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Mayor Foy noted that this requires a special use permit from the Town of Chapel Hill. This is a zone that the Town created in order to encourage affordable housing. Orange County Planning Director Craig Benedict said that the preparation of this agenda is a joint effort from the Planning staffs of Orange County, Chapel Hill, and Carrboro. The two rezonings are part of the Chapel Hill Transition Area, which is only a joint review by the Town of Chapel Hill and Orange County. Chapel Hill Planning Director Roger Waldon gave the presentation. He showed a map of the joint planning area. The area to the northwest of the Chapel Hill city limits is the Chapel Hill Transition Area. This means that Chapel Hill does not exercise unilateral zoning jurisdiction over this; it is shared with Orange County and Carrboro. Any proposed rezoning is a matter that has to be considered by the Chapel Hill Town Council and the Orange County Board of Commissioners and requires affirmative action by both bodies. Both of the applications tonight are in the transition area, both of the applicants are seeking rezoning, and in both cases the rezoning would have to be approved by the Chapel Hill Town Council and the Orange County Board of Commissioners. The first rezoning is Rusch Hollow. The current zoning is Residential 1. The proposed rezoning is to a zoning district called Residential Special Standards. This was put in place by Chapel Hill to help facilitate affordable housing. The area is about three acres. The staff's conclusion is that this rezoning would promote the purposes of the land use plan. The preliminary recommendation is that the two bodies consider approval of this application for rezoning. PUBLIC COMMENT Executive Director of Habitat for Humanity Susan Levy spoke as the applicant. She spoke about the increase in the number of applicants that Habitat has had. They usually get about 30 applications during an application session, and during the last one they received over 60 applications. Many of the applicants currently live in Chapel Hill or Carrboro. Habitat is interested in this site because it is within the Chapel Hill-Carrboro school district. Over 35 of the applicants also work in Chapel Hill or Carrboro (schools, UNC, UNC Hospitals, local restaurants and retail, private health care, light manufacturing, and construction}. If this rezoning request is approved, Rusch Hollow will serve 17 households who earn less than 50% of the area median income. One of the families that will live in this subdivision is the Rogers family, who has been waiting for two years to move into affordable hauling. They started planning this development well over two years ago and they have not heard from anyone opposed to Rusch Hollow from the community meetings. They will bring sewer lines to this area and the sewer will have a positive effect on the future of affordable housing. Habitat has received allocations of public funding from a variety of sources in order to support the construction of this neighborhood. To date, they have a commitment for $497,000 in public funds for the purchase of the land and the construction. Habitat will raise about twice this amount in private sources to fund the rest of the development. There will be 12 single-