The following letter will be shared with the Chapel Hill Town Council:
Dear Mayor Hemminger and Town Council members of Chapel Hill,
While ultimately we envision a town that has affordable housing for all, the Chapel Hill-Carrboro NAACP is supportive of the measures to amend the LUMO to address “missing middle” housing in service of that larger goal. The predominance of single-family homes in our town and the growing demand for places to live compound the problem of the rising price of housing.
No strategy is a silver bullet, but if we don’t open the door for all town planning levers, thereby increasing the availability of housing at different price points, then we will become a homogeneous town socioeconomically. We will continue to lose racial diversity in our neighborhoods. We will fail to reverse policies of the past that were rooted in racism.
Some of the residents of our town have petitioned against these amendments, but we feel that these concerns have been well addressed by the Town staff’s research, documented in these FAQs and therefore are not elaborated here.
This Council has taken a strong stance on matters of increasing supply of housing for different income levels, and we are grateful for that. We are at a crossroads. This added measure and more that are needed to come will ensure a Chapel Hill that we can be proud of decades into the future.
We look forward to collaborating with the town on achieving our shared vision through this and additional policies aimed at increasing affordable housing for people earning below 80% AMI.
Respectfully,
Chapel-Hill Carrboro NAACP