how Raleigh arrived at this moment, what we’ve learned over the past fifteen years, and what the next Comprehensive Plan should say. We’ll also share CITYBUILDER’s recommendations for Raleigh’s future, along with the evidence and values behind them.

If you care about Raleigh’s future, be part of the conversation. Read along. Come to our events. Reply to our articles. Challenge our thinking. Share examples from other cities. Tell us what we’re missing.

And don’t just engage with us. Participate in the City’s Reflecting Raleigh process too. Read the materials. Attend community meetings. Submit comments when draft policies are released.

In our next article, we’ll look back at the 2030 Comprehensive Plan and the planning philosophy that shaped it. Before Raleigh decides where it’s going next, we need to understand how we got here.

Every generation gets the chance to shape the future of its city.

This is ours.

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.