Federal ROAD to Housing Act Gets Even Better

Near the finish line: After ten long months of back-and-forth between the House and the Senate, the biggest federal housing bill in decades is close to becoming law. On Tuesday, the ROAD to Housing Act’s lead sponsors in the House and Senate released an encouraging joint statement on the bill’s final prospects. Sen. Scott said on CNBC that he expects the bill to pass in 2-3 weeks.

This bill is big: Pesky provisions that restricted build-to-rent housing were removed from the most recent version of the bill. Surprisingly, some great policies that the House stripped from the ROAD Act have made their way back in! Tahra Hoops from The Rebuild has a great summary of why this bill would be so transformative if signed into law.

Read more

We read a lot in this community. We share articles, policy papers, books with dense footnotes and even denser implications. We talk about zoning reform over coffee and debate density metrics at cocktail parties. That is who we are, and I love us for it.

But this summer, we’re doing something different. We’re watching films together.

The CITYBUILDER Summer Film Tour is a three-city screening series coming to Durham, Cary, and Raleigh this summer, presented in partnership with Better Cities Film Festival and Southern Urbanism. Each event brings together a curated selection of short documentary films, none longer than twenty minutes, that explore housing, urbanism, and the future of American cities. Cities that look a lot like ours.

Think of it as the book club, but we watch instead of read. The format is the same: we absorb something together, and then we talk about it. The conversations after are just as important as the films themselves.

Why films? Why now?

The Triangle is one of the fastest-growing regions in the country. We are making decisions right now about land use, infrastructure, density, and who gets to belong that will shape this region for a generation. Most of those decisions are being made quietly, in planning commission meetings and zoning board hearings and development agreements that many residents never see.

Part of our mission at CITYBUILDER is to widen the circle of people who are paying attention. Film is one of the fastest ways to do that. A well-made short documentary can explain in seven minutes what a policy brief takes forty pages to say, and it can make you feel something in the process.

What we’re watching and why it matters

Saga City is an animated short about a fictional town called Colvert that was drowning in the problems we know intimately: traffic, sprawl, heat islands, economic decline, the suffocating logic of car dependency.

And then Colvert decided to do something about it. The community came together, shared a vision, and rebuilt the city through infill development, infrastructure overhauls, transit systems, and suburban density.

The film’s arc is the story of a place much like the Triangle, whose problems can only be solved by changing the status quo.

CNU25.Seattle: Pocket Neighborhoods features architect Ross Chapin walking us through two Seattle neighborhoods built at human scale: small clusters of homes arranged around shared courtyards and garden paths. He talks about what he calls the “gift of constraints”, and about the five layers of threshold between the sidewalk and your front door.

These layers tell you where public space ends and private space begins, creating a community that encourages neighborly interaction. One resident says of Chapin’s neighborhood: “It feels like an oasis.” When you design for people first, at human scale, this is what you get. Most of our zoning codes make it impossible to build like this.

LA’s Forbidden City is a walking tour with urban planner Mark Vallianatos through the duplexes, fourplexes, and bungalow courts of Los Angeles; buildings that Angelenos love, live in, and can no longer build. It is a mystery and a history at the same time. In the 1920s, you could put any housing type next to any other on the same street. By the time parking minimums and setback requirements and density caps worked their way through the code, the most-loved building types in the city were effectively banned.

Here is our plan: at every screening, we want to start building a list of buildings in the Triangle that people love and can no longer legally construct. Raleigh’s forbidden city. Durham’s. Cary’s. Come to a screening and help us start it.

Segregated By Design is the film I most want you to see, and the one I find hardest to describe without getting angry all over again. Richard Rothstein, author of “The Color of Law,” narrates a fast-moving motion design film about how every major American metropolitan area became segregated — not by accident or individual bias, but by the deliberate, explicit policy of the federal, state, and local governments.

It explores the New Deal housing policies that demolished integrated neighborhoods to build segregated ones. You’ll learn about the United States Housing Authority’s first target city, Austin, Texas, where they planned to relocate every African American in the city to a specific designated area, closing schools and libraries based on skin color. The Federal Housing Administration’s insured loans — available to white families, denied to Black families, with deeds that prevented resale across racial lines. Redlining. Blockbusting. Slum clearance. State-sponsored violence.

And then this: the slums were not created by the people who lived in them. They were created by targeted government policy that forced overcrowding, withdrew public services, and then allowed white homeowners to look at the conditions and conclude that this was a characteristic of the community rather than a product of the government that engineered it.

Rothstein’s closing argument is that if we recognized that segregation is unconstitutional, we have an obligation to remedy it completely. That is not a comfortable conclusion, but it is a necessary one. I want us to watch this together and talk about what it means for our Triangle, for the maps of our own neighborhoods, for whose name is on the deed.

Before | After is one minute and forty-five seconds long, and it will make you want to call your city council member. It’s a collection of street transformations around the world, captured on Google Streetview by the team at Urb-i: car-dominated roads redesigned for people, with paint and bollards and bike lanes and benches where parking spaces used to be. It’s simple, direct, and inspiring. Cities on every continent are doing this. We have no excuse not to join in.

Come to one. Come to all three.

These screenings are held around the triangle. They’re at great venues: Fullsteam ATC in Durham, Hearsay in Cary, Trophy Brewing in Raleigh. They’re family-friendly with activities for kiddos. Drinks are available. The format is relaxed.

But these screenings are not passive. After we watch these films, we’ll talk about what they mean for housing in the Triangle, about the history underneath our neighborhoods, and what’s actually within reach for our region.

This summer sits between where we’ve been and where we’re going. CITYBUILDER is hosting YIMBYtown 2026 at the Raleigh Convention Center this November — a national pro-housing conference that will bring together advocates, planners, builders, and policymakers from across the country. This film tour is how we prepare for that. It is how we deepen the community that makes a conference like YIMBYtown worth attending.

Come watch. Come talk. Come build it with us.

Dates & Locations

June 25, 2026, 7-9pm · Fullsteam ATC · 320 Blackwell St #101, Durham

July 22, 2026, 7-9pm · Hearsay, A Cocktail Bar · 317 W Chatham St, Cary

August 26, 2026, 7-9pm · Trophy Brewing & Taproom · 656 Maywood Ave, Raleigh

All screenings are $10 and open to the public. Presented with Better Cities Film Festival and Southern Urbanism.

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.

Illinois Eliminates Parking Minimums Near Transit

Illinois’ People Over Parking Act took effect on June 1st, eliminating parking minimums around transit corridors and hubs across the state.

The impact: According to housing advocate Micheal McLean, an estimated 781 square miles of Illinois are now exempt from municipal parking minimums. This includes a majority of the city of Chicago.

Transit triumph: Specifically, the law exempts from parking minimums any development project within one-half mile of a public transportation hub or one-eighth mile of a public transportation corridor. Check out just how big that area is using this map from Chicago Cityscape.

Closer to Home:

NC Parking Reform Makes it Through Senate Ag Committee

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When most people think of real estate development, they picture big.
Big buildings. Big investors. Big cranes. Big risk.

But some of the most powerful, community-centered work in real estate doesn’t happen on that scale. It happens on a small lot, with a local builder, a pencil sketch, a tight budget, and a whole lot of vision.

That’s the space I’m stepping into, and I believe it’s the future.

What Is Incremental Development?

Incremental development is about building at the neighborhood scale, not the skyscraper scale.

It’s duplexes, fourplexes, ADUs. It’s renovating the upstairs unit in a corner store. It’s turning a vacant lot into a walk-up triplex. It’s small apartment buildings that don’t need a parking garage or a multimillion-dollar bond.

It’s also:

• Slower

• More intentional

• Easier to blend into existing communities

• Often led by people who live nearby or grew up down the street

This kind of development used to be normal. It’s how many of our historic neighborhoods were built. But over the last 50+ years, zoning laws, financial systems, and development culture have made it harder and harder to build small.

Why It Matters

Big development has its place. But big developers often don’t touch neighborhoods unless the profit margins are high enough. That leaves a gap, and that gap creates disinvestment, vacancy, and lost potential.

That’s where small-scale, incremental developers come in.

We can:

• Activate neglected lots

• Fill housing gaps that big developers overlook

• Work faster and more flexibly

• Prioritize quality of life over unit count

• Build with the community, not in spite of it

And most importantly: we can reflect the values and needs of the neighborhoods we’re part of.

This is a guest post by Desmond Dunn, originally published on The Emerging Developer.

But Let’s Be Real….It’s Hard

This path isn’t easy.

If you’re not already wealthy or well-connected, becoming a small developer takes hustle, creativity, and a deep understanding of risk. You’re often fighting the same battles big developers fight, just without the deep pockets.

The system isn’t really designed for us:

• Construction costs are high

• Zoning can block the kind of buildings we want to build

• Financing is harder to access when your deal is “too small” for banks

• And technical expertise is locked behind gatekeepers

But I believe that’s exactly why this work is worth doing, and worth fighting for.

This Is Where I’m Planting My Flag

I didn’t come into this world with a real estate pedigree or a family legacy in construction.

I came in with questions, curiosity, and a desire to build something that made sense for our communities, Black communities, working-class communities, communities that have been left out of the big plans and passed over by the big money.

I want to build housing that’s rooted in dignity, good design, and long-term impact.

And I want to bring others along, because we need more small developers. People who can walk into a neighborhood, see its strengths, and build in a way that adds, not erases.

