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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Will Council stick the landing?

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

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

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

• Planning Commission legislative hearing: scheduled for October 6

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

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

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

Speak in Support of Chapel Hill’s New LUMO Draft

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

Martin Johnson is a housing advocate based in Chapel Hill.

The context

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But much of the public opposition went somewhere else entirely.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Housing assistance is not a character trait.

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

“Is Stormie here?”

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

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

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

“Please do not put this in my neighborhood.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“It saved our life.”

Carla Liberatore offered a very different story.

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

Liberatore later became a successful financial adviser.

Today, she lives in Lochmere.

Her story should make the danger of these stereotypes obvious.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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A long time ago in a galaxy far far away… before exclusionary zoning became the norm in America post WWII, single room occupancy (SRO) was a common type of housing. Think of these units as smaller, simpler apartments: an individual rents a private room but shares kitchens and bathrooms with neighbors.

SRO housing can range from a guest bedroom rented out of a large single-family home, to a dorm-style boarding house that provides a cheap housing option for single adults, to repurposed office buildings with private rooms and shared amenities.

Unfortunately, in the Triangle SROs are mostly illegal. As part of the late 20th-century wave of zoning in America, SROs were outlawed or regulated into oblivion, and with them the cheapest housing available disappeared.

SROs provide a number of unique benefits:

• SROs are often the cheapest non-subsidized housing you can find. Median rents for SROs were historically hundreds of dollars lower than apartments of even modest size.
• They work for a surprising variety of people: students, young workers, folks in between jobs, single adults, and anyone who just doesn’t need a giant apartment.
• They can unlock existing housing capacity by using spare rooms and underused buildings without spending billions in subsidies.

Raleigh and Durham (like most growing cities) have a housing shortage and an affordability problem. We build lots of big, expensive living options, but the lower rungs of the housing ladder are sparse. Markets work when they offer a range of choices. Right now in Durham, SROs are only allowed without a special use permit on college campuses and in the downtown core. Raleigh has a strict occupancy restriction that sets a limit of 4 unrelated persons per “dwelling.” This effectively outlaws any sort of SRO outside of a specific “Co-Living” zoning district. So while SROs are not technically outlawed entirely, in both cities the regulatory environment eliminates their use outside of student dorms and other specific circumstances.

This is a complete shame. There’s already housing stock sitting unused or underused in many cities. The law shouldn’t force it into inactivity. Durham is in the process of rewriting its zoning code (an effort that’s currently paused). When that process resumes, Durham has a golden opportunity to make SROs an integral part of our housing market once again.

Currently the R-D and RX districts in the proposed zoning code (now called the LDC) are intended to permit various forms of buildings while limiting the density of different neighborhoods to different levels (I would encourage you to check out the draft materials). My proposal is to add specific language to the RD/RX districts that includes all the standards of the proposed RD/RX district, and allows for SRO arrangements without special use permitting. Removing this regulatory barrier will allow the flexibility of SROs to flourish and pay dividends to our housing market. I would encourage the UDO to adopt occupancy standards in line with the Fair Housing Act, along with reasonable environmental and health standards. What’s important is that one doesn’t need to apply for a special permit to take advantage of SRO housing options.

SRO setups would flourish along our transit corridors, near mixed-use districts in and around downtown. Allowing SROs is a form of upzoning, but one that doesn’t involve massive high rises, it is effectively a “gentle” density, legalizing a long lost form of housing that will help us in the 21st century.

With respect to Raleigh, they should ditch the odd “4 unrelated persons” rule for occupancy, take SRO out of a special zoning district, and add SRO to existing residential districts. SROs should be treated as a normal, viable form of housing.

For more info on policy proposals, especially those that could legalize SROs statewide, check out this model legislation from Institute for Justice.

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

Hopefully you all had a chance to skim my take on Governor Stein’s Executive Order 36: “Increasing Housing Opportunities for All North Carolinians.” But if not, the tl;dr is: North Carolina is growing, we need more housing, the Governor gets it, and this EO has potential!

