Wake County seeks to preserve affordable housing through new ‘game-changer’ fund
Wake County leaders remember the loss and displacement of Forest Hills Apartments residents in Garner.
And Wintershaven Apartments residents in Raleigh.
And the scores of other affordable housing complexes that have been bought and redeveloped as market-rate homes.
“Unfortunately, we have had to go through many learning experiences where we were not able to save properties, and individuals in our community were unfortunately displaced,” said Alicia Arnold, Wake County’s deputy housing director. “And what we’ve learned is that we absolutely need something like a preservation fund.”
Monday, the Wake County Board of Commissioners approved a contract with Self-Help Ventures Fund to administer a fund to preserve affordable housing throughout the county. Self-Help is a Durham-based nonprofit financial institution that includes credit unions and loan funds.
The county will seed the fund with $10.5 million with plans for it to grow to $61.2 million with funding from municipalities, corporations, nonprofits and foundations. The Raleigh City Council will vote whether to commit $4 million to the fund at an upcoming meeting.
This fund will allow the county to be nimble and snatch up properties when they go up on the market, Wake County Commissioner Matt Calabria
“What’s important is that this is the starting gun for us to be able to have very serious conversations with landowners about how to preserve affordable housing before we lose it potentially forever,” he said.
Wake County housing
Since 2010, nearly 60% of Wake County’s apartments renting for less than $750 a month have disappeared, according to a housing presentation Monday. And 40% of apartments renting for less than $1,000 a month have disappeared since 2010.
“It’s far easier to preserve a resource than to recreate it,” Calabria said. “By protecting our existing affordable housing, we can ensure families who’ve lived in affordable neighborhoods for generations don’t have to worry about getting priced out of their homes.”
A majority of the fund will go toward preserving “naturally occurring affordable housing,” meaning housing that isn’t currently subsidized. Sometimes that means properties are older or in need of renovations and are at risk of being sold and redeveloped.
“We’ve done a significant job in building and strengthening our production of affordable housing in this community,” Arnold said. “We’ve produced over 2,200 units in the past three years. But if we are not paying attention to preservation, we are pouring water into a leaky bucket.”
Calabria called the creation of the fund a “major pivot point.”
“It unlocks the ability for us to really start to go after matching funds, and contributions from area corporations, nonprofits, foundations and other organizations who may wish to participate,” he said. “It’s a great opportunity for us to leverage nongovernmental dollars to make sure that we’re doing things as efficiently as we can.”
The fund will also take advantage of an alert system of sorts that will track subsidized affordable housing developments that are near the end of their contractual obligations to keep the units affordable. This will allow Wake County to work with property owners before they put affordable housing complexes on the market.
“This is a game-changer in Wake County,” said Wake County Commissioner Vickie Adamson. “We can’t build housing to replace what we are losing. And if we don’t stop the bleed we’re not going to go anywhere in Wake County.”
This story was originally published October 4, 2021 at 7:13 PM.
