Charlotte Housing Trust Fund Staff Picks Are In. The Questions Are Already Louder Than the Numbers.

Five hours into the April 13 business meeting — after the transit budget was approved, after street vending was sent back to committee, after the passenger vehicle ordinance cleared and the Stellar Awards got referred to Economic Development — LaWana Mayfield called for order one last time. The Housing Committee chair had 18 proposals to walk through, $44.2 million left in the 2024 housing bond, and a council that was already asking questions before Rebecca Hefner could finish her first slide.

The staff recommendation: fund 13 of 16 remaining proposals (two of the original 18 were withdrawn before evaluation). Four multifamily rental developments totaling $11.2 million — the exact dollar amount remaining in the rental housing production category — and all nine homeownership proposals totaling $9.65 million. If approved, the numbers add up to approximately 479 rental units and 214 homeownership units.

The council votes April 27. A special Housing Committee meeting is planned for the week of April 20. Between now and then, council members will receive the full HTF booklet — a project-by-project evaluation that Hefner held up for the room, noting it was an older version because "we're not quite finished with this round."

The Four Rental Projects

All four recommended multifamily developments are tax credit projects — two at the highly competitive 9 percent rate, two at 4 percent. If council approves them on April 27, the 9 percent projects go to the North Carolina Housing Finance Agency in May for an August or September decision.

Village at Greer Heights is an 80-unit senior housing community proposed by DreamKey Partners on 14 acres of county-owned land off Randolph Road. Staff recommends $3.06 million ($2.76 million from the Housing Trust Fund, $300,000 in federal HOME funds). The investment per unit is $38,000 — roughly half of what DreamKey's previous application for the same site requested, which came in at over $70,000 per unit. Hefner called it "a great example of city and staff and our partners at DreamKey working together to create a more efficient proposal." The development would be affordable for 99 years at $287 per unit per year, the longest period allowable under state law.

Greer Heights is part of a broader master plan on the county land. Council already approved Ellington Town Homes — 35 affordable homeownership units — at the same site in the previous round. CrossRoads Corporation has a homeownership proposal on this slate as well, along with a second DreamKey multifamily community that staff recommends deferring.

One detail from Hefner's presentation that the numbers alone do not capture: at the Greer Heights community meeting, a woman who grew up in the neighborhood asked if she could be added to the wait list for a development that has not yet been funded, let alone built. She wants to age in place in a neighborhood where home sales prices are rising fast enough to push the change score high.

The second 9 percent project, Mineral Springs Commons 2, would add 91 senior units at the intersection of Graham Street and West Sugar Creek Road. Wesley Community Development Corporation is proposing the second phase of an existing development — the first, 73 units completed in 2023, is fully leased with a wait list. Staff recommends $1.1 million. The development is structured as a faith-based partnership: the Board of Trustees of the Western North Carolina Conference of the United Methodist Church serves as ground lease holder, retaining ownership of the land while Wesley CDC leads development.

Evoke Living at Willora Lake drew the sharpest procedural questions of the evening. CSE Communities, an affiliate of Crosland Southeast, is proposing 120 senior units along North Sharon Amity Road near Central Avenue. Staff recommends $5.85 million — the highest per-unit investment in this round at just over $48,000, though Hefner noted that figure is "on par with your average investments over the last several years." The development would sit roughly half a mile from Evoke Living at Eastland, another CSE senior community that council funded in a previous round and is currently under construction at Eastland Yards.

Horizon Development Properties, an affiliate of Inlivian, is proposing Oak Valley Family — 188 units on Green Oaks Lane, tucked between Central Avenue and Commonwealth Avenue, replacing the former 50-unit Oak Valley Apartments. Those apartments were closed for safety issues; residents were relocated; the buildings now sit vacant behind a fence. Staff recommends $1.5 million. A previous iteration envisioned 500 units and a substantially higher public investment. This version scales back to 188 family units with 47 project-based vouchers at 30 percent AMI, meaning those residents pay only 30 percent of their income on rent regardless of future rate increases. Former residents who were relocated received priority to return.

The Rezoning Question

Council Member JD Mazuera Arias had raised the issue at the April 6 Housing Committee meeting. On April 13, he brought it to the full council.

"When did the housing trust fund applications close?" he asked Hefner.

"January 30th," she confirmed.

He asked whether applicants are required to have an approved rezoning before the deadline. Hefner explained: the current policy requires site control and an approved rezoning before council votes on recommendations — not before the application deadline. Evoke Living at Willora Lake applied on January 30 with its rezoning still pending. Council approved that rezoning on March 23, making the project eligible for HTF funding.