That last part is what I want to discuss today. This EO is just the first step, and its level of impact hinges on how agencies implement it. As I mentioned last month, I saw firsthand how this process typically worked under Governor Cooper for this type of EO: the Governor’s team and agency policy leads work together to craft a policy vision, draft the EO language, and then collaborate to implement that vision through changes to policies and programs controlled by each agency. However, the final result of that effort is highly dependent on a few factors:

1. How much internal buy-in within agencies is there for the policy change?

Yes, state executive agencies report to the Governor, who appoints agency leaders, but these leaders — particularly those that may not have come directly from internal ranks — rely on permanent civil servants throughout state agencies for guidance. And they should! Many of these folks were there before this administration and will be there after, doing the work, executing an already long list of priorities with limited resources.

However, this can mean that sometimes new top-down directives and processes are looked at with wariness, out of completely legitimate concerns about overstretching or reallocating these limited resources. If a new policy initiative is grown internally and/or agency staff are excited about it, ideas will naturally be more ambitious, face less skepticism, and progress more efficiently. But if seen as just another new task being forced upon staff without a clear articulation of how they fit into the vision, it’s going to take a little more pressure, time (often unavoidably at the expense of other important problems), and high-level engagement to drive things forward. This makes cross-cutting challenges like housing and land use policy that don’t “live” anywhere at the state level (outside of the NC Housing Finance Agency’s important, but limited financing mandate) particularly difficult to tackle.

I could see agencies needing a little extra pressure to really dig deep here.

2. How many internal resources have been allocated to overseeing EO implementation and where is it prioritized?

Building off the previous point, once an EO goes out, Governor’s Office staff must devote limited time to coordinating with agencies, tracking progress, and pushing things forward. The problem is that new stuff happens! As famed philosopher Mike Tyson once said: “everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth”, and no matter how well any administration plans, they’re going to get punched in the mouth. In this case, the appointment of a new Senior Advisor on Housing with the bandwidth to focus on this issue gives me confidence that once that punch comes, this EO at least won’t be forced to the back burner, at least not for too long.

3. How often is the Governor’s Office and agency leadership hearing about it from the outside?

A truth about governing that seems very simple, but I didn’t fully appreciate is this: it is not enough to have internal support for a policy idea. For any initiative to be prioritized at the level necessary to make real progress, political staff must be hearing about it.

The fact that Governor Stein even put forward this EO shows that he knows “housing” is a salient issue. However, as you all know, knowing that “we need more housing” is not the same as knowing that we need the deep and complex reforms to build more supply in high-demand areas, more diverse home types, and the multi-modal and pedestrian infrastructure required for greater incremental density to be practical in the long-run.

This is where housing advocates and the broader CITYBUILDER community can make an impact.

Believe me when I tell you that calling the Governor’s Office main line and voicing support for a new policy or asking about progress makes a big difference. There is always someone answering the phone (when I worked there it was a wonderful woman named Gwen who has more patience than I could ever dream of), tallying how many people call about various issues and relaying to staff when something in particular gets a lot of attention.

Of course this is not the only way to advocate, but the main takeaway is that elected officials are not going to spend the necessary time and political capital on issues that they don’t think are important to their constituents.

What Success Looks Like (To Me At Least)

I spent some time last fall digging into specific ways that agencies could complement priority legislative and local solutions, and really shift how we build in North Carolina. Listed below are some of these recommendations, and specific items that, I think, folks should be pushing for.

NC Department of Transportation

NCDOT is the most consequential in terms of its direct impact on the built environment. NCDOT now operates and maintains over 80,000 miles of roadway, second only to Texas in total miles, with many state highways intersecting urban and suburban communities across the state. The agency also has quite impactful driveway design and permitting authorities that shape the placement and design of schools, homes, and local businesses. As you can imagine, vehicle management and marginal congestion improvements are often prioritized over walkability and considerations for pedestrian improvements.

Transportation decisions shape the feasibility of community design, and the impact of NCDOT decisions on local communities does not stop at large highway or light rail projects — it influences every aspect of building.

Below is a list of reforms that NCDOT can and should be pushed to adopt under current authorities:

#1: Adopt a Context Classification System for roadway design as part of the North Carolina Roadway Design Manual. This should be modeled after Florida DOT’s first in the nation standards creating specific roadway design guidelines based on surrounding land use, including narrower lanes as well as more robust pedestrian and multi-modal considerations in urban and suburban areas. Crucially, this system requires highway engineers to justify wider lane size and increased capacity expansions rather than forcing them to justify reductions and other traffic calming measures as is currently required.

