The Most Unlikely Housing Comeback in the Triangle

Carrboro and Chapel Hill are beginning to reverse decades of anti-growth policy, with zoning reforms that could reshape southern Orange County.

Permit application for a site at Chapel Hill’s Blue Hill District. (Source: Chapel Hill Planning Department)

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…