Affordable housing crisis is focus of community forum

CROSSROADS CORPORATION

As Charlotte’s affordable housing stock struggles to keep pace with demand, government, nonprofit and philanthropic agencies are joining forces to close the gap in neighborhoods like Grier Heights in southeast.

Affordable housing and how it impacts Black Charlotte is the focus of a webcast sponsored by The Post.

Inlivian CEO Fulton Meachem is the keynote speaker at the webinar “Breaking barriers and Building Future” March 14 at 2:30 p.m. via Zoom. Advance registration is required on Eventbrite.

Mecklenburg County is struggling to wipe out a housing gap fueled in part by gentrification in Charlotte’s urban core of previously working class and historically Black communities.

The city an estimated shortage of 26,000 affordable housing units, and the gap is widening as the cost of renting or buying increases. The elderly and people with disabilities are among the fastest-growing groups in need of affordable housing solutions in Mecklenburg, according to a 2022 census of nearly 3,000 homeless people with 70 homeless adults with disabilities identified.

According to the Census Bureau estimates 36% of all U.S. households rent.

The National Foundation for Credit Counseling, in a survey of more than 2000 U.S. renters found:

• Half had a personal experience with eviction. For Black Americans, the response was 57%;

• People 35 years of age or older are more likely than people under 35 to blame the tenant (57% to 41%) in landlord-tenant issues;

• 36% feel they fully understand their “rights and opportunities” when it comes to eviction;

• The dominant emotion associated with eviction is “sadness;”

• Half of those surveyed (50%) aren’t aware that financial literacy and debt management programs for renters exist.

Inlivian, a quasi-public housing authority, serves more than 26,500 people, but in recent years, initiatives launched by nonprofits from churches to housing advocacy agencies – partnering with government and the philanthropic community – have stepped in.

Mecklenburg County commissioners last year approved a $6 million grant to West Side Community Land Trust funds to buy 32 homes in the neighborhood. The purchase from a single property owner keeps the off the open market, where they would fetch higher prices and put the neighborhood at risk of accelerated gentrification.  

The funds came from the American Rescue Plan Act, which President Joe Biden signed to provide direct economic relief during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Mecklenburg County's ARPA grant is the largest gift we've received to date from a single funding source. The support provided from the county has been catalytic in our efforts to preserve and create perpetual affordability,” Charis Blackmon, West Side CLT’s executive director and a leading local affordable housing advocate said last year. “This is an example of what’s possible with large-scale municipal investment. Without the county’s deep support, these homes likely would have been lost, families displaced, and affordability erased.”

In 2022, the county and Charlotte Mecklenburg Housing and Homelessness Strategy Initiative started a program with United Way of Central Carolinas as the lead agency. The Enduring Structure initiative is supported through the county manager and Community Support Services through a contract with United Way, which oversees work, staff and financial support.

“This is the next step in this community-driven process, as recommended and described by the CMHHS Strategic Framework,” County Manager Dena Diorio said then.

The Enduring Structure includes two committees supporting the program. The Advisory Committee is made up mostly of private sector representatives; the Technical Committee consists of public and private sector technical experts and practitioners. People who have been or are homeless will be included on both panels.

Community nonprofits – notably churches – have been on the forefront of creating more affordable housing for working class people.

St. Paul’s Baptist Church, for instance, owns Centra Square, a mixed-income neighborhood in the Belmont neighborhood that opened in 2018. The 112-unit affordable housing community of multi-family and senior housing was built through a partnership between St. Paul Baptist, Zechariah Alexander Community Development Corporation and Laurel Street Residential, a Black-owned developer.

The city of Charlotte contributed $4.4 million to the project, which encompasses 3.5 blocks owned by St. Paul and include a 40-year affordability restriction for working-class and low-income residents. The neighborhood includes a 60-unit senior housing building, 29 townhomes and 23 garden-style apartments with amenities that include outdoor sitting areas and playground, fitness center and covered picnic area.

“The main reason it’s such a big deal is the number of units it adds to [addressing] the deficit in affordable housing units,” Mecklenburg County commissioner and St. Paul’s board of directors chair George Dunlap said before the development’s dedication. “I think St. Paul as a whole is pleased that we can add 112 units to [narrowing] that deficit.”

Myers Park Presbyterian Church last year awarded a $1 million grant to CrossRoads Corporation for Affordable Housing and Community Development to help residents in the historically black and  economically marginalized Grier Heights neighborhood remain in their homes as gentrification creeps across the  community.  

The grant will help CrossRoads, an affordable housing developer, mitigate the effects of gentrification by enabling it to develop homes below market rate for buyers with household income less than 80% of the area median income.

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