#2: Adopt a statewide 20% reduction target for vehicle miles traveled per capita and incorporate a proposed project’s impact towards achieving this goal into project scoring. Several states across the country already have similar targets. This would help focus investment decisions on systems that are more conducive to needed housing reforms.

#3: When “incorporating all components Complete Streets guidance into project design” as outlined in the EO, NCDOT should explicitly outline a hierarchy of components to be incorporated if a project does not physically allow for all elements. Additionally, it should be explicitly outlined that within urban and certain suburban area classifications and below certain targeted speeds (typically <40 mph), reducing the size and number of lanes should be considered before the elimination of any complete street component unless a roadway is explicitly exempted due to unique circumstances such as heavy freight traffic or other extraordinary, publicly documented considerations.

#4: Reform the Strategic Transit Prioritization (SPOT) Process voting procedures to ⅔ majority rather than current unanimous voting structure for high-level funding allocations by project type where the agency has discretion.

For context: The SPOT process is how NCDOT allocates flexible funding not bound by statute to highway projects (typically around 10% of overall funding levels). Currently, the internal requirement of unanimity across all voting members results in the repeated adoption of outdated allocations that set aside additional highway funding — beyond the 90% already allocated — to satisfy a minority of (predominantly highway engineer) holdouts.

#5: Reform Strategic Transportation Investment (STI) scoring to capture a more comprehensive suite of project costs and benefits along with their impacts on local communities. The EO calls on NCDOT 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”.

A bit of background here: STI scores are the metrics used to evaluate and prioritize projects submitted by local governments and regional planning organizations for NCDOT consideration.

Specific reforms include:

• Incorporate modeled impacts of induced demand into a project’s congestion reduction and freight benefit scores.

• Create a new point category for a project’s impact on state VMT reduction targets and other strategic multi-modal initiatives (post-adoption of reform #2 listed above).

• Rebalance the currently over-indexed value of localized congestion reduction in project scoring and consider dynamic system-wide safety and congestion mitigation benefits for local and regional public transportation projects as part of project scoring. Projects should be credited for local impacts as well as a proportional share of regional impacts if part of a larger planned system.

• Create a new scoring category that incorporates compatibility with local priorities for communities surrounding the project location — include potential impacts to land values, local tax revenue, community connectivity, and the economic benefits or costs seen by local communities.

• Incorporate bonus points for projects in locations that have adopted VMT-reducing land-use and resilient design reforms (e.g. parking, zoning, minimum lot sizes, other reforms targeted at incremental density improvements) into congestion mitigation scoring as these reforms will amplify benefits in those locations, particularly for public transit and multi-modal investments.

#6: Explore new partnerships with local governments to pursue federal USDOT public financing for transit-oriented development projects through the Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act program, particularly along planned S-Line and future expanded Charlotte to Raleigh, Asheville, Winston-Salem, and Wilmington passenger rail routes. This work should build on the impressive “S-Line Mobility Hub” Program run by the NCDOT Integrated Mobility Division.

#7: Introduce a new “community roadway” classification for state highways in urban areas, complete with multi-modal considerations and lower vehicle capacity assumptions. Core considerations on whether a current highway should instead be a “community roadway” should include design speeds (35 mph or lower, unless a designated freight corridor should not receive highway or greater classification); surrounding land use; and whether the classification is compatible with local transportation plans.

#8: Partner with the NC Department of Public Instruction to create revised driveway and roadway standards. Develop new alternative site development guidelines for small-site urban public-school locations (current base guidelines almost entirely assume large-site, car-centered, suburban locations for new schools) that encourage walkability, increased childhood activity, and independence.

NC Department of Commerce

The Department of Commerce facilitates local economic growth through infrastructure grants, business recruitment and incentive programs, planning assistance, and data-driven research. Commerce conducts labor market analyses, publishes vital economic statistics for policymakers, and connects communities to resources that improve their competitiveness.

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Housing unaffordability and increasing commute times are consistently noted as drags on employers’ ability to hire and retain employees throughout the state. Incorporating requirements and incentives for local governments to enact substantive changes to their land use and housing policies as part of various economic development investments would be entirely within the mission of the Department and in line with this executive order.