Let’s Build the Future…Lot by Lot

Incremental development isn’t about fast wins or flashy headlines.

It’s about staying power.
It’s about trusting process over pressure.
It’s about reclaiming the power to shape where we live, one property, one block, one neighborhood at a time.

I’m still learning. Still connecting dots. Still figuring out where I fit in.

But I’m in this for the long haul.

If you’re in this space, or thinking about entering it, I’d love to connect. Drop a comment or send me a message. Let’s build this movement from the ground up.

Desmond Dunn is a husband and father of two, building a path in small-scale real estate development. He’s an emerging affordable housing developer and an Urban Design and Development Consultant at r.plan, focused on projects that strengthen underserved communities like Southeast Raleigh through good design and real community benefit.

More by Desmond Dunn:

The United States has a waste problem.

Each year, our country generates approximately 292 million tons of municipal solid waste (MSW). That’s about 4 pounds per person, per day.

But what our cities and towns pick up from your curb is just one piece of the picture.

An even larger waste stream comes from the built environment. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, more than 600 million tons of construction and demolition waste (CDW) are generated each year.

CDW are the materials generated during the construction, renovation, repair, and demolition of buildings, roads, and other structures. That includes a whole bunch of stuff: concrete, asphalt, lumber, drywall, metal, brick, glass, plastics, roofing materials, and even organic matter like trees and vegetation cleared during development. Globally, construction and demolition activities account for about one third of all waste generated. Demolition activities alone account for over 90 percent of that total.

While some of these materials are recycled, much of their value is lost. Concrete is frequently crushed into aggregate, wood is chipped or burned for fuel, and many reusable materials are simply buried in landfills. Although some components are directed toward a “next use,” true material reuse remains relatively uncommon, and millions of tons of valuable resources continue to be discarded every year. The result is increased pressure on landfill capacity, continued demand for virgin raw materials, and avoidable greenhouse gas emissions associated with manufacturing replacement products.

A major reason for this wasteful outcome lies in how buildings are typically removed at the end of their service life. Conventional demolition prioritizes speed and short-term cost savings. Heavy machinery can reduce a building to rubble in a matter of hours, but the process is inherently destructive. Materials become mixed together, contaminated, or broken beyond repair. Valuable lumber, architectural elements, doors, windows, fixtures, and structural components that could have been reused are ruined in the process.

Demolition also creates significant environmental and community impacts. Dust, noise, truck traffic, and debris can affect surrounding neighborhoods for days or weeks. Once materials have been crushed and mixed together, separating them for recycling or reuse becomes labor-intensive and expensive, creating a strong economic incentive to simply landfill the debris.

Deconstruction offers a fundamentally different approach.

Rather than tearing a building down as quickly as possible, deconstruction carefully dismantles structures piece by piece to maximize the recovery of reusable materials. Often described as “construction in reverse,” the process prioritizes salvage before disposal. Doors, windows, flooring, cabinetry, dimensional lumber, fixtures, bricks, and even structural elements can be removed intact and prepared for reuse in future projects.

The environmental advantages of deconstruction are substantial. Each salvaged material represents resources that do not need to be extracted, processed, manufactured, and transported again. Reusing existing building materials preserves their embodied carbon (the emissions already invested during their production) and helps reduce the climate impact of new construction. Deconstruction also significantly reduces the volume of waste sent to landfills, extending landfill lifespan and reducing the ecological impact associated with waste disposal.

The benefits extend beyond environmental gains. Because deconstruction relies on skilled labor rather than heavy machinery, it creates more local jobs than traditional demolition. Material recovery, sorting, resale, and reuse industries all generate economic activity while supporting the growth of a circular economy.

Recognizing these benefits, a growing number of cities are beginning to require deconstruction and stronger construction waste diversion practices. One of the most ambitious examples can be found in Boulder, Colorado. In 2020, Boulder adopted a deconstruction ordinance that applies to both residential and commercial buildings slated for removal. The ordinance requires buildings to be deconstructed rather than conventionally demolished, establishes a minimum diversion target of 75 percent of building materials by weight, and requires extensive documentation of material quantities. Since implementation, the program has diverted millions of pounds of material from landfills and has become a national model for circular construction practices.

Other cities across the country, including Portland, Palo Alto, Pittsburgh, and San Antonio, have implemented similar requirements that prioritize deconstruction and material recovery over demolition.

These requirements exist in North Carolina, though not to the same degree. Statewide CDW is required to be source separated, meaning that waste must be sorted by material prior to disposal at a licensed CDW management center or landfill.

Chapel Hill and Orange County have some of the most intense municipal CDW recycling requirements in the state. Their Regulated Recyclable Material Ordinance requires that every demolition project have a waste management plan in place, and structures larger than 500 square feet must be assessed for material recyclability and reuse potential in order to get a demolition permit issued.

This ordinance also requires that all clean wood, scrap metal, and corrugated cardboard be recycled, and increases landfill tipping fees (the actual cost to throw things away) for mixed demolition waste.

The biggest barrier to large scale building deconstruction is how buildings are currently designed. Many of the most common construction details are extremely difficult or nearly impossible to efficiently deconstruct.

In commercial construction, this challenge is particularly evident in the widespread use of cast-in-place reinforced concrete. Cast-in-place concrete is valued for its strength, durability, and flexibility in design, but these same characteristics make it extremely difficult to recover for reuse. Once concrete is poured around reinforcing steel, the two materials become permanently integrated. During demolition, the concrete is typically broken apart using heavy machinery and the embedded rebar becomes bent, damaged, and contaminated. While the resulting material can often be crushed and used as aggregate, the original structural components are lost forever.

Alternative construction methods can significantly improve deconstructability without sacrificing structural performance. Precast concrete systems, for example, consist of individual components manufactured off-site and assembled using mechanical connections. These components can usually be removed intact, repaired, and reused in future projects. In addition to improving material recovery, precast construction can reduce construction waste, improve quality control, and shorten on-site construction schedules. Similar opportunities exist with modular construction systems, bolted steel framing, and other assembly methods that prioritize reversibility rather than permanence.

Residential buildings present a different set of challenges. Although wood-framed houses contain many materials with high reuse potential, they are often assembled using nails, adhesives, sealants, and composite products that make separation labor-intensive. Structural lumber may remain in excellent condition after decades of service, but extracting it without damage can be difficult when framing members are tightly nailed together. Engineered wood products, laminated materials, and modern composite assemblies further complicate recovery because individual layers cannot easily be separated for reuse or recycling.

These challenges have led architects, engineers, and sustainability advocates to promote a concept known as Design for Deconstruction (DfD). Rather than treating a building’s end of life as an afterthought, DfD incorporates future disassembly into the design process from the very beginning. Buildings are designed using standardized components, mechanical fasteners, accessible connections, and modular systems that allow materials to be removed, repaired, replaced, and reused.

The idea is simple: buildings should be viewed not as disposable products but as temporary assemblies of valuable materials. Just as manufacturers increasingly design products for repair and recycling, the construction industry can design buildings for eventual disassembly and material recovery. By considering a building’s entire lifecycle, from construction to deconstruction, communities can dramatically reduce waste generation, preserve valuable resources, and move closer to a truly circular built environment.

Join Our Policy Talk

📅 Tue Jun 16th 12:00pm - 1:00pm
📍 Virtual on Google Meet

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.

Paige Kanipe is an architectural designer and recent graduate of the North Carolina State University Master of Advanced Architectural Studies program. Her research focuses on sustainability, circular construction, and the integration of Design for Deconstruction principles into the built environment.

Australian Housing Minister Issues Call To Build More Density

Danger down under: It’s not just America that faces a massive housing shortage, Australia is staring down a growing supply gap of hundreds of thousands of homes. During a speech at the National Press Club, the country’s Housing Minister, Clare O’Neil said:

“We need to build more dense cities in our country, full stop. […] For the first time, people are making the connection between the housing development down the street from them, and the capacity of their children to get into a home of their own. And that’s a connection that needs to be made.”

Anglosphere ailments: Housing shortages are currently hitting English-speaking countries much harder than other nations. As this graph from the Financial Times illustrates, The U.S., U.K., Australia, and more have experienced lower rates of housing growth than their European and East Asian peers.

Read more

Across the country and throughout North Carolina, people are struggling with rising housing costs and population growth, coupled with the growing imperative to create more sustainable communities. In Raleigh, one of the most promising solutions is surprisingly small: Accessory Dwelling Units, better known as ADUs.

Sometimes called backyard cottages, granny flats, carriage houses, or garage apartments, ADUs are small, secondary homes on the same property as an existing residence. They can take the form of a detached backyard home, an apartment above a garage, an in-unit (often basement) conversion, or an addition attached to the primary house.

For decades, these kinds of homes were heavily restricted or outright illegal in Raleigh and many American cities. But Raleigh’s recent reforms have helped change that. Today, the city is becoming a leader in showing how ADUs can support affordability, sustainability, and neighborhood evolution, and possibly help welcome some of our neighborhood NIMBYs into the YIMBY movement.

ADUs can help people rethink what housing growth and new neighbors actually look like. They have the power to turn skeptical, even long-time homeowners into active participants in solving the housing shortage. While ADUs won’t solve the housing crisis on their own, they are an integral part of the solution.

Raleigh’s ADU Policy

In 2020, Raleigh adopted major zoning reforms that expanded where ADUs can be built, and simplified the process for homeowners interested in adding one to their property. The city now allows ADUs in many residential zoning districts, including areas traditionally reserved for single-family homes. In some designated transit corridors, homeowners may even be allowed to build two ADUs on a single lot.

