Orange County NC Website
Attachment III <br />s Town of Chapel Hill <br />405 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd <br /># Chapel Hill, NC 27514 -5705 <br />(p) 919 968 -8406 <br />www.townofchapelhill.org <br />The unmet need for affordable rental housing <br />Most occupied housing units in Chapel Hill are renter - occupied: by one estimate (2011 <br />American Community Survey), 11,640, or 54.2 percent of them. This is a much higher rate than <br />the 39.7 percent renter occupancy for the Durham - Chapel Hill metropolitan statistical area as a <br />whole. <br />A residential market study completed in 2010 estimated that between 2009 to 2014, <br />approximately 1,257 new rental units would be needed to serve the Town's population: <br />706 serving households earning greater than 80 percent of the area median <br />income (AMI) <br />290 serving households earning between 50 percent and 80 percent of AMI; <br />At any given time, approximately 300 people are on the Town of Chapel Hill's public housing <br />wait list and 1800 are on the housing choice voucher (Section 8) program waitlist. Demand far <br />exceeds supply. Both programs mainly serve people with incomes of less than 30 percent of the <br />AMI. Approximately 85 percent of households on the Section 8 waitlist have incomes below 30 <br />percent of AMI; the waitlist has been closed for over two years, and the wait averages four to <br />five years. Approximately 80 percent of households on the Town's public housing waitlist are in <br />this income range; the average wait is around a year. <br />Another important target population in this income range is people who are disabled and <br />homeless. Permanent supportive housing units provide this population both an apartment and <br />essential services, such as mental health and physical health care. Demand for these units <br />vastly outstrips supply, with approximately 50 people on waitlists in Orange County at any time. <br />HUD requires communities that receive funding for homeless programs to calculate their unmet <br />need for such housing each year. In 2013, using HUD's formula, Orange County determined <br />that approximately 42 additional units of permanent supportive housing are needed. <br />Town of Chapel Hill Affordable Rental Housing Strategy <br />