In my NC town, a hostility for those who question development is growing | Opinion
The health of a community isn’t measured by ribbon cuttings or marketing slogans. It is measured by how it treats its own citizens when they harness the courage to speak hard truths.
In Clayton, NC, those truths are increasingly met with silence and deflection.
There is a harmful narrative that those of us speaking out against a proposal for a senior-living and commercial space are “anti-growth” or “anti-development.”
This is not true. We want transparent, ethical development, free of conflicts of interest. We want growth that is responsible and backed by proper environmental and safety planning, so the burden does not fall to taxpayers. We want to protect our already strained infrastructure from further collapse. We care about our first responders and our teachers. We need more grocery stores, medical facilities, and schools, not retail that sits unleased and abandoned. And we have already seen the cost of poor planning: children struck while biking or walking to school, neighbors killed crossing the street. These were preventable tragedies had safety been prioritized from the start.
At a recent Clayton Planning Board meeting, I used my public comment time to present facts, policy references, and safety concerns drawn from my expertise as a public health and health equity professional, about a proposed senior-living and commercial development. The proposal appears to conflict with the town’s own comprehensive growth plan. My remarks were well received by a packed room.
Clayton town officials do not seem concerned that the proposal’s developer has a troubling history.
The developer is being marketed as a benevolent partner bringing affordable housing to low-income seniors. In reality, the developer’s history includes a lawsuit settled for $25 million alleging overcharging of financially-vulnerable seniors for parking and residents expressing safety concerns with buildings. The developer has faced reports of working with questionable contractors and drawn scrutiny as well as protests for rent hikes.
In Clayton, the pattern is clear. Citizen voices are excluded from decisions that will shape our town for decades. Elected and appointed officials align themselves with developers whose profits hinge on favorable approvals, even when those developers have a documented track record of concerning practices. Ethics and transparency are treated as optional, not foundational. Silence has become the default response to legitimate public concern.
The danger is not only in developments approved without scrutiny. It is in what this behavior normalizes: that public engagement is unwelcome, that questioning is adversarial, and that loyalty to private interests outweighs service to the public.
Accountability is not hostility. It is an act of love for the place you live, for the people who share it, and for the generations who will inherit it. What we tolerate today will shape our future tomorrow.
Lindsay Logan Allen is a Clayton resident and works in public health and health equity.