The city’s reforms removed barriers that had historically made ADUs difficult to build. For example, Raleigh no longer requires additional parking for ADUs, allows multiple forms of ADU construction, and created a Fast Track program featuring pre-reviewed building plans to help streamline approvals. While these innovations aren’t without issue, ADUs are indeed being built.

These policy changes may sound technical, but they represent a major shift in how we’re thinking about growth. Instead of concentrating all new housing into large apartment buildings or sprawling suburban development, Raleigh is embracing small-scale additions that fit naturally into existing neighborhoods.

By no means is this a silver bullet solution to our current housing crisis. But with ADUs, neighborhoods can welcome new residents while becoming more flexible, inclusive, and resilient.

ADUs are the Multi-Tool of Alternative Housing Typologies

For individuals in our area fortunate enough to already own a home, ADUs can create much needed flexibility. ADUs can house aging parents closer to their adult children, adult children closer to their aging parents, in-home caregivers, rent-paying tenants, and out-of-town guests. No one can deny that a family’s needs evolve over time, and ADUs are a great way to allow their property to evolve with them.

For renters, ADUs can create smaller and often more affordable housing options in neighborhoods where few apartments exist. This can be especially impactful in older neighborhoods that may already have good access to transit, education, and employment. For homeowners, ADUs can provide financial stability through rental income.

In cities, ADUs can generally increase housing supply without requiring major infrastructure expansion, because they’re built on existing lots that are already serviced by roads, sidewalks, utilities, parks, etc. In greenfield developments, the cost to add utility services can contribute to the costs of new housing overall.

The City of Raleigh has specifically highlighted the usefulness of ADUs in providing senior homeowners with more opportunity to age in place, saying: “[ADUs] provide aging homeowners the opportunity to move into a smaller, more accessible home in their backyard while retaining their larger, main house for family or renters. This is often referred to as ‘aging in place.’”

This level of flexibility was denied to homeowners before the recent reforms.

Sustainability Grows in the Backyard

ADUs are also one of the most environmentally sustainable forms of housing that cities can encourage. Their smaller size, in-town location, and proximity to existing infrastructure and services make ADUs a vital part of our sustainable development toolkit.

Smaller Homes, Smaller Footprints
The average ADU is significantly smaller than a conventional single-family home. While the median size of a new single-family home sold in 2024 was 2,210 square feet nationally, typical ADUs come in at between 450 and 800 square feet.

From an efficiency perspective, smaller home builds require fewer construction materials. Structurally, smaller homes require less energy to heat and cool, meaning that ADUs produce fewer emissions than single-family homes.

Reducing Sprawl
The zoning mandates implemented nationwide in the last century encouraged the development of neighborhoods that consisted exclusively of single-family detached homes. This inflexible system meant that new housing could only be accomplished by building ever outward, creating a pattern of sprawl.

When new housing is forced beyond the urban core, growth spreads into farmland, forests, natural spaces, animal habitats, and previously undisturbed lands. And it’s not just the land for the house and neighborhood itself that disturbs the natural environment. Fresh suburbia requires new roads, additional utilities, and expanded infrastructure, all of which take up previously unspoiled space.

If destroying nature weren’t enough, suburban development locks its residents into a lifestyle fully dependent on cars to access any non-home-based recreation, employment, services, or activities. Most suburbs were developed without any option for residents to utilize alternative modes of transportation, such as walking, biking, or transit.

In contrast, ADUs help cities absorb growth more sustainably by allowing more people to live within areas that are already served by infrastructure. Rather than forcing development farther away, ADUs create incremental housing growth close to jobs, schools, transit, and amenities.

Yes! In My Backyard!

For many homeowners, supporting more housing abstractly can feel uncomfortable. People worry about parking, traffic, unfamiliar faces, noise, light, and the ever ill-defined “neighborhood character”. But ADUs make housing growth local, personal, and palatable; backyard cottages aren’t built by large-scale developers, they’re built by our neighbors, and built by us.

When you or your neighbor builds an ADU, the whole neighborhood is shown that growth doesn’t mean destruction. Likewise, our nation’s housing shortage stops being a massive, intractable issue and instead becomes a challenge that we can help solve by saying yes in our own backyards.

Join Us for an ADU Training and Tour on June 6!

CITYBUILDER is thrilled to be partnering with WakeUp Wake County and RaleighForward, through an Impact Partner Grant from the City of Raleigh, to host an ADU Professional Training and Sustainability Home Tour. For anyone interested in learning more about ADUs in Raleigh, RSVP and plan to join us on Saturday June 6. These events are free and open to both professionals and members of the public.

RSVP for ADU Training

RSVP for ADU Tour

For many people, seeing ADUs in person is transformative. These homes are often beautifully designed, compact, efficient, and seamlessly integrated into existing neighborhoods. They demonstrate that adding housing can enhance communities rather than diminish them.

Raleigh’s ADU reforms are about more than backyard cottages. This policy represents a new way of thinking about growth that is incremental, sustainable, people-centered, and adaptable. Raleigh is proving that ADU reform helps build a more flexible future, one small home at a time.

Charlotte Chapman is the Executive Administrator of CITYBUILDER.

Happy Summer CITYBUILDERs!

We’re looking forward to a season full of sunshine and more ways to connect and build the pro-housing community together!

This summer, we’re putting our usual Book Club on hold. (We’ll be back in September with Stuck: How the Privileged and the Propertied Broke the Engine of American Opportunity by Yoni Applebaum if you want to get a head start on reading.)

In lieu of our Book Club, we’re thrilled to announce a 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.

Our first movie night is June 25th at the new FullSteam Theater in the American Tobacco Campus. Tickets are available now. Join us in Durham in June, Cary in July, or Raleigh in August. We can’t wait to see you there!

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For our June Policy Talk, we’re excited to showcase the work of Paige Kanipe. Paige is a recent graduate of North Carolina State University with a Masters of Advanced Architectural Studies. Her graduate thesis work focused on how buildings can be deconstructed rather than demolished in order to preserve building materials and reduce construction waste. Join us for a virtual lunch and learn on June 16th to learn more about this innovative, sustainable approach to building.

And if you haven’t already, be sure to sign up to join us this weekend for a tour of ADUs in Raleigh! We’re excited to celebrate and show off what’s been built since Raleigh passed groundbreaking reforms in 2020 to allow ADU construction by-right in the city. Come see the progress we’ve made!

We can’t wait to see you there; happy summer y’all!

Charlotte Chapman
Executive Administrator, CITYBUILDER

ICYMI - SIGN UP NOW FOR YIMBYTOWN!

Be an Early Bird for YIMBYtown 2026!

Registration for YIMBYtown 2026 is LIVE! Get your Early Bird tickets now at yimby.town.

JUNE EVENTS WITH CITYBUILDER

ADU Professional Training
Saturday June 6th • 9:00am - 12:00pm
AIA Triangle • 14 E Peace St, Raleigh
RSVP for the Training

Join us for a morning of learning and conversation in this workshop introducing architects and builders to ADU design, permitting, and sustainable construction methods enabled by Raleigh’s 2020 ADU reforms.

Continuing Education credits available. Breakfast will be served.

ADU Sustainability Tour
Saturday June 6th • 1:00pm - 5:00pm
RSVP for the Tour

Join CITYBUILDER and our friends from RaleighForward and WakeUP Wake County for our first ADU tour around Raleigh. We’ll visit ADUs in an open-house style, discovering new builds and design practices that were enabled by Raleigh’s 2020 ADU reforms.

Please note: the rain date for the ADU Sustainability Tour and the ADU Professional Training is June 20, 2026.

Summer Film Tour - Durham!
Thursday June 25th • 7:00pm - 9:00pm
Fullsteam Theater American Tobacco Campus • 320 Blackwell St, Durham
RSVP & Tickets

Join us for the premier 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.

POLICY TALK: Building Deconstruction not Demolition with Paige Kanipe
Tuesday June 16th • 12:00pm - 1:00pm
Please RSVP for this virtual talk

Did you know - 600 million tons of construction and demolition waste are produced in the US annually? Learn how we can recycle and reuse buildings through deconstruction rather than demolition to reduce waste while providing materials for building to build more sustainably.

Join us to hear more from Paige Kanipe, recent graduate with a Masters of Advanced Architectural Studies from the NC State School of Architecture.

House Passes Improved ROAD To Housing Act 396-13

Back again: Last week, the House voted to pass the improved ROAD to Housing Act, notably stripped of its previous anti-Build-to-Rent provisions that would have eliminated ~10% of the nation’s yearly housing stock increase (that’s about 70,000 homes).

Senate rematch: Now the amended bill heads to the Senate. Suggesting that further negotiations lie ahead, Senators Tim Scott and Elizabeth Warren said in a joint statement: “There’s still work to be done and we are committed to continuing to work with the White House and our colleagues in the House on a housing bill that can pass the Senate and get to the President’s desk.”

Closer to Home:

Raleigh Council Approves Placing Housing & Transit Bonds on Ballot

Read more

CITYBUILDER readers know that housing is quickly taking center stage as a key political issue in North Carolina. Local governments have been slow to address many of the fundamental obstructions to more robust, affordable, and sustainable communities as our state continues to grow (though there have been positive steps in recent years). After several fits and starts, an array of proposals are either currently being considered by the North Carolina General Assembly, or soon will be.

