CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Charlotte city leaders are seeking solutions to the city's affordable housing crisis. Monday night, Charlotte City Council discussed several new projects that would bring hundreds of affordable apartments and some homes to the Queen City.
The city of Charlotte is looking to add 602 new and affordable units throughout the city.
"There is a real crisis," District 4 councilwoman Renee Perkins Johnson said. "People cannot afford to live here."
The map below shows where the new units could go. The green symbols indicate family-style apartment buildings, the orange symbols indicate senior apartment complexes and the yellow symbol indicates an affordable townhome development.
However, only about 140 units would be geared towards households that make less than 30% of the average median income. Some council members don't believe that's enough and would like more of a focus on providing homes for those families.
"The 0-30% - they're in the hotels, they were in tent city," Johnson said.
If approved, 17 affordable townhomes would be built in east Charlotte, selling for about $240,000 each.
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"We know that's obviously how you create intergenerational wealth," District 1 councilman Larken Egleston said, commenting on home ownership options.
Since 2002, roughly $218 million approved by taxpayers has created or preserved more than 10,000 affordable units in the city, but there's a consensus on council: That's nowhere near enough.
"We're not succeeding right now," District 6 councilman Tariq Bokhari said. "In fact, we're failing."
The discussion comes as the City of Charlotte released its Housing Trust Fund 20 Year Anniversary report, detailing what the fund has achieved over the last two decades. City leaders acknowledged while progress has been made, there is more that can be done.
"There is no microwave solution to solving the affordable housing crisis," District 2 councilman Malcolm Graham said.
It's why Charlotte Mayor Vi Lyles and others would like to hold an affordable housing summit, bringing in experts within the field and learning new ideas and different approaches to try to do more, faster.
She called for the forum to be scheduled as soon as possible.
City council leaders would like more of an emphasis on home ownership options, targeting more efforts to update and preserve naturally occurring affordable housing, and provide more affordable housing for households making less than 30% AMI.
Charlotte City Council could approve the seven proposals on April 11. In total, $12.5 million of taxpayer money would go towards the projects. If they approve it, that would just about deplete the last $50 million affordable housing bond passed by voters.
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WCNC Charlotte is part of seven major media companies and other local institutions producing I Can’t Afford to Live Here, a collaborative reporting project focused on solutions to the affordable housing crisis in Charlotte. It is a project of the Charlotte Journalism Collaborative, which is supported by the Local Media Project, an initiative launched by the Solutions Journalism Network with support from the Knight Foundation to strengthen and reinvigorate local media ecosystems. See all of our reporting at charlottejournalism.org.