New apartment complexes are going up around the Triangle, but some of the units might still be out of financial reach for many people. https://abc11.com/housing-market-rent…


 

DURHAM, N.C. (WTVD) — The Bull City’s newest mixed-use development is coming to Downtown.

A historic beam signing ceremony took place Thursday highlighting the completion of the structural framework of Novus, a new mixed-use luxury residential high-rise in the Five Points district.

Durham Mayor Leonardo Williams said it’s an effort to bring more housing opportunities to the growing area.

“It’s important that we provide all levels of housing,” he said. “Look where they can go.”

The 27-story high-rise will house 54 condos and 188 apartments with ground-floor retail shops.

Construction is expected to be complete by the end of the year.

 

Durham breaks ground on more affordable apartments

 

‘Still struggling’: Durham County to launch guaranteed income of $850 monthly to help families

 

 

An accessory dwelling unit (ADU) is a smaller, independent residential dwelling unit located on the same lot as a stand-alone (i.e., detached) single-family home. ADUs go by many different names throughout the U.S., including accessory apartments, secondary suites, and granny flats.

DURHAM, N.C. (WTVD) — There’s plenty of construction activity in Triangle cities and towns. Some of the fanciest housing options can be seen in Durham.

Bull City neighborhoods close to downtown are a mix of traditional single-family homes, shiny new apartments of various heights, and townhomes critics say are too expensive for the average wage earner or families that need affordable housing.

One solution could be accessory dwelling units or ADUs. They’re smaller homes built behind existing homes with enough room to accommodate another dwelling. That’s what’s happening near North Carolina Central University, where developers Barry and Kim Hill own property that will eventually have several ADUs.

Barry Hill said their latest project grew from conversations he had with a woman who lives next to a home the couple renovated.

“We got to be talking neighbors, and I would cut down a tree and ask her if she wanted hers cut too. ‘Probably not,'” was her answer, he said. “She’s 80 years old. So eventually, I said, ‘Miss Claudette, would you ever think of selling your house? And she said no because I’ve lived here so long and my best friend lives next door. So I said well. Why don’t we build you a new house, and you can stay right here? Because your house probably needs some work? And she said that sounds like a great idea.'”

The need grows for more affordable housing in Durham

 

 

 

DURHAM, N.C. (WTVD) — The Durham Housing Authority and Durham Habitat for Humanity announced the completion of the Building Blocks Initiative, which resulted in 37 new, energy-efficient homes in East Durham.

“I got emotional driving over here to this interview because I remember being a young girl in the nineties at Few Gardens, and going to our community center, playing on the playground. Now I’m on the executive staff of the Durham Housing Authority; seeing these homes and being able to impact families is truly near and dear to my heart. It’s great to see these homes here and families being able to take advantage of it,” said Durham Housing Authority Communications Manager Aalayah Sanders.

Few Gardens was a public housing complex owned by the Durham Housing Authority and is now the site of 21 homes as part of this project. There are an additional 16 homes located nearby on Laurel Avenue.

The Building Blocks Initiative started in 2019 and is partly the result of a $35 million grant DHA received, with the site geared towards households that make less than 80% of the area median income.

“There’s a need for affordable housing, not only affordable housing but homeownership opportunities,” said Sanders.

Durham’s development plan stalled because there were not enough firefighters to keep it safe.

 

DURHAM, N.C. — Durham is growing so fast the fire department is struggling to keep up with the demand.
They sound the alarm, and that could mean a freeze on development in the southeastern part of the county.

At a recent city council meeting, Planning Director Sara Young said a plan to build 700 homes on Kemp Road had to be shelved – possibly for years.

“The issue is that another fire station is needed to adequately serve this area,” she said.

In a memo to the council, she wrote, “the Durham Fire Department has significant concerns about not having the infrastructure and personnel in place … an additional Ladder truck (vehicle) with responders to staff that unit (FTEs) would be required to meet the needs of this area.”
Pamela Andrews, a lifelong resident of southeast Durham County and founder of Preserve Rural Durham, said her group is opposed to the development for both fire safety and environmental reasons.

“We’re just a mile or two from Falls Lake, which is the drinking water for over 600,000 people in Wake County,” she pointed out.

Council has tabled approval of the project and sent it back to staff.

“I’m certainly not going to put housing where the fire department says they can’t service it,” said Mayor Pro Tempore Mark-Anthony Middleton.

Given the rapid growth and demand for housing in Durham, any delay could be costly.

“At this point, we are still looking at years until such a fire station would be built,” Middleton said. “Who knows how many years.”

