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Housing Call: August 27, 2024

Organizational Updates 

Registration for the 2024 NC Affordable Housing Conference closes tomorrow, August 28 at 5 pm. As a reminder, due to capacity, the conference will not accept onsite registrations this year, so be sure to register before registration closes next week. We look forward to seeing you on September 5–6 at the Raleigh Convention Center! Link to register can be found here.

There will be NO HOUSING CALL ON SEPTEMBER 3 – See you at the conference 🙂 We will resume our housing all on September 10. 

Check out our [podcast] Bonus Episode: Heirs Property Unlocked: Part 1 | North Carolina Housing Coalition

Special Guest – Emily Roberts, Engagement Coordinator for SEAP – Southern Economic Advancement Project 

Emily Roberts is the Engagement Coordinator for SEAP, supporting SEAP’s digital presence and engagement with partners, both new and existing. Emily received her Master of Public Health (MPH) degree from East Carolina University in 2013 and, upon graduating, jumped in to lead and support community engagement efforts across Western North Carolina. A community organizer and creative entrepreneur at heart, Emily is passionate about exploring and naming the ways in which every-day visual cues are used to tell stories, influence decisions, and include or exclude the voices and identities of others. Emily is grateful for her North Carolina roots and the foundation they provide to work alongside good and brave folks doing progressive work across the South. 

Tell us a bit about SEAP, and your role there and how it applies to North Carolina.

SEAP was founded in 2019 by Stacey Abrams. We partner with policy thinkers and doers to amplify their efforts and to help bridge gaps in policy infrastructures. Our goal is to advance policies that improve economic security, access to healthcare, and environmental justice for all Southerners across the 12 states that we serve, which includes NC. We try to pay attention to how race, class, and gender intersect social and economic policy in the South. We do this through network building, research support, and technical assistance. I’m the engagement coordinator at SEAP, so I support our team’s efforts to seek out, develop, & maintain strong partnerships with leaders and organizations throughout our region. From technical assistance to microgrants, we seek to help implement policies in local communities that improve the quality of life for vulnerable Southern communities and families.

SEAP is partnered with several nonprofit organizations in North Carolina through some Covid vaccine uptake microgrants back in the early days of the pandemic. We also have partnered with the North Carolina Budget and Tax Center to survey households in Rocky Mount on the American Rescue Plane (ARP) funding when it first came down. Currently, we’re getting to know housing organizations across the South, including North Carolina. I’ve loved connecting with folks in Greensboro, Wilmington, Davidon, and the NC Housing Coalition.

In SEAPs efforts to work with communities and how they use their ARPA funds, what are some patterns you’ve seen?

Every community is different and relationships and dynamics are different, but the key pattern that I’ve seen and taken away to consider is the relationship side of things. Communities that seem to have the most success advocating for and securing ARP funds for equity-building projects are communities where grassroots and organizational leaders have strong working relationships, or at least mutual support and trust, between elected county and city officials.

We are continuing to see an unprecedented amount of federal dollars coming straight from the federal government to both local governments and community-based organizations. Even if you haven’t had success advocating for equity-building projects in your community, or even if you have, there will be opportunities in the future to continue to build out those relationships and navigate those to secure public dollars for your community.

What would you like to highlight about ARPA for local communities in North Carolina that they should be considering or aware of?

If there are unobligated ARP dollars in your town, city or county, those dollars must be obligated by December 31, 2024. The good news is that as long as those dollars are obligated, they don’t have to be spent until December 31, 2026. The key thing here is to advocate and work with your local officials to obligate those dollars. We have an ARP Local Funds tracker resource on the data tab of our website. To access it, click here, scroll down to ‘ARP Local Funds Tracker,’ click ‘Enter the Dashboard’. This is all based on the reports that localities sent in to the Treasury back in July. If you see that there are unobligated dollars where you live, the best thing you can do now is to call your local officials or a staff person in their office and ask if the dollars still remain unobligated. If they do remain unobligated, it might be a really good time to have conversations, whether you had them before and previously secured ARP dollars or not, have those conversations to see if there might be an option to have your project written into the plan for your city, town, or county.

How can people reach you or reach SEAP for further help or resources?

We have lots of great resources on our website, including:

There are lots of great opportunities and ways to help folks who hold the purse strings think creatively about these ARP dollars now that the program is starting to sunset. Now that the waters have hopefully settled a bit, we can take stock of what’s still out there and how we can put it to good use to ensure an equitable Covid recovery for all southerners.

If you’d like to reach out to Emily to chat more about your programs and any resources available at SEAP, you can reach her at emily@theseap.org.

 

Federal Updates

  • Congress is out on August recess and will return on September 9.
  • Earlier this month, HUD published 2025 Fair Market Rents for the Housing Choice Voucher Program.
  • The CDBG – Community Development Block Grant program turned 50 years old this year – to learn more about this program and its history, click

 

State & Local Updates 

The NC Department of Health & Human Services recently released their Strategic Housing Plan to help maintain, increase and better utilize affordable supportive housing for people with disabilities across the state. The five goals outlined in the plan are:

  • Increasing access to and development of supportive housing.
  • Increasing the stability of households and efficient access to affordable supportive housing through non-development activities.
  • Providing quality housing support services statewide and supporting the development of training related to these services.
  • Enhancing coordination among state agencies administering housing funding and programs.
  • Increasing partnerships across the state to bolster affordable housing. 

The Homeownership Assistance Program (HAP) has reopened to assist eligible first-time and first-generation homebuyers in 16 eastern North Carolina counties. The program will continue to serve low- to medium-income households in 16 counties federally designated by HUD as most impacted and distressed by hurricanes Matthew and Florence. These counties are Bladen, Brunswick, Carteret, Columbus, Craven, Cumberland, Duplin, Edgecombe, Jones, New Hanover, Onslow, Pamlico, Pender, Robeson, Scotland and Wayne. The program provides qualified applicants with up to $30,000 in down payment assistance and up to 5% of the home sale price towards closing cost assistance to qualifying homebuyers. Previous applicants may reapply.

NC Attorney General Josh Stein joined the US Department of Justice and Attorneys General of California, Connecticut, Colorado, Minnesota, Oregon, Tennessee, and Washington in filing the much anticipated lawsuit against RealPage, a real estate software company that colluded with landlords to artificially increase rents.

Recently, Mount Vernon Baptist Church sold 2.5 acres of land in Durham’s Southside to Habitat Durham for affordable homeownership opportunities.  Over the weekend, the two organizations celebrated the beginning of construction on 10 homes that will be built on the land adjacent to the church.

 

 

Events

  • 2024 NC Affordable Housing Conference | September 5-6 at the Raleigh Convention Center.
  • Second Annual NCWAHN Luncheon | September 6, 1 – 2:30 p.m. at Jiddi Space in downtown Raleigh. Cost: $25
    • The luncheon will follow the close of the NC Affordable Housing Conference and provide an excellent opportunity to connect women working in affordable housing from across the state.Wake County Board of Commissioners Chair Shinica Thomas will be this year’s keynote speaker.

 

Reports & Resources

 

In the News

Recommended read

Bonus Episode: Heirs Property Unlocked: Part 1

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