Raleigh stands by housing proposal

The City Council declines a county suggestion to hold a public hearing, sending it back to commissioners

Raleigh leaders quickly reaffirmed their support last week for turning the George's Mews apartment complex off Glenwood Avenue near downtown into housing for low-income workers.

As a result, a nonprofit developer's proposal to purchase the complex now heads back to the Wake County Board of Commissioners, who are expected to take it up at their Oct. 6 meeting.

The commissioners tabled the proposal at their last meeting and asked the Raleigh City Council to hold a public hearing on it.

The City Council, which met the day after the commissioners made the request, held no public hearing and voted 7-1 to reaffirm their support of the proposed purchase by Community Alternatives for Supportive Abodes, which wants to turn George's Mews' 26 one-bedroom apartments into a mix of rent-controlled apartments and housing for the disabled.

The county commissioner who most insisted on the city having a public hearing was Joe Bryan, the board's chairman. Bryan, on an economic-development recruitment trip to China, could not be reached for comment.

But Commissioner Betty Lou Ward said she doesn't think the project is doomed just because Raleigh didn't hold a public hearing. "I don't think it's a deal breaker," she said.

Ward said she wants to talk to Debra King, CASA's executive director, before deciding how she'll vote on the issue.

Ward also said that she doesn't agree with some the arguments against the project, particularly the idea that it would hurt property values in the Glenwood-Brooklyn neighborhood.

"If it does move forward, I don't think the neighbors will notice anything appreciably different," she said.

CASA's proposal to buy George's Mews for $2.14 million would be funded by the city, Wake County and state agencies. Raleigh's City Council has already agreed to contribute $926,164. The county is being asked to provide $566,500.

The project has sparked a vigorous public debate about the effects of such housing on neighborhoods, and about the process by which the city funds different affordable housing projects around the city. Advocates for the disabled and for affordable housing have argued in favor of CASA's project, while a number of Glenwood-Brooklyn residents have come out against it.

The Historic Glenwood/Brooklyn Neighborhood Association recently polled its members to see if they supported the project.

Jennifer Attride, the association's president, said 56 of the 81 members opposed the project on the grounds that it is not in line with the city's "scattered site" affording housing policy, which is designed to avoid concentrating assisted-rental housing in minority and low-income neighborhoods.

CASA already operates a Cleveland Street quadruplex a block from George's Mews.

But other Glenwood-Brooklyn residents remain worried about the sorts of people that would move in to the apartments after CASA takes over.

Philip Isley, who was the only council member to vote against the project last week, said many residents have contacted him with questions about who would qualify to live in George's Mews.

During last week's meeting, Isley asked King, CASA's executive director, whether felony drug dealers would be allowed to live in the complex.

King said CASA's tenants undergo criminal background checks, and that such drug charges would have had to happen a "really long time ago" in a person's history for CASA to consider accepting them.

"I was not comfortable with the answers she gave me," Isley said later. "I'm not convinced they have a plan of who can and can't be there."