Orange County NC Website
Maxecine Mitchell- Also, one of the things is they’re trying to have the people sell their house back to another low-270 <br />income family. That’s what it’s designed for. So, for me, and I do agree with you, jobs do matter… But the desire is 271 <br />for affordable housing to keep it within the affordable housing community. Not to go outside of that. Unfortunately, in 272 <br />Carrboro they got bought up and they all turned on to students. All I saw was college students. What happened to the 273 <br />families? Whether they were renting or owning they’re gone. And you’re not going to get them back. 274 <br /> 275 <br />Tony Blake: And the students move in where the transportation is and people who are in poverty need public 276 <br />transportation to get to work. 277 <br /> 278 <br />Audrey Spencer-Horsley- And one of the things that was very clear, as I was talking to people that need the housing, 279 <br />is transportation is king. And it’s almost synonymous with affordable housing and if you provide an affordable unit for 280 <br />somebody that doesn’t have access to jobs or service you’re really locking them into poverty. 281 <br /> 282 <br />Lydia Wegman- Is the $5,000,000 going to be building housing in the towns or only in the County? 283 <br /> 284 <br />Audrey Spencer-Horsley- It’s intended to be Countywide; it’s not limited. Because the non-profits that are probably 285 <br />going to be the primary developers work in the entire county. 286 <br /> 287 <br />Tony Blake: But you can’t really build the density you need without water and sewer, right? 288 <br /> 289 <br />Audrey Spencer-Horsley- Right, and that’s a challenge too. One of the things we’re looking at or we considered was 290 <br />where there was infrastructure or where the infrastructure was planned. 291 <br /> 292 <br />Patricia Roberts: Because one of the problems with Chapel Hill and Carrboro is it takes so long to go through the 293 <br />process. 294 <br /> 295 <br />Audrey Spencer-Horsley- And I heard that too. And I was at a meeting with the developers and that was their pet 296 <br />peeve was that it takes too long and it costs money when you take that long. 297 <br /> 298 <br />Lydia Wegman- Audrey, with the $5,000,000 who is deciding where the non-profits are going to build? Is that up to 299 <br />the non-profits? What’s the decision process? 300 <br /> 301 <br />Audrey Spencer-Horsley- Most of the non-profits have their own strategic plans and their pipeline of the type of 302 <br />housing that they do, and the interesting thing that I found have their niches. Like Habitat primarily does home 303 <br />ownership for low income persons, and then you have Community Home Trust that is a little higher end, it’s more of 304 <br />what you would consider the workforce housing, and then you have those that do more of the rental housing that 305 <br />serve the very lowest of income which is not much produced annually, and then you have somebody like Cossa 306 <br />that’s kind of in the middle, that does have experience and has done larger developments but they don’t do as much 307 <br />new construction large scale as large scale acquisitions. But to answer your question, one of the things that we will 308 <br />be working with the Board and having public comment on is where the housing goes and looking at the design 309 <br />criteria. And one of the things that the Board said is they don’t want impacted areas, for example. They don’t want 310 <br />large developments where you’re going to have all of your low income in one place and we want to make sure that 311 <br />they are designed standard, has universal design so that it could accommodate somebody that has a disability or a 312 <br />senior that wants to age in place. Those are the kind of things we will be looking at. Then we will probably put out a 313 <br />request for proposal and it will be based on a competitive process and who best needs and leveraging other funding. 314 <br /> 315 <br />Tony Blake: Yeah, the USDA has funding for this and funding to help people build businesses to provide 316 <br />employment. But what’s your input on this place where Chapel Hill’s doing a 99 year lease on the land next to the old 317 <br />cemetery down by Legion Road. I thought they were going to build affordable housing apartments there? 318 <br /> 319 <br />Audrey Spencer-Horsley- They’re initially doing 80 units and then they’re proposing to do 60 units. We have a little bit 320 <br />of funding in that project already. 321 <br /> 322 <br />Kim Piracci- In this time and this place it seems like there’s very little student housing. 323 <br /> 11