City Council summit focuses on housing in Charlotte

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (WBTV) - Leaders in Charlotte are keeping housing top of mind as the city continues to grow and people currently living here deal with the rising cost of housing.

Tuesday wrapped up two days of city leaders hammering out housing focuses, priorities and planning for the future.

Councilwoman Renee Johnson said, “today really gives us the opportunity to take a deeper dive and discussing solutions into helping our most vulnerable residents.”

The second day of the Housing and Jobs Summit opened with 10 housing focus areas.

1. Reduce the unsheltered homeless population.

2. Reduce the unstably housed population [e.g., long-term hotel residents, severely cost-burdened residents, etc.]

3. Develop targeted strategies focused on hard-to-house populations such as:

- Justice involved residents.

- Domestic violence survivors.

4. Support the production and/or preservation of affordable housing units.

5. Advance geographically targeted strategies to mitigate involuntary displacement driven by gentrification.

6. Increase the inventory of for-sale of single-family homes affordable to households at the 60%-80% Area Median
Income level.

7. Increase homeownership assistance programming [e.g., down payment assistance]

8. Enhance access to affordable education and re-skilling programming.

9. Enhance access to services and amenities essential to economic mobility e.g., childcare, financial literacy and banking, etc.)

10. Accelerate the creation of good paying jobs in low-opportunity areas.

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“At the time that we’re growing and bringing people in, if you live here, you ought to be able to have an ability to have a housing choice,” said Charlotte’s mayor, Vi Lyles.

City council members voted on their top priority areas which includes support for the production and preservation of affordable housing and enhance access to affordable education and re-skilling programming.

Braxton Winston, Mayor Pro-Tem on Charlotte City Council said, “we’re trying to prescribe solutions for folks across the spectrum of Charlotte no matter what zip code, we need new solutions to deal with the realities on the ground.”

Councilwoman Johnson shares what she thinks are some of the biggest concerns for Charlotteans.

“Increased housing prices, increased rental prices, gentrification, so we’re looking at solutions to definitely try to even out the market and help with down-payment assistance and continue our focus on affordable housing solutions,” said Johnson.

Some of the priorities developed from the housing and jobs summit will determine how the $50,000,000 bond voters approved this past November will be spent on affordable housing.

Mayor Lyles said, “what we want to do is use that money in the way that gets the greatest impact for the most people and that’s our commitment.”

Mayor Pro-Tem Winston believes the summit will give the city staff and community partners a guidance of council’s priorities for addressing housing issues.

City council will dive deeper into the priorities later this month during a council retreat to determine how money from the housing trust fund is spent.

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