Charlotte voters will decide in November whether to approve $125 million in bonds for the city's Housing Trust Fund. On Monday, city staff showed the City Council how that money would be divided, and the plan now sets dollar goals for where the homes should go, not only what kind they are.
Up to $25 million would be aimed at housing near the city's planned transit lines. Up to $35 million would go to what staff call high-opportunity areas: neighborhoods with strong schools and jobs that have historically seen little affordable housing investment. Council plans to adopt the policy in October, ahead of the vote.
Who it reaches
The city's shortage of affordable homes is about 40,000 units, Warren Wooten, deputy director of Housing and Neighborhood Services, told council, and households earning 30 percent of the area median income make up the largest share of it.
Council Member Reneé Johnson of District 4 asked the city to write "30% and below" into the policy. She described emails from a single mother with a son older than 13 who could not get into a family shelter together. "There's no family shelter," she said. The plan's supportive housing and shelter category is $12 million. No figure was given Monday for how much of the $125 million would reach households at 30 percent of median income.
Where the money would go
Dr. Raquishela Stewart, director of Housing and Neighborhood Services, and Wooten presented the plan as an update to the 2024 policy that guided the city's last housing bond, $100 million. At-large Council Member LaWana Mayfield, who chairs the council's housing committee, said 2,918 units had been identified under that bond, including homes for sale and multifamily rentals.
The full allocation, as shown on the presentation slide, with the change from the 2024 plan:
- Rental housing production: $38 million, up $3 million
- Homeownership: $31 million, up $6 million, the largest increase
- Rental housing preservation and staying in place: $18 million, up $4 million
- Supportive housing and shelter capacity: $12 million, up $3 million
- Site acquisition for high-opportunity and mobility investments: $10 million, up $5 million
- Housing rehabilitation and emergency repair: $5 million, unchanged
- Innovation pilot fund: $5 million, unchanged
- Energy-efficiency and sustainability retrofits: $4 million, a new category
- Administration and evaluation: $2 million, unchanged
The location goals sit on top of the categories: a rental project near a transit line would draw from the rental category and also count toward the transit goal. Developers apply to the Housing Trust Fund for this money, and the city scores each proposal partly on its location. Under the update, a project will earn credit for sitting near transit lines that are planned but not yet built. Wooten said the transit goal is meant to put housing along the build-out of the city's mobility plan, for which voters have approved a long-term funding source, while limiting displacement along those lines. The high-opportunity goal, he said, targets areas that have missed out on investment "due to things like land cost" or because projects there do not fit well with federal tax-credit rules.
The plan also loosens some requirements so smaller and newer developers and nonprofits can compete, starting with a lower minimum number of affordable units per project.
What council pressed on
Council Member Danté Anderson of District 1 asked that the transit bonus apply only where new lines are actually likely, in line with what the Metropolitan Public Transportation Authority has approved. She said she wanted "some high likelihood that that investment will occur."
At-large Council Member Victoria Watlington asked for data on what the city's past housing dollars have produced and how long the homes stay affordable. Wooten said some recent rental projects have agreed to affordability periods of up to 99 years.
Asked whether the homeownership money is being used, Wooten said the city is "constantly called for additional down payment assistance." On home repair, he said the binding limit is not money but "the community capacity to do the work," the contractors and organizations available to do it.
Council Member JD Mazuera Arias of District 5 said his repeated votes against affordable housing projects in his district were about spreading them across the city, and called the high-opportunity goal a way to avoid "reconcentrating poverty in just one area."
Council takes up the spending policy in October. Voters decide on the bond Nov. 3.