What’s causing Raleigh’s housing shortage isn’t today’s growth – it’s yesterday’s failures.
As a Raleigh planning commissioner between April 2013 and April 2019, I read former Raleigh City Councilor Russ Stephenson’s recent opinion piece on the affordable housing crisis with interest and circumspection. As I suspected, he misses the forest for the trees. At the outset, he suggests that “[r]apid growth is making Raleigh’s affordable housing crisis worse.”
Actually, while the Raleigh metropolitan area is experiencing breathtaking growth, Raleigh’s growth has actually moderated in recent years. According to the US Census, from 1990-2000, Raleigh added 70,716 residents. From 2000-2010, it added 112,751 residents, but added only 63,773 residents between 2010-2020. Why might this be? Slowing annexations and fewer dwellings being built.
In fact, just as the growth reached its peak in the early 2000s, residential building permits fell off a cliff. Raleigh issued 6129 building permits in 2007 just before the Great Recession. Permits dropped to 1469 in 2009 and then hit rock bottom in 2010 at 1260. Even in 2019 prior to the pandemic, permits only reached 4580 – still well short of the pre-recession level.
What this data shows is that Raleigh’s housing affordability problem is rooted not in the growth occurring today, but in the failure to produce sufficient supply starting 10 and 20 years ago. Stephenson criticizes City Council’s adoption of its Missing Middle text change (TC-5-20) as not sufficiently prescribing how development should occur in residential areas. He is right in one respect: the Missing Middle text change will not solve the housing crisis. And that is because there is no singular solution to this vexing problem.
The City Council has taken multiple steps to reduce regulations and appropriate more funding for affordable housing. They include reducing the number of mandated parking spaces, making it easier and more affordable to build senior housing, making Cottage Court residences more viable to build, working to authorize the construction of “Tiny Houses,” and passing the largest affordable housing bond in the City’s history. Together, these reforms add flexibility to the entitlement process so a wider variety of housing can be built in more places at a faster pace while also subsidizing the production of more affordable units for the most economically insecure residents.
Stephenson closes out his piece by citing Portland, Oregon as his only example of “how to develop missing middle infill housing that is affordable, compatible and profitable.” Meanwhile, Portland’s median housing price is the 16th highest in the nation at $545,600. While the median housing price in Raleigh has risen significantly over the years to $384,000, it is far below cities like Portland that are often cited as having the “answer” to affordable housing.
Stephenson’s 13 years on Council coincided with the period of some of the city’s most rapid growth. He backed measures that impeded the development of housing and neglected efforts to fund affordable housing. While there is no single solution to the housing challenges facing Raleigh, it is time to back as many initiatives as possible to dig ourselves out of this affordability hole. Otherwise, we will find ourselves in the position of Portland, Seattle, San Francisco and so many other cities that have micro-managed their way into a true housing crisis.