But this week, we have a new entrant into the Housing Policy Thunderdome (er, I mean, wonderful, not at all dysfunctional exercise in democratic self-governance): Governor Josh Stein!

On Tuesday, May 19^th, Governor Stein signed Executive Order 36: “Increasing Housing Opportunities for All North Carolinians.” In outlining his rationale for the order, the Governor hit all the housing sweet spots: North Carolina’s 764,000 home shortage, the rapidly expanding gap between wages and housing affordability, infrastructure and workforce needs, an aging housing stock, diverse housing needs across different demographics – the hits.

As the Governor said, “you all have heard the expression ‘if you build it, they will come’, well, as it turns out in North Carolina, if you do not build it, they will still come”. Core message of the day: North Carolina is booming, and we need more housing.

However, for me, the most exciting element of this order is the fundamental recognition that state agencies have a role to play in solving this challenge, and they need to work together to do it.

What does the executive order do?

First, I want to take a moment to express appreciation for the work that goes into getting a new, cross-agency EO ready for primetime. I served as Climate Change Policy Advisor to Governor Cooper over the last couple years of his administration, so I was able to get a look behind the curtain; boss signed 330 EOs over his 8 years, so he had some experience in this department. It is no easy task, so I want to commend Governor Stein and his team for taking a hard swing at addressing this issue in a comprehensive way!

Okay, that being said, what does this thing actually do?

Section 1: Establishes a new Senior Advisor for Housing in the Office of the Governor

This sounds like a small step, but trust me when I say this is vital!

Often, policy advisors will act as the central point person with a specific agency. In other cases, such as with my former role as Climate Change Policy Advisor, they work with several agencies that each touch on parts of an issue, but don’t necessarily “own” it.

This position seems to be similarly situated, as well as being a member of senior staff. This speaks to the prioritization of housing as an issue moving forward. Unlike other states, North Carolina does not have a muscular housing-focused entity at the state level beyond the NC Housing Finance Agency (“NCHFA”). The people at NCHFA do great work with the mandate they have, but it is not within their charge to address the myriads of underlying policy influences that impact housing production.

This means that for the first time, there will be someone specifically tasked with seeing how all the pieces of the bigger picture fit together. Governor Stein also brought in a heavyweight in Janneke Ratcliffe, who was most recently Vice President at the Urban Institute, a premier national leader on housing policy. Her entire focus will be devoted to working across agencies and issue areas, breaking through silos, and reforming policies and incentives created by agencies that often are blind to how they influence where and what we are able to build.

In the Governor’s Office, with limited time and too many problems, personnel truly is policy, and Janneke Ratcliffe is good personnel.

Section 2: Efficient Deployment of State Resources Through Technology and Data

The title of this section reads pretty boring, but that masks its importance. This is the meat of the order, outlining the expectations of various agencies to work with each other and the new Senior Housing Advisor.

Some particularly notable elements related to community design and land use decisions include the following (emphasis my own):

All agencies shall work with NCHFA to “…increase efficiencies in small-scale projects to enable more participation by small developers.”

This is an explicit acknowledgement of the value of small-scale projects and developers. Spotlighting projects that do not receive the same benefits through public subsidies and face structural disadvantages is a vital first step to developing the wider variety of housing types that North Carolinians need. I discuss this issue and much more in a North Carolina Housing and Transportation Roadmap that I developed last fall.

“…explore the development of integrated housing information platforms to streamline data across jurisdictions and address critical inputs like zoning, infrastructure capacity, transportation, permitting, and market feasibility.”

How this provision is implemented will be key, but creating easy to navigate platforms will help local governments (particularly smaller communities with less resources) adopt best practices. Also, by linking these elements together, the Governor is showing that his administration understands how these elements all collectively impact what types of communities actually get built and where.

“…directs DOT to explore metrics for transportation project impacts on community connectivity, housing availability, and local economic benefits and to collaborate with local planning organizations and community-based organizations to support transit-oriented development, locally driven housing development, and local connectivity” and “directs DOT to incorporate Complete Streets guidance into project design to the maximum extent feasible to support community connectivity, safety, and housing access.”

Personally, this is the provision I am most excited about after spending two years working with NCDOT on clean transportation priorities. The extent to which the agency sees its role as simply mitigating problems downstream of causes beyond its control without recognizing its role as an active player in shaping community design was… eye-opening, to say the least.

This directive flips that perspective on its head.

The Governor is directing NCDOT to take a harder look at the impact of its infrastructure decisions on surrounding local communities, what types of community design decisions they lead to, and the importance of connected, safe, and community-oriented streets in creating the conditions necessary to build more homes of all types in the state. However, from my experience, the Governor’s team and advocates will have to stay on top of this to make sure that NCDOT actually adopts the deep reforms needed to give this some teeth (more on that below).

“directs DEQ to work with the Senior Advisor and state agencies to advise on the use of the Flood Resiliency Blueprint and other natural hazard risk data (e.g., landslide, wildfire), drinking water and wastewater treatment system capacity, stormwater, and water allocation limitations that may impact development patterns for new housing.

This provision is good, but I would like to see it go further. Land use needs to be more affirmatively incorporated into resilience planning, rather than simply using resilience tools to advise housing policies. How I like to think about this is by treating resilience planning as a two-sided coin.

On one side, you mitigate harms: restrict building in rapidly expanding floodplains and areas under threat from wildfire; improve building standards to better withstand increasingly severe storms; implement impervious surface restrictions; invest in stormwater runoff capture, green infrastructure, and natural floodplain restoration, etc.

Okay, back to the resilience coin. On the first side you have harm mitigation. On the other side you incentivize better outcomes: remove parking mandates that lead to more impervious surfaces, allow (and encourage) greater density in safe areas, improve land use and transportation systems to reduce expanded development pressure into floodplains and natural land.

In my opinion, NCDEQ, as well as many of my friends in the climate and environmental community, have not taken the second side of the coin seriously enough. This is not necessarily borne out of opposition to the ideas, but because acting on them often involves scrambling long-hardened political coalitions, employing strategies outside of areas of traditional expertise, and accepting sometimes unavoidable local environmental trade-offs. However, restricting buildable areas without allowing for increased flexibility in safe areas to offset it creates housing supply imbalances and untenable political realities, inevitably resulting in pressure to roll back environmental protections, causing poorer outcomes for everyone.

Bringing NCDEQ into a conversation on resilience and development patterns could be a great opportunity to advance further discussion in this area, but it will require intentionality, and will need to be leveraged properly.

Additional important provisions in this section include instructions to the NC Department of Health and Human Services to streamline existing government programs and integrate new data tools to better serve individuals suffering from mental health and substance abuse disorders, those with intellectual disabilities, and underserved populations that are often systematically excluded from affordable housing opportunities. All of these are critical advancements and will surely pay dividends for cross-agency cooperation and more efficient data sharing, and deliver greater assistance to those most in need!

Section 3: Further Integrate Housing Initiatives at Department of Commerce.

The final section of this order focuses on the Department of Commerce. Although I believe there is much more that can be done to leverage the Department’s resources to incentivize additional local reforms, it is heartening to see that Commerce is taking a prominent role given the importance of housing affordability in continuing North Carolina’s recent economic growth.

Most provisions in this section are high-level and focused on typical Commerce functions, such as providing greater assistance to local governments and housing non-profits, and advancing workforce development priorities in housing-related trades and professions. All good, if a bit devoid of details.

However, the final provision in the order caught my attention.

Commerce is directed to “give housing creation and support significant weight in the process for nominating eligible census tracts to the U.S. Treasury to be designated Opportunity Zones.”

Like others, how this section is implemented will be key, but to me, this opens the door to Commerce taking a much closer look at the housing policies of local communities and leveraging the possibility of federal investment to incentivize further reforms. Given the likelihood of upcoming federal housing legislation that incorporates new considerations for local zoning and real-time housing supply improvements when determining certain federal awards, this is a very smart move if implemented proactively.

Final Thoughts

This is an exciting executive order with a ton of potential, but its success is entirely dependent on how deep the administration digs and how far they are willing to push agencies to think in new ways. Pushing forward legislative reforms is still vital, and if implemented correctly, this executive order has the potential to accelerate the impacts of reforms.

The Governor has jumped into the fray, but it will be on all of us to push for the reforms we need and deserve.

Conor Mulderrig is an Independent Clean Energy, Housing, and Transportation Policy Consultant in Durham, NC. Previously he served as Climate Change Policy Advisor to Governor Roy Cooper where he worked to advance cleaner buildings, transportation systems, and land use reforms. He also served as Special Advisor for Clean Energy Deployment and Resilience at the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, Resilience Liaison to the Governor’s Recovery Office for Western North Carolina, and most recently was an Infrastructure Fellow for Arnold Ventures Philanthropies.

New York Times Shows How Restricting Housing Drives Up Prices

What happened: On May 18th, the New York Times published an interactive map of housing costs relative to area median income across the United States. When paired with graphs like the one above, the trend is clear: cities that allow more housing to be built have lower housing costs than cities that limit home construction.

Consistent findings: This NYT analysis joins the mountain of evidence that increasing housing supply is the most important factor in lowering rents and home prices. Explore the map here.

