Orange County NC Website
Approved 7.10.24 <br /> 1776 <br />Dolores Bailey: That’s not a problem for many of the people I serve. I provide affordable housing and in 1777 <br />Orange County there’s a 1,900-unit gap of people who are looking for housing. And seniors in particular, and black 1778 <br />and brown seniors in particular. And Carol Woods has a 1,600 person wait list. And there’s not much diversity on that 1779 <br />list. 1780 <br /> 1781 <br />Mareah Steketee: Correct. 1782 <br /> 1783 <br />Dolores Bailey: So Carol Woods has not figured out how to provide diversity. I am saying this because if 1784 <br />you’re getting ready to build a community like this, you really must look at that. And let me just give a comment on 1785 <br />something you said. The African-American community is no longer able to keep their families at home. They 1786 <br />absolutely want and need places like this but often when they are created, like what this sounds like to my ears, is 1787 <br />exclusive. It does not include everyone and so what I think I heard was that we need to change the zonings because 1788 <br />you want to put in a facility for aging. You’re going to put in a family center but you don’t want to be seen. 1789 <br /> 1790 <br />Mareah Steketee: No, we think that others don’t want to see us, ma’am. 1791 <br /> 1792 <br />Dolores Bailey: That is so not true. The need for housing in Orange County is so desperate for everybody. 1793 <br /> 1794 <br />Mareah Steketee: It is. Yes, it is. 1795 <br /> 1796 <br />Dolores Bailey: As Chris said, if he could live in this community, he would, too. It’s a wonderful-sounding 1797 <br />community. So, if you are not going to restrict it to 55, if this is not a retirement center which we need more of in 1798 <br />Orange County, we do, there’s no place for people to age which is why this sounded good to me because it sounded 1799 <br />like you were creating another Carol Woods but that’s not what you’re doing. So, I am confused. 1800 <br /> 1801 <br />Mareah Steketee: Well, the confusion probably comes because the CCRCs that you are familiar with, Carol 1802 <br />Woods, etc. are enormously expensive. Many of our community members could not afford to live there and so we’re 1803 <br />looking for an alternative that is between, that isn’t age restricted. In fact, there’s a person who’s interested in the 1804 <br />community who says I have a disabled daughter who needs her own home. Can she live in this community? We say 1805 <br />absolutely yes. We’re not restricting. We need to do a better job at reaching out, right? A lot of our interested 1806 <br />parties right now don’t want to commit because they don’t want to do it before zoning. They’re more risk averse. We 1807 <br />have a lot of outreach and marketing to do yet. We’re at the beginning of that. Even though we have 34 people who 1808 <br />say I want to live there and 100 more who are interested and many more in the background, yes, we can do a better 1809 <br />job of being inclusive. We have not said tonight that we’re affordable housing because we have tried very hard to 1810 <br />meet that bar and with a family-care home, two family-care homes, and the expense of a common house and health 1811 <br />facilities, it’s very difficult to keep the cost down. That has to be spread across all the people in the community and 1812 <br />once we’re established there may be an opportunity to provide some options for people with lower income, but we 1813 <br />don’t want to be exclusive in terms of background. 1814 <br /> 1815 <br />Dolores Bailey: When you mention the affordable side of it, normally we base that on people’s income, and if 1816 <br />we’re talking about seniors I am convinced there’s not going to be a whole lot of really high incomes that are out 1817 <br />there. You talk about exclusivity, you mention the family center and needing caretakers. Will the caretakers be able 1818 <br />to live here? 1819 <br /> 1820 <br />Mareah Steketee: We’ve talked about it. 1821 <br /> 1822 <br />Scott Radway: Dolores, we’ve known each other and gone through a lot of affordable housing wars on the 1823 <br />same side. And I wanted to make one comment about what people are talking about and some of the questions are 1824 <br />about is anybody could live there that’s under 55 and some other things like that. Some of you may have experience 1825 <br />with age 55 or age 62 age-restricted residential developments, and some with CCRCs, and some with assisted living 1826