In a statement, the City Manager, Wanda Page, disputes what the planning director said about the need for a new fire station, writing:

“Providing services needed and expected by residents and businesses is a top priority as the city grows and new homes are constructed and occupied. Unfortunately, a memo about the proposed Kemp Road development assessment of fire service capabilities left an inaccurate impression of our ability to serve growth. The Durham Fire Department is prepared to support current and planned growth in this area. Existing Fire Stations in Southeast Durham (8 and 17) can house additional equipment and staff as that area develops. Plans for an additional fire station have been discussed, which could provide additional support if the area continues to develop.”

By Sarah Krueger, WRAL Durham reporter

Coming in 2020…

Located adjacent to the Durham Station Transportation Center and American Tobacco Campus, Willard Street Apartments will offer 82 affordable apartment homes (39 one-bedroom & 43 two-bedroom) for modest wage earners working in downtown Durham with a mix of 30% and 60% AMI units. Willard Street Apartments will be a part of a four-story building with two elevators built above two stories of structured parking, with 5,000 SF of street-level retail space and a landscaped plaza overlooking the city skyline. Amenities include on-site management, community multi-purpose room and kitchen, fitness room, business center, and laundry facilities. Partners on this project include Self-Help Ventures Fund, Duke University, City of Durham, and Capitol Broadcasting.

 

Left to right: Durham City Council member DeDreana Freeman, in purple, talks to Durham CAN leaders along with Council member Mark-Anthony Middleton and Council member Vernetta Alston on Wednesday, March 21, 2018 at First Chronicles Community Church. Dawn Baumgartner Vaughan dvaughan@heraldsun.com

 

We update this article today with great news from the Durham NC Twitter feed:

 

 

Twenty new people move to Durham every day.

 

They’re arriving in a city in the midst of an affordable housing crisis, city leaders said this week.

 

On Wednesday night, the three newest elected City Council members met with Durham Congregations, Associations and Neighborhoods, part of the community-organizing group’s efforts to hold elected officials to their campaign promises.

 

Vernetta Alston, DeDreana Freeman, and Mark-Anthony Middleton have been in office about 100 days. Middleton was in Durham CAN’s clergy caucus before running for office. He told the group he has learned that governance is very different than activism.

 

Read on here.

 

The rising costs of downtown living in cities like Durham NC are not unique. Check any city with an educated workforce, unique neighborhoods, limited housing supply and great restaurants like Durham has and you find rising home costs. What about Durham is unique vis-a-vis affordable housing? Consider the following: how we failed to meet Federal affordable housing guidelines in 2015 and 2016, the limited amount of city-owned land downtown, and the attractive short-term incentive for the City of Durham working with out of state developers on all of these multi-story apartment buildings downtown.

Durham is in an ‘affordable housing crisis,’ council members say.

 

I worked for a national financial institution in the wealth planning field for many years and this is where I first came into the technical and correct definition of “Affordable Housing” by HUD.  Some of my clients were residential home investors and or residential developers.  My role was client facing and my team included business and commercial bankers who I worked with when one of my clients was interested in a new commercial or business loan.  Our institution had a department dedicated to the tax credits and tax planning available to commercial developers when they allocate a portion of their new project to “Affordable housing or Affordable office space”.      Many of us are unaware that banks have CRA (community reinvestment act) and tax credit planning departments to help developers plan effectively and meet Urban Federal Affordable housing guidelines.    A city often cited for doing well with Affordable housing downtown is Tulsa OK.   

 

When looking at apartments, you may have come across terms like “affordable housing,” “Section 8,” and “low-income housing.” Perhaps you are wondering what it all means — and are all these terms the same thing? And finally, would you qualify for affordable housing?

 

The first thing you need to know is the acronym AMI. This stands for “Area Median Income” and basically means that, based on where you live, can you afford to rent an apartment on your income? Every year, HUD (Housing and Urban Development) determines the AMI for every region in the country. Once the median income is established, households earning less than 80 percent of that amount are considered low-income. Those earning less than 50 percent are considered very low-income, and anyone making less than 30 percent of the AMI is considered extremely low-income.

 

As far as rent goes, you shouldn’t spend more than 30 percent of your income. If the average income in your area is $80,000 a year, but you make $35,000 a year, then you could qualify for a subsidy that would help you stay around that 30 percent level for your rental costs.

 

While that’s basically how it works, there’s more to it — first, you’ll have to make sure you qualify. There’s a “sweet spot” when it comes to income — if your income is too low, you won’t be able to afford your “share” of the rent, even with subsidies. If your income is at or slightly above 50 percent of the AMI, you probably won’t qualify.

