Affordable Housing

Owning your first home is a rite of passage — a marker of true adulthood. For those privileged enough to buy a house, it is often the first step in building wealth. But millennials are not achieving that milestone at the same rate that Baby Boomers and Gen Xers did at their age. 

The novel “A Good Neighborhood” (St. Martin’s Press/2020) starts with a premise familiar to many North Carolinians: new residents moving into a historic community and putting up a brand new, giant house. 

Affordable housing is in limited supply in many communities in North Carolina. The problem is particularly acute in Wake and Mecklenburg counties, where the population growth has outpaced that in more rural parts of the state. WUNC data reporter Jason deBruyn explored what is happening to housing in the Triangle region for his new in-depth series “Where We Live.”

200 families living in the McDougald Terrace public housing complex in Durham have been temporarily moved into hotels because of ongoing problems with carbon monoxide. The Durham Housing Authority put in place a voluntary evacuation order Friday as it conducts testing at the units. 

Racialized housing policies were in place in many U.S. cities for most of the 20th century, and the legacy persists. Redlining, urban renewal and an array of other policies shaped wealth and demographic patterns that inform how today’s cities look and run. Statistics paint a stark picture, but artists and scholars have also taken on the charge of humanizing the story.

Nearly 10 weeks after Hurricane Dorian struck North Carolina’s coast, Ocracoke Island is still under an evacuation order blocking visitors and tourism. On Monday, Nov. 11, the Hyde County Board of Commissioners agreed to allow visitors starting Nov. 22, which is the same day the island’s main road is expected to reopen. 

The sun had just taken a dip behind some heavy cloud cover when Marian Spicer set up a folding table with campaign fliers at the downtown Durham early voting site on a recent afternoon.

She mingled with other campaigners and approached voters to give them her pitch in favor of the proposed $95 million affordable housing bond.

Durham is one of a number of North Carolina cities that have experienced rapid growth in the last decade.

North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein joined 21 other state attorneys general in criticizing the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s proposed changes to the disparate impact standard.

This summer the city of Greensboro plans to sue the 10 landlords with the highest number of housing code violations. These companies have racked up hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines owed to the city.

North Carolina is a hotspot in the nation’s eviction crisis. As of 2016, the state’s rate of evictions and eviction filings were nearly double national rates. New reporting shines a light on the specific problems in Durham County, where gentrification is pushing out long-time residents and advocates say the city is in a time of crisis.

Willie May Mckellar has lived at Turner Park mobile home community for 22 years. Out in front of her home she points out water that has been standing in large potholes for days. She points to the tree in front of her home. The roots have grown up under the building and crumpled the skirting around the bottom of her single-wide trailer. She owns her home, but not the land underneath it. These are issues she think the new owners of the park should address because she pays rent for the land.

  Ananda Bennett’s story about how she became a quadriplegic still makes her laugh.

“I love this story so much,” she said.

It started as a normal day for the then 11-year-old. Her mom picked her and her brother up from school and they went to run errands. Then Bennett felt a sharp pain between her shoulder blades. By the time her mom returned to the car, it was a scene out of a movie.

A deadly apartment fire in Greensboro earlier this year highlighted some deep-seated community issues. The kitchen fire in the Summit-Cone apartment complex in May killed five young children, all siblings who were refugees from the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Beauna Clarke lives in Greenfield Place, a rent controlled complex in Chapel Hill. On one of the first crisp fall days of the year, she showed off the two-bedroom apartment.

"Okay, so you enter into the dining area, kitchen area," she said.

She described the amenities while the dishwasher hummed and dryer rumbled. A mountain bike stood beside her couch in the living room.

These days, Warren and Jennifer Small host family get-togethers at their house in south Raleigh.

They look forward to trick-or-treaters. Warren can fish in the pond just beyond their backyard. And they've learned a few bird calls with their young son, Braeden. He already recognizes some of his favorites.

Jesse Hamilton McCoy II was raised by a single mother in low-income neighborhoods in Vance and Durham Counties. Growing up in the late 1980s and 1990s, he witnessed the drug epidemic firsthand and remembers not being able to trust some adults in the community because of their addiction. 

Housing advocates in the Cape Fear region are offering landlords an incentive to help end homelessness. Those who register to rent to a homeless tenant will be guaranteed up to $2,000 in case the tenant breaks the lease or damages the property.

The highest rent prices in the nation can be found in metropolitan areas like Manhattan or San Francisco. So why is it that Greensboro has some of the highest eviction rates in the country? Greensboro is ranked seventh on the list of the top evicting large cities in the U.S., according to Princeton University’s Eviction Lab. 

The Asheville City Council voted to severely restrict tourist rentals in Asheville earlier this year. The new rules state that rentals that had city permits before the vote can stay in business.

A new investigation by the BBC has uncovered scores of cases where women allegedly endured sexual harassment or may have been forced to do sexual favors to avoid eviction or secure housing.

Like any good architect, North Carolina State professor Tom Barrie knows how to build houses. But perhaps more importantly, he knows why we build them.

Nearly 20 percent of residents in Greensboro live in poverty, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. A new series by WUNC reporter Naomi Prioleau examines the specific barriers these individuals face as they try to change their economic future.

It is not as easy to find a place to live in the city of Durham as it used to be just a few years ago. The “Bull City” has made its share of “best places to live” lists, thanks to population growth, a booming economy and a transformed downtown.