Closer to Home:

Governor Stein Signs Executive Order on Housing Solutions

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Max Podemski’s A Paradise of Small Houses describes how nine different American cities each developed their own archetypal housing typology. We’ve got Boston, Manhattan, and Philadelphia in the east, but also New Orleans, Chicago, and Portland, with postwar contributions from Los Angeles, Vancouver, and Houston. Each of these cities have, at different times and in different contexts, faced the same problem: how to house an influx of workers using the tools, techniques, trades, and materials at hand.

The stories of how homes within these cities evolved tells us a lot about the broader North American society that shaped them. As Winston Churchill said, “We shape our buildings — and thereafter our buildings shape us.” No building shapes our society more than the home.

For CityBuilder’s readership, A Paradise of Small Homes begs the question: what will our region’s contribution be to a future edition of this book? As residents of cities that are growing exponentially in the 21st century, who will build our housing, at what scale, and under what regulatory regime? Our metro area’s growth has occurred almost entirely after the era of small builders that Podemski observes. Most Triangle residents live in large subdivisions or apartment blocks. Recent reforms offer us a chance to craft a new “small house” typology that suits our needs.

The Missing Middle

Podemski’s core conclusion is that solving the housing crisis requires not just large-scale development but small-scale urban home-building, carried out by local businesses and families drawing on regional design traditions. Podemski focuses on specific housing types in each city (shotgun houses in New Orleans, bungalows in Portland, triple-deckers in Boston) and details how each one was shaped by circumstances unique to those cities at those times.

Details like typical lot width, what size of lumber was available, and the arrival of immigrant laborers all contributed to creating semi-industrialized assembly lines that churned out new houses by the thousands. Trying to re-create those specific houses today requires the impossible: re-creating the circumstances around their original construction.

The most obvious change since those days has been the introduction of zoning and building codes. Indeed, the book offers numerous tales of how cities tailored codes precisely to correct what were seen as deficiencies in local building practices. This usually resulted in over-regulation, which put an end to the construction of housing types that are cherished today.

Podemski and the Triangle’s present challenges

Philadelphia was once celebrated as “the city of homes”, and Podemski shows how small builders and ordinary families democratized the construction of the city. And even though Philadelphia-sized houses are now legally permissible to build in parts of Raleigh, actually getting that permission remains a daunting process.

Up north, Boston’s triple-deckers were a marvelous wealth-building ladder for generations of immigrants (including my grandmother), who could occupy a fraction of the building as household needs grew or shrank, while also renting out apartments to cover the mortgage. Of course, one man’s treasure is another man’s trash: surrounding suburbs implemented classist zoning, and the state intervened with fire codes that banned triple-deckers. Yet multigenerational households like my grandmother’s have only grown in number, and their needs are one reason why accessory dwelling unit (ADU) reform continues to spread, especially in diverse suburban landscapes like Cary.

Houston’s townhouse reforms date back to the 1990s, but point the way for other growing Sunbelt metros. Space City’s simple changes to minimum lot sizes produced enormous quantities of fee-simple attached housing at price points well below what neighboring metros could deliver. Raleigh has recently embraced infill townhouses, and other Triangle towns should take note.

What’s next for the Triangle

The Triangle is one of the fastest-growing metros in the country, having added millions of residents just in my lifetime. It could accommodate future growth by deregulating small-scale infill, or try to further channel it into large planned developments. Podemski gives pro-reform planners a historical and aesthetic vocabulary to argue that denser, smaller housing isn’t radical or out of character; it’s actually what cities looked like before zoning and building codes eliminated it. To guide Raleigh’s housing future, we should take a page from other cities’ pasts.

Join CITYBUILDER Book Club

📘 A Paradise of Small Houses by Max Podemski
📅 Thu May 28th 12:00pm - 1:00pm
📍 PRESS Coffee Crêpes Cocktails
400 Hillsborough St suite 108, Raleigh, NC 27603, USA
👉 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.

Payton Chung, LEED AP ND, is a developer and author who writes about the interrelated crafts that build cities: architecture, development, finance, landscape, planning, and transportation. He has written for the Urban Land Institute, Greater Greater Washington, the American Institute of Architects, Streetsblog, and the Congress for the New Urbanism. He is a Cary native and currently working on transit-oriented residential developments in the Triangle region of North Carolina.

Read more by Payton Chung:

Today, Raleigh City Council will hold a public hearing on the proposed 2026 Housing and Transportation Bond referendum packages. Let’s dive right in:

What’s in the Bond Proposals?

The current draft that Raleigh City Council will be looking at today proposes:

• $101.5 million for affordable housing investments

• $101.5 million for transportation and mobility improvements

According to the proposed ballot language, the bond package at its current size is not expected to increase the city’s property tax rate dedicated to debt service.

The housing portion would fund affordable housing development and preservation, homebuyer assistance, homelessness response, and a mixed-income revolving loan fund designed to attract additional outside investment and accelerate housing production.

The transportation portion moves beyond just traditional road spending, to include:

• sidewalk expansion

• bike infrastructure

• Vision Zero safety projects

• neighborhood traffic calming

• greenway and connectivity improvements

• Bus Rapid Transit related infrastructure

• implementation funding for Raleigh’s Active Mobility Plan “Big Jump”

That “Big Jump” implementation alone includes more than 5 miles of new sidewalks and 50 miles of high-comfort bikeways over five years.

CITYBUILDER supports moving the bonds forward.

Some advocacy groups are now arguing the housing bond should be substantially larger, and are encouraging Council to delay or rethink the proposal. This is the wrong approach.

Raleigh absolutely should continue pushing for larger housing investments over time. The city will likely need additional housing resources in the future as the affordability crisis continues.

But there is also a recurring pattern in Raleigh politics where the moment a meaningful housing proposal becomes politically achievable, some groups pivot from demanding action to arguing the proposal should be bigger, slow down, or worse. We saw this same dynamic during the 2020 housing bond debate, when some groups argued the affordable housing bond should be larger, only to later oppose the bond entirely.

Thankfully, voters moved forward anyway, with 72% voting FOR the last bond.

Raleigh Forward recently published a clear explanation of why the question facing Council is not simply “how big can the bond be,” but how Raleigh should structure long-term housing investments in a way that can actually “be deployed effectively and sustained over time”:

RaleighForward on Balancing Urgency With Long-Term Fiscal Stewardship

In recent weeks, news outlets have reported that several advocacy groups are urging Raleigh City Council to consider a significantly larger affordable housing bond for the November 2026 ballot. Some suggest a bond closer to $200 million, which is roughly double the $101.5 million housing bond currently under discussion as part of a broader capital package that also includes transportation investments.

The motivation behind these calls is understandable. Raleigh’s housing affordability challenges have intensified alongside rapid population growth, and the demand for assistance continues to outpace available resources. But the central policy question facing Council is not simply how large a housing bond should be. The more consequential issue is how Raleigh should structure its housing investments so they can be deployed effectively and sustained over time.

…

Raleigh’s housing challenges are real and growing, and the City has an important role to play in addressing them. But effective housing policy requires more than large funding commitments. It also requires a financing strategy that aligns with how housing development occurs. The steady state bond approach under discussion represents an effort to enhance fiscal discipline as Raleigh deals with the same fiscal stress other cities are facing due to macroeconomic headwinds, not to mention state and federal budget cuts. Not only is this approach fiscally sustainable, but a more frequent, predictable investment cycle also allows developers, staff, and funding partners to plan more effectively. Within that framework, Council retains flexibility to adjust the size and structure of each housing bond. However, the larger goal remains: to implement a bond financing strategy that is not only ambitious and more effective, but predictable and durable enough to sustain progress over the coming decades.

Dive deeper into the housing bond components over at RaleighForward, where this was originally published.

Transportation is Affordability Infrastructure

Affordability is not just about housing production in isolation. Transportation costs matter too.

For decades, America’s answer to affordability has been “drive until you can afford housing.” But that model simply shifts costs from rent to transportation. Families end up spending thousands more per year on cars, fuel, insurance, maintenance, and long commutes.

Safe sidewalks, bike connections, transit infrastructure, and walkable communities are affordability infrastructure too. CITYBUILDER believes that walkable urbanism is how we build a sustainable future. This is part of why we support Raleigh’s current combined housing and transportation investment approach.

A city cannot seriously address affordability while ignoring transportation costs, unsafe streets, disconnected sidewalks, or the lack of mobility options outside of driving everywhere.

The reality is that housing progress in Raleigh has always depended on broad coalitions. Pro-housing advocates, transit supporters, environmental groups, urbanists, neighborhood organizers, affordable housing providers, and mobility advocates all need each other if we want to build a more affordable and connected city.

Splitting these coalitions apart over an “all or nothing” strategy risks ending up with neither.

This bond package is not a permanent solution to Raleigh’s housing crisis. But it is real funding for real projects that can move forward this fall.

Today’s public hearing is where City Council decides whether these bonds move forward to voters this November. So those of us who support more housing and better mobility infrastructure need to be visible today.

Public Hearing Information

📍 Raleigh City Council Chambers, 222 W. Hargett St.
🗓️ Tuesday, May 19th
⏰ 1:00 PM

More Info

CITYBUILDER encourages supporters to email City Council in support of the Housing and Transportation Bonds and to attend the hearing in person if possible. Wear green, or throw on your CITYBUILDER or YIMBY gear so supporters can easily identify each other in the room.

More housing is good. Building together is better.

This sketch by Léon Krier identifies the ideal urban space as a product of the marriage between public and private realms. Krier invites us to ponder how walkable streets lined with shops and housing support the public monuments that draw residents into shared spaces.