#1: Create an internal “Division of Housing” modeled after the Washington Department of Commerce’s Growth Management Services that can oversee the integration of housing and land use considerations across all NC Commerce programs and initiatives, coordinate with local governments, and create resources and share best practices across the state.

#2: Develop a list of key priority supply-side housing and land use reforms for local governments to boost economic competitiveness and allow for a small percentage of relevant large infrastructure development funds to be utilized by local governments for local housing and land use planning that incorporates these reforms. Resources should be in the form of model ordinances that could easily be introduced and adopted at the local level, and include, at least, the following:

• Elimination of mandatory parking requirements for new developments and redevelopments (hopefully H162 will take care of this one!).

• Zoning reform to allow duplexes, triplexes, and small multifamily homes within greater amounts of residentially zoned areas.

• Expanded density flexibility and the elimination of proxy density restrictions — reduced FAR, increased height allowances, increased maximum lot coverage percentages, allowance of lot subdivisions, multiple housing units per plat, etc.

• Reduced minimum lot sizes.

• Accessory dwelling unit flexibility

• Allowance of residential development in commercially zoned areas

• Reduced setback requirements.

• Stormwater management requirements that are solely based on impervious surfaces and water quality/flooding impacts, not home type.

#3: Develop suggested pre-approved site plans for local governments to adopt as part of their ordinance planning processes. Early NC actors like Durham’s EHC and Raleigh’s preapproved ADU designs should be used as examples as well as others from across the country.

#4: Integrate considerations for local housing and land use policies into evaluation criteria and competitiveness factors for the One North Carolina Fund. Considerations should include available local housing supply, presence of prioritized local policies that allow for housing supply to absorb new residents, and the average expected commute times for new employees.

#5: Provide competitive advantages across programs for projects in locations that adopt key priority housing and land-use reforms.

#6: Incorporate considerations for locally accessible workforce housing into Megasite and Selectsite Readiness Program site analysis guidance.

#7: Introduce non-traditional housing design and construction (ADUs, cottage courts, rowhouses, duplex/triplexes, etc.), workforce housing on public lands, and allowances for faith-based housing initiatives as new workforce priorities for consideration by the NCWorks Commission and Golden Leaf Foundation.

NC Department of Environmental Quality

NCDEQ does not play as direct of a role in housing supply related issues as NCDOT or Commerce. Its most direct connections include stormwater management in key protected watersheds, state funding for floodplain management, and community resilience planning for severe storm events. Successful engagement from NCDEQ on this issue would ensure that its programs work to disincentivize further development into vulnerable areas while making it easier to advance incremental density improvements and more diverse home options. Suggested reforms include:

#1: Direct the newly formed NCDEQ State Resilience Office to incorporate the following as updates to the Resilient Planning Communities Guide as resilience improvement strategies:

• Prioritize local housing and land-use policies that encourage increased incremental density improvements and lower construction costs in non-hazard-prone areas.

• Stormwater Credit Trading Programs to allow for increased levels of infill housing in areas that are safe to build.

• In lieu fee stormwater management options in concert with local regional retention ponds and other stormwater capture facilities modeled after Tallahassee’s Blueprint Intergovernmental Agency, Capital Cascades Program, and Missing Middle Handbook.

• Local multimodal and pedestrian improvement projects that support reduced car-dependency, improved freedom of mobility, and increased housing options in areas safe for development.

#2: Ensure that stormwater management requirements in targeted watersheds are housing-type agnostic for residential dwellings and instead based solely on impervious surface areas. NCDEQ should ensure that homes built under the residential building code (single-family and 1-2 story multi-family) do not face any additional state stormwater management requirements based solely on housing type and only face requirements based on a project’s impervious surface and watershed impacts.

#3: Explore the feasibility of providing technical assistance to local governments interested in expanding stormwater credit trading systems by leveraging the Nutrient Offset ILF Program, the Department’s experience with local mitigation credit banks, and other in lieu fee-based credit trading programs across the country to provide guidance.

#4: Integrate bonus points into project scoring across competitive grant programs for stormwater projects in locations that adopt land use reforms that incentivize incremental density improvements.