 

So, what does “affordable housing” look like? Well, it depends. First, there’s something called “Low-Income Housing Tax Credits” that go to developers who agree to set aside a certain percentage of units for low-income families. In turn, the rents for these units must remain affordable (again, around that 30 percent of AMI level) for low-income renters; as long as they are, the developer can continue to get the tax credits.

Then there’s public housing, which is government-owned housing. It stays affordable, because the government sets the rental rates. This program is fading out — no more public housing is being built (and hasn’t been since the 1970s), and when the units are torn down, they’re gone for good.

 

And finally, there’s Section 8. HUD’s Section 8 program helps renters pay rent when it exceeds 30 percent of AMI. There are two types of Section 8 — Tenant-Based and Project-Based. Tenant-Based means the voucher goes directly to the renter, and they can move with it — they don’t have to stay in one apartment community. Project-Based means the subsidy goes to the landlord. The landlord agrees to set aside some units for qualifying families.

 

So, how do you apply for affordable housing? It depends on the type you want to get. For public housing and Section 8, you’ll have to apply to the public housing agency in your state (you’ll find the list of agencies at HUD.gov). For affordable housing, just look for an apartment complex that offers it and apply directly to the management office.

 

The $95 million affordable housing bond Durham Mayor Steve Schewel pitched during his State of the City address last week would be the largest in the state’s history, city officials say.

 

In this view, the city’s current funding for affordable housing isn’t enough to keep downtown from becoming an expensive enclave for white people. If residents are serious about preventing displacement, they need to put their money where their mouths are.

 

In 2000, according to the Planning Department, 49 percent of Durham’s housing stock was affordable to three-person households earning 80 percent of the area median income, and 26 percent was affordable to households earning 60 percent of the AMI. By 2015, those earning 80 percent of the AMI could only afford about a third of Durham housing units. For those earning 60 percent of the AMI, just 14 percent was affordable.

 

America’s Housing Crisis Is A Ticking Time Bomb

 

A new report reveals rising rents and surging inequality, which will only worsen.

By nearly every measure, the American housing sector is broken. For decades, city, state, and federal policies have contributed to rising rents, falling subsidies, and the systematic shift of homeownership to older, richer and whiter Americans.

That’s the undeniable upshot of a new report from the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University. The report compiles hundreds of metrics on the health of America’s housing sector and finds that the long-term prognosis is grim despite some short-term progress since the recession.

The housing crisis is the ticking time bomb at the heart of the American economy, wiping out savings, increasing inequality, and reducing the ability of workers to weather the next recession. It has been in front of us all along, but now, finally, it is impossible to ignore.

1. Low-Cost Housing Is Disappearing From The Market

For decades, housing costs have risen faster than incomes. Since 1960, renters’ median earnings have gone up 5 percent while rents have spiked 61 percent; homeowners earn 50 percent more while home prices have gone up 112 percent.

This has obvious human costs. As the National Low Income Housing Coalition reported earlier this month, a growing share of the nation’s renters cannot afford to live in the cities where they work. In 2016, nearly half of renters were considered cost-burdened — i.e., they spend more than 30 percent of their income on rent — a proportion that has more than doubled in the last 50 years.

Rising rents also have indirect impacts. The Harvard study noted that the cities with the greatest increases in housing costs also have the greatest increases in homelessness. Expensive housing encourages private equity firms and investors to buy apartment buildings and evict current residents. Displacement leads to sprawl, long commutes, and workers spending more time away from their families. From cheap restaurants to affordable childcare to neighborhood community centers, rising rents are a tsunami that sweeps away support networks and social amenities critical to low-income residents.

 

 

 

 

  

 

But wait, it gets worse: The Harvard study found that the fastest rise in home prices is at the low end of the market. “Cheap” homes, or those selling for less than 75 percent of the median price, are appreciating at twice the rate of high-end homes.

This appears to be because low-cost housing is simply disappearing from the market. Since 1990, more than 2.5 million apartments renting for less than $800 per month have been demolished, upgraded into luxury condos, or converted into hotels or offices. Between 2010 and 2017, prices in poor urban neighborhoods rose 50 percent faster than in rich neighborhoods, forcing residents to choose between spending an ever-increasing share of their income on rent or moving away.

 

 

  

Many, it seems, are choosing the latter. In the last two decades, the number of poor renters living in “low-density census tracts of metro areas”— economist-speak for suburbs — has increased from 4.5 million to 7 million, surpassing the number of poor renters living in cities. It’s official: The housing crisis has come to the suburbs.