Lessons from Léon: Krier on North Carolina is our series honoring Léon Krier (1946–2025), applying his human-scale sketches to the future of the Triangle.

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Improved ROAD to Housing Act Set for Vote

A better bill: Yesterday, the House Financial Services Committee reached a bipartisan agreement to pass an upgraded version of the ‘21st Century ROAD to Housing Act’, which passed the Senate in March.

Senate shortfalls: The Senate’s version of the bill contained a provision that would effectively halt the construction of build-to-rent housing in America, eliminating at least 70,000 new housing units per year (~10% of total housing construction).

House improvements: The new House version of the bill doesn’t contain the provisions eliminating build-to-rent, which is a major win for housing advocates. The bill still contains a ban on “large institutional investors” (companies that own more than 350 single-family homes) buying additional single-family homes. However, this ban is not expected to significantly depress housing construction.

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Housing policy in North Carolina is often framed as a purely local issue. It’s easy to see why: cities, towns, and counties each control zoning, development approvals, parking requirements, and other rules that shape what gets built in our communities.

But the reality is that local governments operate inside a framework heavily shaped by state law. The North Carolina General Assembly determines which tools local governments are allowed to use, what restrictions they can impose, and how development regulations are structured in a Dillon’s Rule state. Recently, the legislature has started to identify where statewide standards could and should override fragmented local rules that make housing harder to build.

Over the past several years, some North Carolina municipalities have begun experimenting with reforms aimed at allowing more housing choices, supporting infill development, and modernizing outdated development standards. A few places have legalized missing middle housing, removed parking mandates, allowed ADUs, and encouraged mixed-use districts and faster approval processes.

Progress built this way is naturally uneven.

In many places, even small-scale housing is still burdened by overlapping regulations, excessive parking requirements, complicated approval systems, infrastructure limitations, and development standards that make incremental housing financially difficult to deliver. Communities that want to allow more housing still struggle to navigate these layers of conflicting rules and procedural barriers.

That is why state-level housing reform matters.

Done well, statewide reforms can simplify the rules, expand local flexibility, reduce unnecessary barriers, and create a more predictable environment for homeowners, housing developers, and community growth.

To the NC legislature: we have some housing reform goals for this 2026 short session.

The session may be “short,” but legislators still have plenty to accomplish. As lawmakers continue negotiating the state budget and broader policy priorities through the coming months, active conversations around major issues, including housing, are happening behind the scenes.

Bills that crossed over remain eligible to move. Existing legislation can still be amended. Policy ideas that never passed as standalone bills can still become part of larger negotiations as the session continues.

As housing advocates, local leaders, and community members, it’s important to stay engaged and continue pushing for reforms that make it easier to build more homes across North Carolina.

Here are our CITYBUILDER state-level housing priorities:

Pass Practical Parking Reform (HB369)

HB369 is one of the most important housing reform bills still moving this session.

At its heart, this bill is both a housing affordability bill and an anti-flooding bill.

Across North Carolina, small developers, churches, business owners, and property owners are routinely forced into impossible site design tradeoffs. Local parking mandates require large amounts of paved surface area, while stormwater and impervious surface regulations simultaneously penalize excessive pavement coverage. The result is often fewer homes, smaller buildings, more expensive projects, or small commercial projects that never move forward at all.

HB369 would begin to address that imbalance by reducing excessive parking mandates while encouraging stronger stormwater outcomes on development projects. While the bill may continue evolving through committee discussions and amendments, the overall direction is good for housing affordability, small businesses, incremental development, and community growth across North Carolina. We explored this bill in more detail in our parking piece last year, and organizations like the Parking Reform Network continue to document how excessive parking mandates raise costs nationwide.

📧 Now is the time to email, call and talk to members of the Senate State and Local Government Committee and ask them to support HB369.

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Legalize Taller Single-Stair Buildings

Single-stair reform is one housing policy we remain especially excited about advancing in North Carolina.

CITYBUILDER has partnered with Single Stair NC over the past year to advance conversations around modernizing NC’s building code to allow taller single-stair apartment buildings with updated life safety standards. These building types are increasingly being explored across the United States because they allow more flexible apartment layouts, more family-sized units, and smaller-scale apartment buildings on urban infill sites.

During last year’s long session, SB492 from Senators Moffitt and Mayfield directly proposed modifying North Carolina’s building code to allow taller single-stair apartment buildings. While the bill did not ultimately cross over, we hope lawmakers continue looking for opportunities to incorporate similar provisions into broader housing and code reform discussions this session. The bipartisan federal Road to Housing Act also touches upon single-stair reform, reflecting growing national momentum around building code modernization and small-scale apartment housing.

Allow Housing Near Jobs (By-Right in Commercial Areas)

In many North Carolina communities, it is still illegal to build housing in areas zoned for commercial activity, even when those sites already have roads, utilities, and infrastructure in place.

Many aging commercial corridors and oversized parking lots are well positioned for homes, apartments, and mixed-use neighborhoods, yet outdated zoning rules still separate housing from jobs, retail, and daily life. Allowing housing by-right in these areas would support corridor revitalization, reduce approval uncertainty, and create more opportunities for incremental development and mixed-use communities.

Last year’s SB499 proposed allowing housing by-right in many commercial zones across North Carolina. We hope lawmakers continue advancing similar reforms this session.

Allowing more housing on commercial corridors and underutilized parking lots would help communities grow gradually while making better use of existing infrastructure that we’ve already built and paid for.

Expand Small Lot Freedom

Many communities say they want more housing choices, incremental growth, and opportunities for homeowners to add small-scale housing. But in practice, minimum lot sizes, minimum home size requirements, infrastructure limitations, and other technical barriers still make that difficult to accomplish.

Lawmakers and local governments alike should continue simplifying these barriers by:

• removing unnecessary minimum lot size requirements for ADUs

• removing minimum primary home size requirements

• reducing barriers to cottage courts and small-lot housing

• allowing private water and sewer connections across property lines through easements

These kinds of reforms make it easier for homeowners, small builders, and families to gradually add housing within existing communities instead of forcing growth outward.

Expand By-Right and Administrative Approvals

If housing is legal to build, it should be possible to actually get approved.

Too many communities still rely on lengthy discretionary approval systems that create delays, uncertainty, and unnecessary costs, especially for small-scale housing and infill projects. Large national developers may be able to absorb years of delay and carrying costs. Oftentimes, small local builders cannot.

Communities and lawmakers should continue modernizing development approval systems by:

• expanding administrative approvals for code-compliant projects

• creating clearer review timelines

• reducing duplicative approval processes

• expanding exempt plat and minor subdivision allowances

• creating more predictable pathways for small-scale infill development

When local approval systems become too complicated, expensive, or unpredictable, pressure for broader state-level intervention will continue to grow. Simpler and more predictable rules benefit everyone.

Continue Supporting Affordable Housing Funding

Housing reform is not only about reducing barriers and modernizing regulations.

Communities across North Carolina also need continued investment in affordable housing production and financing tools.

There are several housing funding bills moving this session that would help expand affordable housing construction and close financing gaps for projects across the state, including workforce housing, affordable rental development, and homeownership opportunities. We appreciate our friends at NC Housing Coalition for leading on these efforts.

We are encouraged by the ongoing bipartisan conversations around housing affordability and production. North Carolina’s housing challenges are too large for any single policy solution, and long-term progress will require both regulatory reform and strategic housing investment.

Carolina Forward recently highlighted several of these housing funding bills.

Housing policy work does not happen all at once, and it rarely happens at only one level of government.

Some of the ideas above are active legislation already moving through the General Assembly. Others are policy concepts we believe lawmakers, local governments, and advocates should incorporate wherever possible. Meaningful housing reform is often incremental, built piece by piece through zoning changes, code updates, infrastructure policy, funding tools, and development process reforms working together over time.

And honestly, that’s part of why I keep pushing on this work.

There is no single bill that “solves” housing. There is no one city that gets everything right. The work is continuous and layered.

Local governments need to keep modernizing their policies, and the state needs to keep stepping in where outdated rules and fragmented systems are making it unnecessarily difficult to build homes, support small businesses, and grow communities incrementally. If we want stronger and more affordable communities across North Carolina, housing policy has to keep moving forward at every level at once.

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.

Back in March, I had the opportunity to sit down with Melanie Rausch, a Transit Planning Manager for the City of Raleigh. Melanie has been with the City for four years, where she’s worked on Raleigh’s burgeoning Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) program. To kick off our discussion, I wanted to know more about the projects she worked on before joining the BRT team:

“I’m proud of getting our real time information into the transit app. I also started the effort to get our real time information into Google Maps. I pushed to get that real time information out there. So many people have smartphones now, and being able to look at your smartphone and see where your bus is or when it will arrive provides a sense of relief and comfort that improves the experience and encourages using public transit.”

Her team is currently guiding Raleigh’s BRT project through its first phase of construction along the New Bern Avenue corridor. The BRT program will connect Cary, Garner, North Raleigh, and East Raleigh through four different routes. I used our discussion to learn more about how the City pays for transportation projects, why BRT is one of the most exciting new developments happening in the City of Oaks, and how our transit systems are linked to virtually every aspect of city planning.

This piece was written by Elijah Geist, a CITYBUILDER student fellow. Each semester, CITYBUILDER provides fellowship opportunities for aspiring student urbanists in the Triangle.

