CITYBUILDER Brief: Cary Kills Affordable Housing

Cary Council stops RHA from preserving affordable housing; Pew highlights research on moving chains. Take our survey!

On the National Radar:

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

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

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

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Closer to Home:

Cary NIMBYs Kill Affordable Housing Opportunity

Photo source: Apartments.com