2. America Isn’t Building Enough Homes

Before the recession, America built around 1.1 million new homes per year. In its best year since the country built just 849,000.

This makes no sense. Though the American population has been growing steadily, fewer homes are now on the market than in any year since 1982. Despite seemingly bottomless demand, the construction of apartment buildings fell by 10 percent last year.

James Madden, an affordable housing developer in Seattle, said the reasons for the slowdown are complex. Americans move less now than they used to, meaning fewer are putting their homes up for sale. Construction costs are also booming due to higher material costs. And major cities have fewer plots available for development.

There is also the “NIMBY factor,” delays and obstruction caused by neighbors seeking to preserve their views, redlining-inspired height restrictions, and (especially) their parking.

America also has a nationwide shortage of construction workers. According to the Harvard report, building firms have 200,000 job openings, the highest number in a decade. And yet, despite persistent labor shortages, construction worker wages are rising slower than the rest of the private sector.

America builds a lot of these.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

America builds a lot of these.

Madden said that all these costs, taken together, mean developers can only make a profit on high-end apartments and McMansions. He estimated that in Seattle, developers would struggle to break even on apartments renting for less than $1,900 per month for a one-bedroom unit. In New York or Boston, he said, the figure is probably closer to $3,000.

“In a lot of cities,” he said, “the market can’t supply housing for people making less than six figures.”

The Harvard report showed this too. Almost half the apartments built in 2016 were in large buildings of more than 50 units; nearly nine out of 10 had swimming pools. Homes of less than 1,800 square feet ― the now-mythical “starter home” — made up just 22 percent of construction in 2016, a fall from 50 percent in 1988.

According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, America is 7.7 million units of low-income housing behind where it needs to be, and the country has simply stopped building them.

3. America’s Cities Are Unaffordable

The United States is not one big housing market, of course. Rents and homebuilding vary wildly from city to city as populations move and sectors boom and bust.

But here, too, the news is grim. In 1988, just one city in America had homes that cost, on average, more than six times the annual median income. Today, 22 of them do.

And this number is only going to grow. Last year, 13 of America’s 100 largest cities — from big ones like Seattle and Las Vegas to smaller ones like Salt Lake City and Orlando — had home prices that rose by more than 10 percent. San Jose, California, had the worst mismatch, with the median home costing ten years of the median income at $1.1 million. Rounding out the top five were Los Angeles (9.5 years), Honolulu (9.2), San Francisco (8.9), and San Diego (8.1).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But it’s not just that expensive cities are expensive. Almost three-quarters of Pittsburgh residents own a home, compared to fewer than half of Los Angeles residents. As prices continue to rise, high-cost cities will have a greater proportion of the population vulnerable to displacement and spending more of their paychecks on rent rather than savings, pensions, or other forms of equity. If America’s biggest cities, where job growth has been concentrated for years, can’t offer anything beyond check-to-check living, the country is sleepwalking into a crisis.  

It’s worth noting just how unprecedented this is: One of the most startling statistics in the Harvard report is that 30 years ago, you could buy a house in 72 of America’s 100 largest cities for less than 18 months of their median salaries. Today, that’s possible in just 25 of them, and shrinking every year.

4. Racial Disparities Are Getting Worse

At every level, the housing crisis hits minorities harder.

Since 1987, white homeownership rates have increased by 3.6 percent, while black homeownership rates have fallen by 2.7 percent. Black Americans are now nearly 30 percent less likely than whites to own a home. Hispanics and Asians, while increasing their homeownership rates faster than whites over this period, still trail by 26.1 percent and 16.5 percent, respectively.

But the racial wealth gap goes much deeper. Even among homeowners, African-Americans and Latinos have less than half the net worth of whites. Among renters, blacks and Hispanics are more likely to be spending more than 30 percent of their income on rent — even when they earn the same salaries as whites.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As noted in the National Association of Real Estate Brokers’ “The State of Housing in Black America” report, African-American home buyers are more likely to take out “nonconventional” loans, often from the Federal Housing Authority, which require smaller down payments and lower credit scores.

In high-demand cities, homebuyers receiving housing assistance or nonconventional loans often lose out to cash offers or applicants with traditional loans. Black applicants are twice as likely to be denied home loans as white applicants. While many cities have programs to help veterans, minorities, and low-income families with down payments, housing costs in many cities are now so high that even a 3 percent down payment is out of reach.