Mazuera Arias was direct about what that sequence creates: "It oftentimes leads to this false assumption that they are guaranteed housing trust fund dollars when that is not the case. And so when they do go to the community and they make the pitch to the community that this is going to be affordable housing and it's gonna use housing trust fund dollars, that's misleading."

Council Member Kimberly Owens pressed the point further. She asked whether council had approved the Willora Lake rezoning contingent on the project receiving HTF funding — with the zoning reverting if it did not. Hefner clarified: the rezoning is "a separate and distinct process." But the developer had indicated as a community benefit that it would propose affordable housing on the site and try for HTF funding for two rounds, after which it would pursue development at the increased density with no affordability restrictions.

Mazuera Arias asked the Housing Committee to review the policy. Whether rezonings should be locked in before the application window closes is now a live question headed into the April 20 special meeting.

The Geography Problem

The geographic concentration concern runs deeper than any single project. Mazuera Arias connected it directly to equity: "We won't build our way out of the affordable housing crisis by reconcentrating low income communities with low income housing. I'm pro affordable housing — I'm more necessarily pro affordable housing equity, meaning that we have to couple affordable housing with high opportunity zones. And if we're coupling affordable housing with areas that lack amenities, then we're just repeating the same cycles that we're trying to build our way out of."

He pointed to his own district: Willora Lake is the most expensive per-unit proposal in the round, carries significant community opposition, and sits half a mile from an identical concept already under construction at Eastland Yards.

Hefner noted that the round drew rental proposals across Council Districts 1 through 5, with homeownership adding District 6. No applications came from District 7 — though District 7 received a Housing Trust Fund allocation in the last round.

Council Member Joi Mayo raised a related point: staff did not recommend the River District mixed-income proposal. "I was a little disappointed," Mayo said. "Council Member Mayfield and I have talked often that we don't want River District to become another Valentine." She paused. "No shade. Calm down."

Mayo floated a reallocation: pass on Willora Lake this year and redirect some of those funds to River District, noting the $4.2 million innovation category has not been addressed either.

Hefner explained that the first River District phase, approved in the previous round, has not yet closed, which factored into staff's decision to defer the second phase. She emphasized that non-recommended projects are deferred, not declined — "good projects with strong value propositions."

Mayfield traced River District's history back to 2017, when the land had not yet been cleared. Verbal commitments for mixed-income workforce housing — both rental and for-sale — were made at the time but not codified in legal language by previous staff leadership, she said. She cited River District's current rental listings: $1,539 for a 619-square-foot studio, $1,625 for a 679-square-foot one-bedroom. A check of Novel River District's listings confirms studios in the development start above $1,300. That was not what was promised. She drew a direct line between the Willora Lake rezoning-before-application issue and the River District deferral: "So it doesn't look like we are creating favorites."

Council Member Dimple Ajmera echoed the call for policy change: "Unless we change the policy we are not going to see different recommendations from staff." Hefner noted the overarching affordable housing funding policy is already an open referral to the Housing Committee, and the location score is a component of that discussion.

What's Not in the Recommendation

Staff deferred three multifamily rental proposals. The River District mixed-income development, a Nevin Road tax credit project, and a second DreamKey community at the Greer Heights county site are all waiting for the next round or a council decision to reallocate.

The innovation category — $4.2 million available — received one proposal: modular single-family homes with accessory dwelling units from the West Side Community Land Trust in Council District 3. Staff recommends deferring it as well, noting no specific sites have been identified yet. Hefner said staff would work with the partner to identify sites and bring it back as a homeownership proposal. Council Member Owens, for her part, offered her backyard.

The Housing Committee's May 4 meeting is expected to review the deferred multifamily proposals, along with two additional NOFA applications that have come in through the rolling RFP but are not reflected in this round's recommendations.

The Math

The $100 million housing bond, approved by voters in 2024, has a current balance of $44.2 million. Open commitments — the Tyvola Road preservation project, housing rehab, and administrative holds — account for $9.1 million. That leaves just over $35 million unprogrammed.

If council approves the staff recommendations on April 27, the ending balance would be just over $23.3 million. Subtract the open holds, and the remaining balance drops to just over $14 million in the main fund categories — money that would need to stretch through whatever comes next, including any projects council decides to move from deferred to funded.

The special Housing Committee meeting is the week of April 20. The full HTF booklet arrives in council packets Thursday, April 16. And at Willora Lake, the developer has indicated it will try for two rounds of HTF funding. After that, the density stays and the affordability does not.