The Wilmington City Council has pledged to continue the work of a committee devoted to workforce housing issues despite losing New Hanover County as partner.
The New Hanover County Commissioners voted 3-2 last month to walk away from the Workforce Housing Advisory Committee, citing city budgets cuts and concern about its effectiveness. The committee was created in 2019 to study workforce housing issues and to make recommendations to city and county officials for increasing the county’s affordable housing supply.
All but one of the council’s seven members agreed the committee’s work must continue, even without its former partner.
Mayor Bill Saffo (Photo: City of Wilmington)“I would definitely want to continue on with a new committee and how we reestablish that, I think it’s going to be extremely important,” said Mayor Bill Saffo. “I think it should be charged with some specific things that we would like to see — we’d like to see obviously an increase in the amount of units that we feel that we could put into the marketplace.”
Councilman Charlie Rivenbark, the lone dissenter, countered that the committee never lived up to expectations.
“I don’t know if this committee is the one that can carry forth and do great things or what, but it hasn’t been working,” Rivenbark said. “We just haven’t seen the results that everyone is wanting to see.”
Charlie Rivenbark (Photo: City of Wilmington)City Council member Kevin Spears pushed back.
“I don’t want this governing body to follow that path of detrimental ideology as it relates to this community,” Spears said. “We have to keep working, we have to keep taking steps, shuffles, whatever it is, forward, not backwards. We need to keep this committee in place.”
City staffers shared a spreadsheet showing Wilmington has spent $23 million on affordable housing projects since 2022. The total cost of projects was $184.6 million with most money coming from federal sources. The city produced 2,262 housing units, 882 of which are described as workforce housing, staffers reported.
Council member Clifford Barnett said he is proud of the committee’s work.
Clifford Barnett (Photo: City of Wilmington)“I would hate for us to lose that momentum, so I’m in favor of keeping the committee and adding those we need to add to it,” Barnett said. “When you go back and look at those numbers and look at the number of houses we had a chance to do and how many people we’ve had a opportunity to get into a house, I think we’ve got to do that.”
The council didn’t vote Tuesday on four options city staffers presented for moving forward. The options were to end the committee, review other avenues for engagement on housing matters, establish a new committee or create ad hoc committees to assess and make recommendations on housing needs as part of specific plans.
City Manager Becky Hawke said that at a minimum, the committee’s bylaws must be rewritten to reflect the county’s decision to leave the partnership if the city continues the committee’s work.
“We wanted to just present the options to get feedback, to see if there are other changes you would like to make or if this is a committee you no longer wish to see in this exact format, so it’s really looking for majority direction so that we can take whatever action that’s desired by council,” Hawke said.
New Hanover County backs away from commitment to affordable workforce housing
As NC Newsline reported last month, the county’s three Republican commissioners voted to end the county’s committee, contending the board must balance financial considerations and quality of life demands with the need for affordable housing.
“Our citizens overwhelmingly told us that they did not want to see their tax rate go up.” Commissioner LeAnn Pierce said. “They overwhelmingly said they were struggling at home, and they wanted us to hear them.”
Democratic commissioners Rob Zapple and Stephanie Walker voted against withdrawing from the committee and challenged colleague’s perception that the advisory committee did not perform as intended.
“In the three years since [the board agreed to spend $15 million on the workforce housing committee], we have spent $9 million and it has done exactly what you said you were not aware of,” Zapple responded. “It’s [county funding] leveraged $150 million in private investment that has gone into trying to solve this [housing] problem.”
The board’s decision to back away from the workforce housing committee comes as New Hanover County and many other counties and municipalities across the state and nation are making investments to increase housing supplies to accommodate an unprecedented demand for affordable housing. It also comes amid steep budget cuts for a county experiencing record growth.
A recent study commissioned by the North Carolina Chamber found that the state has a significant housing crisis and needs 760,000 new housing units over the next five years to meet demand across its 100 counties. According to the study, New Hanover County has a 21,656-unit housing gap when owner and renter data are combined.
Meanwhile, 34% of renters and homeowners in New Hanover County are burdened by housing costs, according the N.C. Housing Coalition’s 2025 profiles of the state’s 100 counties. Families that spend more than 30% of their income on housing are considered cost burdened.
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