The Real Story

Ruth Sheehan's Sept. 12 column "Housing fight tells a story" unfortunately did not address the magnitude or the complexity of the affordable housing crisis in Raleigh and Wake County.

Nearly half of the 43,000 households in Wake County earning $30,000 or less are unable to find an affordable place to live. Yet the city and county have no meaningful policies or plans to fill this gap. In fact, the supply is probably shrinking as teardowns are replaced with expensive new homes, forcing lower wage-earning citizens farther away from the city or into subsidized housing primarily in southeast and southwest Raleigh.

She also failed to mention that the city has a scattered housing policy that requires the equitable distribution of special housing and public facilities within neighborhoods. The George's Mews property appears to conflict with the city's scattered housing policy on at least two counts -- its scale and its proximity to another CASA facility on an adjacent street.

As co-chair of the Five Points Citizens Advisory Council, I am responsible for educating citizens and ensuring they have a voice in the city's public review process. When I first heard about the CASA project, I asked the city to notify me when the proposal was ready for review. Had it not been for our city councilor, Thomas Crowder, requesting that CASA meet with the neighborhood prior to the council's taking action, no public dialogue would have occurred. With only 12 days of notice, both the neighborhood and CASA became victims of a broken process. Fear of the unknown quickly became the enemy.

Philip W. Poe, Raleigh

(The length limit on letters was waived to permit a fuller response.)