#5: Quantify the per-unit emissions intensity of multifamily residential buildings in North Carolina compared to single-family homes under current building code requirements as part of the North Carolina Greenhouse Gas Inventory, and quantify overall per capita carbon emissions intensity by census tract to inform statewide sustainable community design. Previous work completed by the Rocky Mountain Institute and a soon to be published report completed by the World Resources Institute New Urban Mobility Alliance in partnership with NCDOT can be used as guidance.

In Conclusion

As I said at the beginning of my piece: This Executive Order is just the first step. But if implemented with strong internal buy-in and sufficient resources, EO36 could meaningfully increase North Carolina’s housing supply and contribute to more walkable cities and towns across the state.

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.

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.

Brought to you by our Gold Sponsor

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.

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.

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.

There’s just something magical about a city at the water’s edge; yet that’s almost entirely lacking in the Triangle. Long ago, our cities and towns were founded away from water: Chapel Hill famously crests a hill, Raleigh infamously sits in Joel Lane’s tavern’s backyard. Durham, Cary, and Apex began as way stations at a time when railroads frequently followed ridge lines. Only Hillsborough has a (very) small slice of Eno River waterfront, which later fostered a mill.

But even all those years ago, foresighted planners laid the groundwork for the Triangle’s many miles of greenways, most of which sit within creek valleys. These greenways preserve public access to the water’s edge, but come with strings attached: the state’s riparian buffer requirements in the Neuse and Jordan Lake basins (i.e., most of the Triangle) make it nearly impossible to build anything except a trail within fifty feet of streams, lakes, reservoirs, ponds, and estuaries.

These rules are a boon to local water quality; they prevent pollutants from flowing into streams and protect aquatic habitats. However, these same rules make it nearly impossible to have a waterfront restaurant or buildings that open out onto streamside greenways.

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North Carolina Needs More Housing Options

NC is growing fast, but we’re not building enough homes that people can actually afford. Because of this, the state has a major housing shortfall. Rents and home prices keep rising, and in many communities the only homes getting built are large apartment complexes or detached suburban houses. What’s missing is the middle: smaller apartment buildings that fit into neighborhoods, support walkability, and create more family-sized homes. Across the country, cities and states are beginning to revisit outdated building rules that make this kind of housing difficult or downright illegal to construct. North Carolina now has a chance to be part of that movement. The basic idea behind single-stair buildings is simple: they’re apartment buildings, up to six stories tall, built around one main staircase instead of the (legally mandated) two. They still use modern life-safety features and, yes, they have an elevator.

What Single-Stair Housing Actually Is

For …

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Twelve years ago today, Kim-Mai Cutler published “How Burrowing Owls Lead To Vomiting Anarchists (Or SF’s Housing Crisis Explained).”

Part flag-planting and part manifesto, it became a seminal work for the YIMBY movement and, in many ways, the first shot in the long war to reclaim American cities for the people.

Today, the piece is especially relevant to North Carolina.
Three points stand out in particular:

1. The article explains San Francisco’s severe housing shortage as the result of decades of restrictive policies and highly organized NIMBY opposition. North Carolina is earlier in that same cycle, but the political dynamics are already visible in local land use debates across the Triangle.

2. San Francisco’s crisis was driven by a shrinking supply of market-rate housing as rules limited where and how homes could be built. North Carolina is seeing similar constraints emerge through the expansion of HOA-restricted suburbia and zoning protected single-family only neighborhoods, even as demand f…

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Across Raleigh, Wake County, Orange County, and key statewide races, voters narrowed the field for November. These contests may not always draw headlines, but they determine who writes the zoning rules, transportation plans, and housing policies that shape everyday life in our cities.

Local elections are where growth becomes real. Where belonging either expands or contracts. Where we decide whether our communities will welcome new neighbors or quietly close the door.

Last night clarified the choices. November will determine the direction of the policies that shape communities across the Triangle.

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Children assume that everyone belongs. Adults turn belonging into a policy debate.

I am raising children in Raleigh, and as I head into this primary Election Day, I keep thinking about the juxtaposition between parenting and politics.

Each morning I read about international conflict before making breakfast and packing snacks. I answer emails about zoning text while I handle school pickup. I review candidate questionnaires after bedtime.

This is how a lot of us are living right now. Big headlines. Small routines. Same day.

