Too bad the Town Council thought the staff had all the answers and rammed through the comprehensive plan in record time instead of leading a visioning process that would have given the community an opportunity to learn about and understand each other's values, and be thoughtful about where we wanted the town to be in future decades.
If only someone had tried to get them to slow down and do it right. 🙄 Instead they played right into CHALT's hands and it just gets worse and worse.
Regarding this point: "He expects that the Food Lion will close in the next few years, driving redevelopment of the shopping center, and that other retail developments may seek to redevelop as well." Which Food Lion?
I guess to those of you making points about CH taxes being too high, can't both be true? Can't the lack of strategic planning AND high taxes both be contributing to a direction that we may not want to be moving in (eg, squeezing out certain demographics)? I agree CH taxes are high, and I don't want to see them go up. But I agree wholeheartedly with the author that strategic planning and critical thinking about urban and community development would be time and resources well spent (and that subsequent action needs to be taken that is in line with whatever comes out of those strategic planning efforts). I don't think investing CH resources into that type of effort will result in even higher taxes. The tax issue is real, for sure, but a separate issue than the one raised by the author.
Geoff Green, I agree with you that there needs to be more single family housing in Chapel Hill and improved parks and pools. However, in the United States of America, it is not the job of the government to build houses. That is the job of land owners who own land and then builders who build buildings. The government on a federal, state, and local level in the USA is not very efficient. The only way to get to the vision you desire and to improve Chapel Hill housing is to have land owners and builders make this happen. There are major impediments to this that you leave out of your story. Chapel Hill is the most difficult place in the state to build with very stringent and odd building requirements, which prevent land owners and builders from embarking on new projects. The property tax rate is off the charts in Chapel Hill, about 1.4% of values. The NC average is closer to 0.7%.
My suggestion to you would be to buy some land and build the housing that you desire to live in and sell.
I realize I am a week late but I felt compelled to comment. I was born and raised in Chapel Hill as was my husband. We lived in Chapel Hill/Orange Co. for 23 years and recently moved to Mebane on the Alamance County side. We were looking to upgrade and our youngest is a sophomore in college so it was time for a change. We, mainly me, were extremely disheartened that we could not afford for our new home to be in the Chapel Hill/ Carrboro area. The home prices far exceeded what we could afford and property taxes made that hope even more unattainable. It makes me sad that there are no longer affordable homes in the area for Chapel Hill natives who fall in the middle class economic classification. It is sad that the town is losing economic and cultural diversity due to poor planning.
Having been in the market for a modest home in Chapel Hill for the past 2 years, I can say that this analysis is true.
If the general rule of thumb that a proper ratio of housing cost to annual income is 2.5:1, then the average 3-4 bedroom modest house in the Chapel Hill area (not talking about the in-town enclaves, but across Orange and Chatham counties) requires a minimum of $200k annual household income. In Carrboro - forget about it - that won't even buy a lot.
This is indeed starting to mirror the Bay Area - where now the dumpiest 2 bedroom ranch on a postage stamp lot is $2M. One of the core problems in the financial crisis in 2008-2009 was the creative financing that was squeezing people into these homes, when they didn't have the income to support it.
People are cashing out of their California homes, and moving to Boise Idaho, Austin Texas, and... Chapel Hill among others. With a million + cash in the bank, and a CA price perspective, they're increasingly dropping more and more on houses in Chapel Hill. Houses in Briar Chapel for example, which two years ago were $350k, are listing and selling in a day for over $500k.
What a really biased perspective. The market works. If people have to commute in and find closer paying jobs, then we will have to increase wages and salaries to attract them to work here. It is simple and it works. No one is entitled to work and live in the some town. In my household, we do not work and live in the same place. We made that decision based on what was best for us and our budget. Other workers do the same. Are there people that would like to live in Chapel Hill but find other alternatives more affordable, of course. Is that bad, no. In fact, most of the people that I work with have been migrating over to Briar Chapel in Chatham because they can get a lot more house and pay lower taxes and still be nearby. Chapel Hill does not have to be everything to everybody. People can commute and we (employers in Chapel Hill) may have to pay them more to do that. It is simple and this is ridiculous.
The town has never turned down a development project, whether large or small, except for Carol Ann Zinn’s Aydan Court (a proposed apartment complex between Meadowmont and the game lands). There is by now an established game whereby the town pays a consultant for a dramatic report, like the one above. This promotes development, which forces the county, school district, and town to raise taxes. That’s how the town keeps up with garbage collection, policing, fire, road maintenance, new subsidies for housing, raises for staff, hiring new assistants for public relations and economic development, and more consultants.
Raising taxes, conveniently, drives out lower income and older homeowners standing in the way of gentrification, and prevents middle income families from moving in. It raises rents on apartment dwellers and retailers alike. In 20 years of watching, I have never seen the TOCH hire a consultant to tell mayor and council how much given development will cost in services at town, school district, and county levels. I think it’s because they don’t want to know. It’s easier (and more profitable for developer friends) to react to hysterical cries of “Apocalypse Now!” just as it’s easier for consultants to write that.
