PITTSBORO — Pittsboro commissioners held a public hearing on Monday evening discussing the affordable housing element of the Chatham Park development, as well as discussing the creation of an affordable housing ordinance for the town.
They ultimately decided to hold off on voting on the topic until there could be a workshop session where experts could come in and evaluate Chatham Park’s proposal.
Commissioner John Bonitz brought the idea forward of continuing the public hearing at a later date until the commissioners and mayor could hear from local experts about their thoughts on Chatham Park’s proposal. Specifically, Bonitz felt hearing a statistic for the current need for affordable housing in Pittsboro would be crucial in the board’s decision when voting on Chatham Park’s proposal.
“I would like this board to hear a quantification of the need or at some attempts of estimating the need for affordable housing in our community,” he said. “I think it’s appropriate because the work of the (affordable housing) task force was, indeed, four years ago, and so any efforts at understanding the need then are going to be different from today.”
The affordable housing element of Chatham Park is the last outstanding element of its master plan awaiting approval from Pittsboro commissioners. But Chatham Park’s proposed 5% of all residential units reserved for affordable housing units hasn’t been satisfactory for the board.
On Monday, Chatham Park representative Chuck Smith said Chatham Park Investors were willing to go up to 8%, but residents who spoke at public comment felt 8% wasn’t enough.
“Anyone who works within the park, including those on the lower end of the pay scale, should be able to find housing in Chatham Park,” Pittsboro resident Bobby Nicholas said. “If only the required percentage is people (earning) 80% to 120% of the average median income, the units for lower cost housing will not be built.”
Other residents expressed similar concerns. Henry Foust retired from his job as a Chatham County Schools teacher and said he was able to live comfortably. But he said based off of the numbers and thresholds he’d seen, he would technically qualify for an affordable housing unit.
“If that’s the case for me, you can imagine what the calculations would show for a beginning teacher, or a teacher’s assistant, or a cafeteria worker and many other people like me,” Foust said. “So the question comes up of, according to the current proposal, is there sufficient space in Chatham Park for people like me?”
One of the issues brought forth by Commissioner Kyle Shipp was in regards to land allocation for residential properties in Chatham Park. Shipp said he wanted to look at how much land the developers planned on using for residential units to see what land could be set aside for affordable housing units.
“This element includes a higher priority of land development,” he said. “I think we do need some standards for the characteristics of that land would be to develop on it.”
Pittsboro commissioners discussed potential incentives for developers, like those involved at the Chatham Park project, to build a certain amount of affordable housing in each development.
The proposed affordable housing incentives for Pittsboro developments would include density credit payments, expedited reviews through town staff, application and development fee rebates and more. These would be granted to developers if they agreed to reserve 10% of residential dwellings for people who make less than 60% of the average median income, 15% of units for those who make between 60% and 80% of the AMI and 20% of residential units for those who make between 80% and 120% of the AMI.
Mayor Jim Nass said the main goal of the incentives was to help bring enough affordable units to Pittsboro to address the needs of those who qualify for affordable housing.
“This problem that we are facing with affordable housing is nationwide, and certainly it is countywide” Nass said. “We want this additional element to be as good as it can possibly be, but I think very much, like the ordinance we talked about immediately before this, that it will have to be tweaked, examined and changed from time to time as we move forward.”
The board will continue the affordable housing hearing at its next meeting on Nov. 8.
Reporter Taylor Heeden can be reached at theeden@chathamnr.com.