Wilmington and New Hanover County have working plans on how to facilitate the region’s anticipated population growth, but finding affordable housing for this new population will be a challenge that both political and business leaders will have to face, city, county and business leaders said during a wide-ranging forum on housing issues Tuesday morning.
More than 120,000 are projected to move to the area during the next 25 years, and city and county officials are working on new land-use plans that will draw new neighborhoods, business districts and transportation nodes to accommodate them. But whether these newcomers, and the people who already live here, can afford the housing options is an open question, those leaders said during the Wilmington mayor’s roundtable on affordable housing.
The term “public-private partnership” was often used to describe the type of solutions needed to address affordable housing, but exactly what kind of policies those partnerships would require were interpreted differently by the panel members, which included Wilmington Mayor Bill Saffo, New Hanover County Commission Chairman Jonathan Barfield, and Superintendent of Schools Tim Markley, as well as representatives from fields like banking, development, healthcare and higher education.
“We’re going to need incentives,” Saffo said.
One idea that Saffo said he could possibly support, depending on the details, are grant density credits, where developers that build housing units with higher densities could get a break on taxes. Barfield said New Hanover County has a similar program in place, called exceptional design zoning, but it is rarely taken advantage of by developers, he said.
While denser developments may help to create better housing and transportation options, it will also put more pressure on the school system, Markley said.
Other incentive ideas include cash subsidies and reductions in fees for developers who build affordable housing, while Barfield said expansion of water and sewer facilities can make higher-density development feasible. Barfield said inclusionary zoning, which requires that developers devote up to 15 percent of their development projects to low- and moderate-income housing, was another potential policy solution, despite its opposition from the real estate industry.
The Wilmington Regional Association of Realtors opposes inclusionary zoning because it would place an unfair burden on developers, said Shane Johnson, WRAR chief operating officer.
“It shouldn’t be all on the shoulders of developers and home builders,” he said. “This problem won’t be solved by zoning.”
Policies that could be embraced by real estate builders and developers is “fast tracking,” where plans with sufficient affordable housing move to the top of the permit approval list, Johnson said. Waiving certain costs, like hook-up fees to water and sewer, could also help promote affordable housing, he said.
Brett Martin, CEO of CastleBranch, said problems with affordable housing generally come down to jobs, noting that salaries need to reach at least $35,000 to meet affordable housing guidelines. And while politicians and policymakers try to bring new jobs to the region, Martin said the process was essentially “netting,” whereas they should be “fishing” for jobs in certain industries, like technological development jobs, which can start at $70,000 a year and move into six figures.
Many of the jobs created in the region are the types needed to support the growth, like teachers, police officers, cooks, office clerks, bank tellers and nursing assistants. A 2009 report found that 58 percent of the jobs in Wilmington are low-paying sales and service jobs, as most of the starting salaries for these careers fails to meet the threshold for affordable housing in New Hanover County housing.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development states paying more than 30 percent of income on rent and mortgage is considered housing-cost burdened and paying above 50 percent is severely cost burdened. The city’s annual Consolidated Annual Performance and Evaluation Report shows that in the Wilmington region, nearly 39 percent of homeowners and 54 percent of renters are cost-burdened.
A person making the region’s median income of $41,573 can afford a home costing $125,000 or rent of $787. However, the Wilmington Regional Association of Realtors reports the median home price in the region is $191,140, while HUD studies show the median rent is $847.
Many jobs in Wilmington don’t come close to the median income level. Average salaries range from $19,310 for child care workers to $30,460 for police officers, with jobs like nursing assistants, cooks and hair dressers coming somewhere in between.
Barfield and others said one of the problems in approaching housing issues was the term “affordable housing” itself, as it raises concerns about the problems associated with low-income housing, like crime and blight.
“Neighborhoods come out when they hear affordable housing,” Saffo said. “It scares them to death.”
And since housing costs can be an issue on many places in the economic scale, Barfield suggested using the term “workforce housing.”
“We have to be more inclusionary of all the folks living here,” he said.
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