The Town of Hillsborough is in the early stages of developing a strategy for expanding and preserving its affordable housing options. Hillsborough’s Board of Commissioners recently met to give initial feedback on the draft plan, which the town aims to finalize this fall.
In Hillsborough, the current demand for an affordable housing unit available to the lowest income bracket outweighs the availability nine to one. For the town’s renters, more than half are cost-burdened, spending more than 30% of their income on housing-related expenses.
Especially because the local government does not have a dedicated housing department, Hillsborough mayor Mark Bell said the upcoming Affordable Housing Strategy will be important both for managing those affordable housing issues and better map out its requirements for future development projects.
“So to have a strategic affordable housing plan that ties into all these other strategic activities that we do in the town, that’s exciting to me,” Bell told 97.9 The Hill. “So when we see an opportunity, we can say ‘Oh, that fits into pillar number two, strategy number seven,’ and keeping with the overall purpose of the Comprehensive Sustainability Plan.
“So we’re not guessing,” Bell continued. “We’re not flying by the seat of our pants, but we direct our work to preserve and create new affordable housing in a really purposeful way.”
The Affordable Housing Strategy focuses on expanding, preserving, and diversifying affordable housing options in town. Through programs and action items, it aims to help address a multitude of affordable housing issues in the community. (Image via The Town of Hillsborough.)
Across four guiding pillars, the plan focuses on increasing the affordable housing stock, preserving the existing supply, and reducing housing-related financial burdens for residents already living in affordable communities. Bell said the town has been looking to stratify different levels of housing affordability and need, particularly targeting “missing middle” housing and households earning 30% AMI — neither of which developers are motivated to build unless the town requires it or helps pay for it.
The developers follow the market, according to Central Pines Regional Council Housing Manager Hunter Fillers. Like other North Carolina communities, Fillers said Hillsborough has seen rapid growth and an influx of people with higher incomes migrating from states like California, Florida, and New York. Leading the presentation to the town commissioners, he said it’s one of several issues that cannot be addressed by merely increasing the affordable housing supply.
“You’re seeing this very high demand,” Fillers said at the Aug. 24 work session. “Not only the kind of natural demand in the town, but those coming from outside with more resources kind of adding to this intense pressure on the housing cost, raising them for residents who have been here for a while, senior residents who may have limited resources.”
The housing strategy is part of the town’s Comprehensive Sustainability Plan, which states all residents in Hillsborough — regardless of age, race or income — should have access to safe and attainable housing. (Image via The Town of Hillsborough.)
The subsidy reform component of the Affordable Housing Strategy includes developing a formal framework for affordability requirements, like establishing standard fees in lieu of providing affordable housing in developments and creating partnerships with nonprofit organizations. Commissioner Kathleen Ferguson agreed the strategy should be more than just a conversation about supply, but ensuring there are diverse affordable housing options for the lowest income bracket.
For example, out of the nearly 1,000 naturally occurring affordable housing (NOAH) units in Hillsborough, none serve households earning 30% AMI. Even the 1,800 units approved or under construction are predominantly market-rate, which Ferguson said is not helpful for residents like the disabled, retired, or essential workers.
“There’s a lot of different forces going on,” Ferguson continued. “Our apartments, or last I saw, were like 95% filled, which is high, and the reason being is they’re waiting on houses. And then the people who live here are stratified on resourcing: Can you afford to repair? Can you afford the home that you really want? And some want density, some want land, some want expanded [family housing], and some just want to get into the house.”
Those nuances are something Ferguson said she hopes future community surveys will explore. The commissioners also largely agreed how more of Hillsborough’s low-income communities should be engaged during that process. In addition to interviews with Hillsborough’s commissioners, data from a wider Orange County outreach effort helped inform the draft plan, and a majority of the limited town-specific responses came from the Fairview community.
Hillsborough seeks to finalize the plan in the fall, which will then serve as a living document to help manage growth and provide a diverse supply of safe and affordable housing. (Image via The Town of Hillsborough.)
Next steps for the Affordable Housing Strategy include incorporating feedback from the work session and that community and stakeholder engagement. In the meantime, Fillers said the neighborhood’s feedback provides a “good base” of initial housing priorities.
“I think Fairview for example, a lot of the renters who maybe their landlords weren’t making repairs that were needed,”Fillers said. And so maintenance was a real issue that we heard. Rental and down payment assistance for working families, that was the second priority, which shows that the housing opportunities and kind of the choice is not there. People may want to own, maybe they want to rent for their lifestyle. So maybe they need different styles of housing.”
To hear the full discussion from the August 24 Hillsborough Board of Commissioners meeting, click here.
Featured photo via The Town of Hillsborough.
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