Our first topic of discussion was the Wake Transit Plan, which was originally adopted in 2016 and amended in 2021 and 2025. I asked Melanie about the significance of the plan and what it means for her department’s work:

“The Wake Transit Plan is significant for a lot of reasons. Mostly because the 2016 plan introduced the ½ cent sales tax dedicated to increasing funding efforts for public transportation. When it comes to public transportation projects, some transit agencies receive more funding from their state than others, so having that ½ cent sales tax helps Wake County supplement funding.”

“From a more public-facing perspective, prior to the Wake Transit Plan, Raleigh only had three high frequency bus routes, which means there were only three bus routes with a frequency of 15 minutes or less. Now, we have 11 routes that fall within that threshold. The Wake County Transit Plan has improved results through collective action on a county and local municipal level. I always recommend looking at the National Transit Database (NTD) if you’re someone interested in understanding the funding behind transportation planning.”

The original transit plan was developed with 4 principles in mind: 1) Connect the Region, 2) Connect All Wake County Communities, 3) Create Frequent, Reliable, Urban Mobility and 4) Enhance Access to Transit. At CITYBUILDER, we focus heavily on land use, so I wanted to know what implications these transit principles have for land use in the Triangle Area:

“There is this author I really enjoy, Jarrett Walker. He wrote a book that I’ve read multiple times. It’s called Human Transit, and the second edition specifically highlights the intersection between transportation planning and land use planning, and how policy decisions affect both. It explains how transit, housing, and land use coincide in more ways than one. The way that location affects costs can encourage important destinations to be spread out. It is not intentional — it’s simply a side effect of current development practices.”

The team behind the BRT project is working hard to ensure that transportation and land use are not siloed. Instead, transit staff are taking a more holistic approach to project development: focusing on making public transit easier to access, more reliable, safer, and more convenient than ever before. I asked Melanie what makes BRT so special compared to other transit projects:

“BRT is taking routes that have been identified as having high demand and high transit propensity, and we’re essentially trying to “beef it up”. We’re trying to build stations that provide a similar service to rail, but without all of the associated costs.”

“These include things like level boarding — which speeds up the boarding process and makes it more accessible — as well as transit signal priority (TSP), queue-jumps, dedicated bus lanes along sections of the corridors, 10-minute frequency, increased span of service, stops at every station, and the addition and improvement of pedestrian facilities.”

You can read more about transit propensity and how it is used to identify communities with mobility needs here.

Let’s break down the features that Melanie mentioned: Queue jumps allow buses to skip through traffic by optimizing when the BRT loads passengers or moves through an intersection. Transit Signal Priority (TSP) either provides longer green lights or shorter red lights based on BRT movement. When a transit service like BRT receives signal priority through TSP or queue-jumps, this is called transit preferential treatment.

In addition to preferential treatment, BRT will provide sheltered stations with ample seating and lighting, fully integrated real-time arrival displays, ticket vending machines, public art installations, and improved pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure in the surrounding areas.

Reducing road congestion is a common priority for local governments. In American cities, almost all trips (92%) take place by car. Because of this, many residents have trouble seeing the value in public transportation investments, especially residents who don’t use public transit themselves. I asked Melanie how she felt about this reasoning:

“You know how the phrase goes, “build it and they will come.” That same concept can apply to investing in public transit. The more time and resources we spend investing in our transportation networks, the more likely people are to use them. When more people use public transit, the number of cars on the road decreases. With the BRT program, we are trying to make a viable transportation alternative in the Triangle.”

There’s also a logical reason for residents concerned about traffic to support public transit. The concept of induced demand explains that when the number of lanes on a road is increased, an equally proportionate number of vehicles will end up using that road in the future. Basically, more people will start driving, or they’ll drive more, so traffic won’t actually decrease. You can’t just build your way out of bad traffic, you have to find alternatives that actually incentivize use by making non-car travel easier, safer, and more convenient.

Throughout my life, I’ve lived in places with limited access to public transit. I grew up in a low-income household that was less concerned with pedestrian infrastructure and more concerned with paying the bills. I never really gave it much thought until I went to NC State and got my first exposure to density and walkability. It wasn’t until that experience that I realized pedestrian infrastructure, public transit, and walkability can help with “paying the bills” — driving less puts gas money back into pockets and saves us time along the way. I think this is the case for most people in the Triangle. I asked Melanie if she relates to some of the apprehension people feel towards “new” transit projects:

“I know it can feel a bit strange or intimidating to invest in something you haven’t experienced before. Trying to assess value can be even more challenging. It doesn’t help that narrative building has been working against public transportation in a lot of ways. We’re trying to flip that perception.”

Raleigh is joining a number of cities in the Southeast that have BRT: In Richmond, VA, they have PULSE BRT, and in Atlanta, GA, they have MARTA BRT. Within the last few years, Richmond approved the Sauer Center — a 37-acre mixed-use residential development that will include diverse housing options, retail, public space, and other amenities, all built along the middle portion of the city’s BRT line. In September of 2025, the City of Atlanta began accepting proposals for constructing an 11-acre residential development along the MARTA BRT corridor.

I wondered if Melanie envisions Raleigh’s BRT encouraging similar large-scale investment along the underserved corridors where it’s currently being constructed:

“Absolutely, and that’s the goal. The City’s Comprehensive Plan identifies Frequent Transit Corridors and encourages density along those routes. That’s part of the BRT’s goal, to attract investment in these communities.”

“Businesses feed off of each other. Hillsborough Street is a corridor in Raleigh that radiates from Downtown without becoming a challenging environment for pedestrians. It maintains a mix of land use types and diverse transportation options. BRT and similar projects aim to provide other corridors with the same opportunity to become a destination.”

To close out our conversation, I wanted to know if transportation networks had impacted Melanie’s life in a meaningful or memorable way:

“Definitely. I have always centered my housing choices around transportation. My parents believed in living close to where you work, so we lived in areas with lots of employment opportunities. Today, I always try to live within a couple miles of where I work. I recently moved and I made sure I still lived near a 15-minute route connected to where a lot of my friends live.”

Build public transit, and they will come.

Be sure to check out the most recent updates on Raleigh’s Bus Rapid Transit here.

This piece was written by Elijah Geist, a CITYBUILDER student fellow and current graduate student at the UNC Department of City and Regional Planning.

Housing Progress is Climate Progress

A new report from the Sightline Institute has laid out the path for climate advocacy under a federal government hostile to environmental protections: fight for housing reform.

The stats: Sightline cites numerous statistics to show that legalizing missing middle housing and apartments reduces greenhouse gas emissions. One example: According to an analysis by RMI, if all states legalized more compact, walkable housing forms, the reduction in carbon emissions achieved by 2033 would be equal to if half of all states adopted a 100% electric vehicle sale mandate (aka, banned new gas-powered cars from being sold).

What that means: Direct support for climate action is unlikely to come from the federal level for several years. In the mean time, climate activists should advocate for more apartments, more walkability, and denser urban areas.

Read Sightline's Report

Closer to Home:

Raleigh City Council Wavers on Housing

What happened: In this election year, rezonings have gotten interesting. Case in point: three recent rezonings along Trailwood Dr. show how varied housing votes are right now in Raleigh. Similar proposals, same corridor, same council, but different outcomes and different voting coalitions each time.

Read more

Raleigh has begun opening the door to missing middle housing.

We’re seeing more conversations and more permits around ADUs, duplexes, and townhomes. That matters. That’s real progress.

But if we’re being honest, something about the conversation still feels incomplete.

Because there’s a whole range of housing types between a single-family home and a large apartment complex, and we’re only beginning to tap into it.

As a kid, I used to ride my bike down Raleigh Blvd, usually coming from the Boys and Girls Club. I would pass by 1950 N Raleigh Blvd all the time and never gave it a second thought.

Years later, I find myself driving past that same property and asking a question.

Why aren’t there more of these?

A six-unit building, built in 1984, sitting on about a quarter acre. Nothing flashy. Nothing out of scale. Just a small apartment building that fits into its surroundings.

The more I think about it, the more it feels like proof.

Proof that the next chapter of missing middle housing in Raleigh has been here the whole time.

Townhomes, duplexes, and ADUs are important tools to end the housing shortage, but they’re just the beginning.

There’s an opportunity to expand our definition of middle housing to include fourplexes, small 6–10 unit apartment buildings, and even neighborhood-scale 10–20 unit developments. Not as a replacement, but as the next layer.

Because if missing middle stops at adding one or two units at a time, we’re only scratching the surface of what’s possible.

What’s interesting is that Raleigh already has examples of this kind of housing scattered throughout the city.

In older neighborhoods like Five Points, Boylan Heights, Mordecai, and parts of Southeast Raleigh, you’ll find small multifamily buildings that have been part of the fabric for decades.

Four units. Six units. Sometimes more.

They don’t stand out as disruptive. They don’t feel out of scale. They just feel like part of the neighborhood, and most people don’t think twice about them.

That’s the point.

By allowing 4 to 20 unit buildings in Raleigh’s neighborhoods, we aren’t introducing something new. We’re just recognizing what was once commonplace.

There’s a wide range between a single-family home and a 200+ unit apartment building.

And right now, we’re barely using it.

Not because it doesn’t work, but because we haven’t fully allowed ourselves to.

A fourplex on a standard lot can look and feel like a large home. A 6–10 unit building is often just two or three stories, similar in height to many of the houses being built today.

And a 10–20 unit building can still feel neighborhood-scale when it’s designed with intention, especially when it includes walkable layouts, shared green space, and thoughtful massing.