And the housing crisis doesn’t just make it harder to buy, it profoundly affects where people choose to live. Though the number of Americans living in poverty has increased by 41 percent since 2000, the number of “high-poverty census tracts” has increased even faster. By now, 51 percent of blacks and 44 percent of Hispanics live in these areas of concentrated poverty, compared to just 17 percent of whites. According to numerous studies, children who grow up in concentrated poverty are disadvantaged on nearly every measure, from school quality to violence to social mobility.

All of this adds up to one inescapable conclusion: For some Americans, housing is a way out of poverty. For others, it is the trap keeping them there.

5. High Housing Costs Shift Money From The Young To The Old

One of the most glaring and least remarked-upon forms of inequality is between older and younger Americans. In nearly every way, rising home values and booming rents have benefitted older Americans while holding younger Americans back.

Since 2013, the average homeowner has seen their net worth rise from $201,600 to $231,400. Renters have watched theirs fall from $5,600 to $5,000. Though every age bracket contains significant inequalities, Americans over 65 are the only cohort with higher homeownership rates now than in 1987. Homeownership for every other age group has fallen significantly.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Older people have always had more net worth than younger people, but never like this. Thirty years ago, families headed by someone over 62 had eight times the median wealth of families headed by someone under 40. By 2013, older families had 15 times the wealth of younger families. Americans over 65 — many of whom are retired from the workforce — have seen a 24 percent rise in their incomes since 2000, compared to a 2 percent fall among 25- to 34-year-olds.

Though stocks and other forms of equity play a role in this divergence, homeownership is a significant factor. In high-cost cities like San Francisco, Boston, and New York, millions of homeowners have doubled or tripled their net worth in the last decade, thanks to the appreciation of their homes. This gives them easier access to credit and the option of selling their home for cash or renting it for retirement income.

It also, crucially, gives them an incentive to prop up home values further. This fundamental mismatch between renters, who want property prices to fall, and owners, who want them to rise, is already the defining political battle in many growing cities.

And it’s not going to resolve itself. Americans 65 to 74 are now the country’s fastest-growing age group. According to a 2014 AARP survey, 88 percent of older Americans want to remain in place as they age. Census surveys show that mobility has been declining for a decade, especially moving within the same city. If baby boomers stay put, that will put an even greater strain on the housing market, as many live in large homes where two, three, or four bedrooms sit empty. Large swaths of growing cities are becoming less dense even as demand for housing explodes.

Unless the baby boomers start moving, cities have no way out of the housing crisis that doesn’t involve building more homes.  

6. Policies At Every Level Are Making It Worse

The Harvard report noted that the only American cities where rent growth slowed last year were those that added more new apartments than new renters.

In Seattle, rents fell by 1 percent last year after the city added an estimated 10,000 new apartments, almost doubling its previous construction record. From 2015 to 2017, when the city added fewer units, rents went up 5 percent yearly. Even though most of the new apartments were high-end studios and one-bedroom units, the extra supply absorbed enough of the city’s new residents to ease pressure on the rest of the market.

But while building more homes in growing cities is a necessary condition for solving the housing crisis, it is not a sufficient one, Madden said. Rents are still unbearably high, and the building costs show no sign of coming down. The market simply isn’t supplying homes for middle-class residents anymore. The only way to bridge that gap is for cities to deliberately build, fund, preserve and encourage affordable housing.

Madden estimated that, like other cities, Seattle has dozens of affordable housing projects ready to be built but no funding to build them. He said that an injection of cash could put up to 3,000 units of affordable housing into the pipeline within a year. City lawmakers (and taxpayers) aren’t willing to fund these projects. State and federal bodies, which have far deeper pockets, simply don’t care.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And the cavalry is decidedly not coming. Since 1988, as the number of low-income families has increased by 6 million nationally and the number of cheap apartments has fallen by 2.5 million, the federal government has added just 950,000 people to the rental assistance rolls. In April, HUD Secretary Ben Carson proposed a plan that would make this worse, increasing rents for almost 5 million families and imposing a work requirement to receive assistance.

Other policies at the federal level also make this harder. Trump’s tariffs on wood, aluminum, and steel will likely increase construction costs even further. Grants for public transportation are under constant threat. And the GOP’s cut to the corporate tax rate reduced the value of low-income housing tax credits, a little-noticed change expected to result in the construction of 235,000 fewer affordable units over the next decade. Public housing, too, continues its decades-long deflation, with the number of units falling by 32,000 last year, its lowest level since the early 1970s.

The closest thing to good news in the Harvard report is that the housing crisis is man-made. Policies got the U.S. into this mess, which implies that policies can get the country out of it. As construction costs and rents increase and the disparities widen, the question is whether politicians ― after years of being asleep at the wheel ― care enough to finally make hard decisions about addressing the problem.

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