The national climate feels unstable. My kids have noticed too. Sometimes they ask why their classmates are afraid to come to school. Children notice. Sometimes they ask why I go speak at City Council in favor of building apartments. They notice that some adults don’t want apartments. But to kids, an apartment just means more friends on the playground. More bikes on the sidewalk. More birthday parties.

Our children assume that belonging is normal.

As adults, we turn belongi…

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North Carolina’s cities are expanding, yet most new housing today remains clustered at two extremes: very low-density subdivisions or large multifamily apartment towers. Neighborhoods do not have a way to add smaller, mid-scale buildings that would fit comfortably within existing blocks. This missing segment limits infill development, reduces feasible housing sites, and restricts architectural and urban design options.

Other American cities have begun filling this gap by reforming their building codes to allow single-stair multifamily buildings above three stories. These policies enable mid-rise buildings on smaller lots while applying clear safety measures, including sprinkler systems, two-hour stair enclosures, strict distance limits from unit doors to exits, and reduced floor areas.

This article compares the various technical requirements adopted by jurisdictions across the country, and evaluates how NC Senate Bill 492 would place North Carolina within this national trend. The object…

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Every election shapes the kind of region we live in.

But primaries are where the direction is set.

As we wrote in Every Vote Builds a City, local races determine whether we expand housing choices and welcome new neighbors or retreat into scarcity and rising costs. That is why we are grading candidates on housing.

For this round, we focused on the most competitive, contested at large primary elections where the outcome will shape housing policy in the general election and beyond. Uncontested races and jurisdictions without competitive municipal primaries will be covered in our general election guide later this summer. Durham does not have competitive municipal primaries this cycle, so we are providing commentary on relevant statewide races that directly affect local housing policy.

We evaluated candidate questionnaires and public records for consistency, urgency, and clarity of support for expanding housing supply, affordability tools, and zoning reform. Housing is the defining issue of t…

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The Orange County At-Large Commissioner race features two Democratic candidates competing in the primary. There is no Republican primary contest for this seat, meaning the outcome of the Democratic primary will largely determine the direction of the race heading into November. We’ve graded all three candidates across both parties.

County leadership plays a critical role in affordable housing investment, development review processes, land use coordination, and homelessness response across Chapel Hill, Carrboro, and Hillsborough. We believe housing is the measure of whether our leaders are ready to welcome growth and build a more affordable future.

We evaluated candidates based on their support for expanding housing supply, strengthening affordability tools, improving predictability in development processes, and addressing housing stability countywide. Below is our full breakdown of each candidate and why they earned their grade.

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We begin Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson not with policy, but with a morning.

“You open your eyes at dawn. You turn in the cool bed sheets.

A few feet above your head, on the top of your roof, a layer of solar panels is blinking in the sun.

Their power mixes with electricity pulled from several clean energy sources.

Towering wind turbines to the east.

Small nuclear power plants to the north.

Deep geothermal wells to the south.

Forty years ago, your parents cooled their bedrooms with jewels dredged out of coal mines and oil pits.

They mined rocks and burned them. Coating their lungs in the byproducts. They encased their world, your world, in a chemical heat trap.

Today that seems barbaric.

You live in a cocoon of energy so clean it barely leaves a carbon trace and so cheap you can barely find it on your monthly bill.

The year is 2050.”

The opening chapter reads like science fiction, but it is grounded in engineering, economics, and policy pathways that already exist. It is not escapism.…

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This is part 2 in a series originally published on Greater Greater Washington that discusses how making it easier to build more, smaller houses in the Washington, D.C. area would bring down home prices and help revive the starter home. Read part 1: “How Re-Legalizing Starter Homes Cuts New House Prices.”

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There are parts of the Triangle that are, by all accounts, known for their dynamism and growth. From large towns like Morrisville and Apex to small ones like Pittsboro and Wendell, these places have embraced a future in which their communities will be much larger, in terms of population and even geography, than they are today.

And then there are communities like Carrboro and Chapel Hill, which long ago decided that they’ve had enough change. With backing from anti-growth activists, elected officials in both towns worked with Orange County to set a growth boundary (which they call the “rural buffer”) in the 1980s, with the promise that the communities would continue to build all the housing they needed. Unsurprisingly, those same anti-growth activists then worked to block almost all new housing proposed in the towns.

Since that time, change in Chapel Hill and Carrboro has largely f…

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