Too bad the Town Council thought the staff had all the answers and rammed through the comprehensive plan in record time instead of leading a visioning process that would have given the community an opportunity to learn about and understand each other's values, and be thoughtful about where we wanted the town to be in future decades.
If only someone had tried to get them to slow down and do it right. 🙄 Instead they played right into CHALT's hands and it just gets worse and worse.
Regarding this point: "He expects that the Food Lion will close in the next few years, driving redevelopment of the shopping center, and that other retail developments may seek to redevelop as well." Which Food Lion?
I guess to those of you making points about CH taxes being too high, can't both be true? Can't the lack of strategic planning AND high taxes both be contributing to a direction that we may not want to be moving in (eg, squeezing out certain demographics)? I agree CH taxes are high, and I don't want to see them go up. But I agree wholeheartedly with the author that strategic planning and critical thinking about urban and community development would be time and resources well spent (and that subsequent action needs to be taken that is in line with whatever comes out of those strategic planning efforts). I don't think investing CH resources into that type of effort will result in even higher taxes. The tax issue is real, for sure, but a separate issue than the one raised by the author.
Geoff Green, I agree with you that there needs to be more single family housing in Chapel Hill and improved parks and pools. However, in the United States of America, it is not the job of the government to build houses. That is the job of land owners who own land and then builders who build buildings. The government on a federal, state, and local level in the USA is not very efficient. The only way to get to the vision you desire and to improve Chapel Hill housing is to have land owners and builders make this happen. There are major impediments to this that you leave out of your story. Chapel Hill is the most difficult place in the state to build with very stringent and odd building requirements, which prevent land owners and builders from embarking on new projects. The property tax rate is off the charts in Chapel Hill, about 1.4% of values. The NC average is closer to 0.7%.
My suggestion to you would be to buy some land and build the housing that you desire to live in and sell.
I realize I am a week late but I felt compelled to comment. I was born and raised in Chapel Hill as was my husband. We lived in Chapel Hill/Orange Co. for 23 years and recently moved to Mebane on the Alamance County side. We were looking to upgrade and our youngest is a sophomore in college so it was time for a change. We, mainly me, were extremely disheartened that we could not afford for our new home to be in the Chapel Hill/ Carrboro area. The home prices far exceeded what we could afford and property taxes made that hope even more unattainable. It makes me sad that there are no longer affordable homes in the area for Chapel Hill natives who fall in the middle class economic classification. It is sad that the town is losing economic and cultural diversity due to poor planning.
Having been in the market for a modest home in Chapel Hill for the past 2 years, I can say that this analysis is true.
If the general rule of thumb that a proper ratio of housing cost to annual income is 2.5:1, then the average 3-4 bedroom modest house in the Chapel Hill area (not talking about the in-town enclaves, but across Orange and Chatham counties) requires a minimum of $200k annual household income. In Carrboro - forget about it - that won't even buy a lot.
This is indeed starting to mirror the Bay Area - where now the dumpiest 2 bedroom ranch on a postage stamp lot is $2M. One of the core problems in the financial crisis in 2008-2009 was the creative financing that was squeezing people into these homes, when they didn't have the income to support it.
People are cashing out of their California homes, and moving to Boise Idaho, Austin Texas, and... Chapel Hill among others. With a million + cash in the bank, and a CA price perspective, they're increasingly dropping more and more on houses in Chapel Hill. Houses in Briar Chapel for example, which two years ago were $350k, are listing and selling in a day for over $500k.
Let's hope we're not headed for another 2008.
What a really biased perspective. The market works. If people have to commute in and find closer paying jobs, then we will have to increase wages and salaries to attract them to work here. It is simple and it works. No one is entitled to work and live in the some town. In my household, we do not work and live in the same place. We made that decision based on what was best for us and our budget. Other workers do the same. Are there people that would like to live in Chapel Hill but find other alternatives more affordable, of course. Is that bad, no. In fact, most of the people that I work with have been migrating over to Briar Chapel in Chatham because they can get a lot more house and pay lower taxes and still be nearby. Chapel Hill does not have to be everything to everybody. People can commute and we (employers in Chapel Hill) may have to pay them more to do that. It is simple and this is ridiculous.
The town has never turned down a development project, whether large or small, except for Carol Ann Zinn’s Aydan Court (a proposed apartment complex between Meadowmont and the game lands). There is by now an established game whereby the town pays a consultant for a dramatic report, like the one above. This promotes development, which forces the county, school district, and town to raise taxes. That’s how the town keeps up with garbage collection, policing, fire, road maintenance, new subsidies for housing, raises for staff, hiring new assistants for public relations and economic development, and more consultants.
Raising taxes, conveniently, drives out lower income and older homeowners standing in the way of gentrification, and prevents middle income families from moving in. It raises rents on apartment dwellers and retailers alike. In 20 years of watching, I have never seen the TOCH hire a consultant to tell mayor and council how much given development will cost in services at town, school district, and county levels. I think it’s because they don’t want to know. It’s easier (and more profitable for developer friends) to react to hysterical cries of “Apocalypse Now!” just as it’s easier for consultants to write that.