This isn’t about inserting large buildings into small neighborhoods.

It’s about allowing more flexibility within the scale that already exists.

Raleigh is growing.

That growth is putting pressure on housing prices, restricting land availability, and determining who gets to stay in the communities they’ve been part of.

If we want to respond in a meaningful way, we don’t just need more housing.

We need more ways to build housing.

Smaller-scale multifamily, especially in the 4 to 20 unit range, creates more attainable entry points for residents, more flexibility in how sites are used, and more opportunities for incremental, neighborhood-based growth.

And just as important, it creates space for smaller, local developers to participate in shaping the city.

This isn’t theoretical.

In places like Pasadena, small courtyard-style apartment buildings in the 10–20 unit range are some of the most desirable housing in the city.

Not because they’re large, but because they strike a balance between density and livability. That same balance is possible here.

As we think about expanding into this range, there are a few systems that will need to evolve alongside it.

Zoning and entitlement pathways.
Financing tools for smaller projects.
Appraisal and valuation approaches.
Predevelopment support for emerging developers.

These levers shape what gets built and what doesn’t.

Raleigh is in a position that a lot of cities wish they were in.

We’re growing. We’re attracting people. And we still have the ability to shape how that growth shows up in our neighborhoods.

If missing middle housing stops at duplexes and ADUs, we’re only scratching the surface of what’s possible.

The real opportunity is in the layer just beyond that.

And the question isn’t whether it works.

The question is whether we’re ready to treat it like it belongs.

Desmond Dunn is a husband and father of two, building a path in small-scale real estate development. He’s an emerging affordable housing developer and an Urban Design and Development Consultant at r.plan, focused on projects that strengthen underserved communities like Southeast Raleigh through good design and real community benefit.

More by Desmond Dunn:

Happy May CITYBUILDERs!

It was a busy April, and and there’s even more in store for May! You can find all the CITYBUILDER events, plus events by local friends and allies at the CITYBUILDER event page!

In April we were excited to join with allies from throughout the housing advocacy spectrum (from direct service providers to elected officials) at the North Carolina Housing Coalition Legislative Lobbying day to speak with our representatives about the importance of funding and supporting housing in North Carolina. It was inspiring to connect with so many people doing this important work.

This past month we had the pleasure of connecting with pro-housing advocates from across the Triangle. We saw our friends from the Sierra Club at RaleighForward and WakeUp Wake County’s earth day event, where one tree-expert panelist stated that density is the most important thing we can work towards if we want to preserve and promote tree canopy.

Last month we held our first Virtual Walkthrough Policy Talk with Steve Wilk at Loft3 in Raleigh. We were excited to showcase their innovative design and building methods used in this housing built with inclusionary zoning. (You can read more about the project here.)

And this past Friday, we were thrilled to host a lunch celebration for the final review of NC State Architecture School’s Single Stair Studio course. Local advocates and elected officials joined us in celebrating the work of these students, whose designs explored what we could build if we were to legalize this innovative yet traditional building form. (Learn more about the benefits of Single Stair reform and how you can support at Single Stair NC).

For May, we are excited to share several events by our friends and allies. The Durham Community Land Trustees are celebrating 50 years this Spring with their Bringing Durham Home Gala event on Saturday May 16th. The DCLT continues to be a vital force in creating permanently affordable homes through the land trust model.

Over in Orange County, the Chapel Hill Community Land Trust also serves to provide affordable homes in a land trust model. You can register for a bus tour of their neighborhoods happening this Thursday May 7th. More information and registration at their website.

Later in May, the Home Builders Associations of Durham, Orange & Chatham Counties are continuing their 2026 Housing Summit Series with an event exploring how development math actually works; Making the Math… Math. This working session is built around a simple premise: public and private sectors are partners in housing, and we get better results when we understand each other. CITYBUILDERs get 50% off their registration with the code CITYBUILDER.

And of course, CITYBUILDER is continuing to host our Policy Talk and Book Club series. At our May CITYBUILDER Book Club, we’ll be discussing A Paradise of Small Houses by urban planner Max Podemski. This book traces the history of the dense, affordable, urban housing that was built in our great cities in the past, and how we could build this way again today to tackle the housing crisis.

For the CITYBUILDER Carolina Policy Talk this month we are thrilled to be joined by Stephanie Watkins-Cruz, Director of Housing Policy at the North Carolina Housing Coalition, Theo Nollert, Chapel Hill Town Councilor and Director of Policy at Carolina Forward, and David Crawford, Executive Vice President of AIA North Carolina to discuss the Legislative Agenda for their orgs during this short session.

If that’s not enough, May is also National Bike Month! The City of Raleigh and Oaks and Spokes each have a robust lineup of events, Durham is hosting their annual Bike Stampede, Cary is hosting Bike Bingo all month, Carrboro is hosting events all month including a Cinco de Mayo ride, Chapel Hill also has a lineup, including a Bike-Themed movie in the park (it’s E.T.) As we published recently, bike advocates must advocate for land use reforms if we want to make a meaningful impact on safety. Read more in the latest VERBATIM piece.

If you haven’t yet come to an event, May is a great time to show up for housing! It’s been great getting to know many of the repeat-attendees. Thank you and we look forward to seeing you again, or for the first time, real soon.

Thanks everyone!

Best,
Charlotte Chapman
Executive Administrator, CITYBUILDER

CALLS TO ACTION

Watch This Space! Rezonings & Legislation will Need Your Support

There are several housing projects throughout the Triangle that may (or may not) end up before Planning Commissions and City Councils in May, plus pro-housing legislation that could end up before the legislature. Continue to subscribe to CITYBUILDER updates, including our weekly CITYBUILDER Brief (paid subscribers only) for updates about when to show up and where.

Be an Early Bird for YIMBYtown 2026!

ICYMI - YIMBYtown 2026 is coming to Raleigh in November! Registration opens this week. Be the first to find out early-bird registration launch, speaker topics, and hotel blocks by signing up for updates at yimby.town

MAY EVENTS WITH CITYBUILDER

CITYBUILDER BOOK CLUB:
A Paradise Of Small Houses: The Evolution, Devolution, and Potential Rebirth of Urban Housing by Max Podemski
with Payton Chung

Thursday May 28th • 12:00pm - 1:00pm
PRESS Coffee, Crêpes & Cocktails • 400 Hillsborough St, Suite 108, Raleigh

Join us for our monthly book club. This month, we’ll be discussing Max Podemski’s A Paradise Of Small Houses: The Evolution, Devolution, and Potential Rebirth of Urban Housing with discussion led by Payton Chung, LEED AP ND.

This book explores the history of diverse, small-scale urban housing types, arguing that reviving typologies such as bungalows and row houses is a practical, human-scale solution to the modern housing affordability crisis.

Our discussion lead, Payton Chung, is a developer and author who writes about the interrelated crafts that build cities: architecture, development, finance, landscape, planning, and transportation. He has written for the Urban Land Institute, Greater Greater Washington, the American Institute of Architects, Streetsblog, and the Congress for the New Urbanism. He is a Cary native and currently working on transit-oriented residential developments in the Triangle region of North Carolina. Payton is also a CITYBUILDER board member and regular contributor.

Reading the book is never required, but always encouraged. Come discuss the themes and enjoy lunch from Press. CITYBUILDER will buy you the (non-alcoholic) beverage of your choice.

CITYBUILDER POLICY TALK: Into to NC’s 2026 Legislative Session with Stephanie Watkins-Cruz, Theo Nollert, and David Crawford

Thursday May 21st • 12:00pm - 1:00pm
Please RSVP for this virtual talk

Join us for our May CITYBUILDER Carolina Policy Talk where we will be joined by three change makers to discuss what’s coming up for housing in the short legislative session this year.

We’ll be joined by Stephanie Watkins-Cruz, Director of Housing Policy at the North Carolina Housing Coalition, Theo Nollert, Chapel Hill Town Councilor and Director of Policy at Carolina Forward, and David Crawford, Executive Vice President of AIA North Carolina to discuss the Legislative Agenda for their orgs during this short session.

Register to join this virtual call where you can learn more.

ALLIED EVENTS

CHAPEL HILL COMMUNITY HOME TRUST: Neighborhood Tour

Thursday May 7th • 3:00 PM
Registration at the Link

Join the Chapel Hill Community Home Trust on a Neighborhood Tour more about the communities where CHT residents live and see some examples of our homes for yourself. The neighborhood tour lasts approximately two hours and starts with coffee and conversation at our office. Space on the bus is limited and registration is required.

DURHAM COMMUNITY LAND TRUSTEES: Bringing Durham Home 50th Anniversary Gala

Saturday May 16th • Registration at the Link

The Durham Community Land Trustees are celebrating 50 years this Spring with their Bringing Durham Home Gala event on Saturday May 16th. The DCLT continues to be a vital force in creating permanently affordable homes through the land trust model.

HBA OF DURHAM AND ORANGE COUNTIES: Housing & Development Summit: Making the Math...Math

Wednesday May 27th • 8:00AM - 12:00PM
Register Now and get 50% off with code CITYBUILDER

The Home Builders Associations of Durham, Orange & Chatham Counties are continuing their 2026 Housing Summit Series with an event exploring how development math actually works; Making the Math… Math.

This working session is built around a simple premise: public and private sectors are partners in housing, and we get better results when we understand each other.

CITYBUILDERs get 50% off their registration with the code CITYBUILDER. More information and registration.