Housing Call: December 19, 2023

Coalition Updates

This is our last Housing Call of 2023! We will be back in 2024 on January 9th!

Remember, if you want to go back and listen to a past podcast, or review the call notes visit our website at https://nchousing.org/podcast/ or you can search for us on Spotify or iTunes – just look for “Housing Matters 2 NC.”

Bringing it Home workshop proposals due January 12!

As preparations begin for the 2024 Bringing It Home Conference on Ending Homelessness in North Carolina on June 4-5, 2024, the NC Department of Health and Human Services ESG Office, the NC Coalition to End Homelessness, and the NC Housing Coalition are calling for presentation proposals.

Presentations will be 1 hour and 15 minutes long and include 10-15 minutes of Q&A or discussion. Presentations could be chosen as stand-alone sessions or chosen as a part of a panel. At this time, we are planning an in-person conference at the McKimmon Center in Raleigh. Please note that presentations need to include one or more of the topics of interest listed. Visit this link for more details as well as the submission form: https://nchousing.org/bringing-it-home-2024/ .

Highlights from 2023

40 Housing Calls
- 2460 People Called in
Your favorite Housing Matters pieces seemed to be about the following:
- Federal Debt Ceiling Agreement & Overview of Key Housing Appropriations in NC and why the matter
- County Profiles
- Senate released their FY-23 Budget & AHCIA
- Policy Brief; Dedicated Revenue Sources for the NC housing Trust Fund & NCHC Awards
- Balancing Through Honoring Our Past – Black Trailblazers in Housing
- Out of Reach Report 2023
We’ll have other highlights for you including a policy oriented summary for you coming out before the end of the year, but I just wanted to take a moment and thank folks for listening and engaging with us. Remember, building the housing movement and getting the policies we need, backed by the resources that meet the scale of the need, takes all of us.

Federal Updates

Federal Budget Updates
- The House adjourned for Holiday recess, meaning any hope for a tax deal and spending bill is postponed until their return on January 9.
- The Senate delayed its holiday recess to continue negotiations on a border security deal in order to try and clear a path for an Emergency War Funding bill. When members return the week of January 8th, they will face a fast approaching deadline (January 19) for FY2024 spending bills and additional priorities like a tax package and emergency war funding bill.
- To read more about the latest versions available for the THUD FY24 budgets, click here.
AHCIA – Reached 200th cosponsor in the House last week! 100 Dems and 100 Republicans. State and district fact sheets with the latest data on the impact of the Housing Credit and the AHCIA are in the call notes. Up to 39,300 additional homes could be financed in NC by the primary unit financing provisions in the AHCIA.
Last week, HUD released Part 1 of the 2023 Annual Homelessness Assessment Report (AHAR). The report found more than 650,000 people were experiencing homelessness on a single night in January 2023, a 12% increase from 2022. NLIHC, NAEH, and CBPP released a joint statement explaining that this increase in homelessness is the predictable consequence of several factors: a severe housing crisis, the depletion of pandemic resources and protections, significantly higher rents and other costs, and continued inaction by Congress. Affordable housing advocates have been warning that homelessness would likely increase, as state and local ERA programs ran out of funding, the last eviction protections expired, and rents and other costs spiked, leading to eviction filings in many communities reaching or surpassing pre-pandemic levels.

NC data points include:

Among largely urban CoC in the US, Fayetteville reported the highest rate of individuals experiencing unsheltered homelessness (91%).
Among major cities, Raleigh reported the 4th highest rate of people experiencing chronic unsheltered homelessness (83% of people experiencing chronic homelessness are unsheltered).
Among largely suburban CoCs, Asheville reported the 5th highest number of veterans experiencing homelessness (195 individuals)
Among largely urban CoCs, Durham reported the 3rd highest percentage of families experiencing unsheltered homelessness. 25 percent of families experiencing homelessness are unsheltered.
The U.S Interagency Council on Homelessness (USICH) Director Jeff Olivet released a statement on December 15 (last week) that summarized the actions and investments and organized them according to the solutions in the All In: The Federal Strategic plan to Prevent and End Homelessness with an ambitious goal to reduce homelessness by 25% by 2025.

State Updates

The Final Draft of the 2024 North Carolina Qualified Allocation Plan (QAP) was released on December 13, 2023
Here is a Draft of the 2024 QAP showing changes from the 2023 QAP.

Scoring changes:

Took Community Center out of the public facilities category and included it with Senior Centers.
Greenway or trailhead now qualifies as a public facility if it has dedicated parking.
Second tiebreaker added – The project with the highest percentage of non-Agency awarded and non-related party funding (excluding federal equity and bank loans) as a percentage of total replacement costs at time of full application submission.
The fifth tiebreaker – Tenant Ownership: must utilize a detached single family site plan and building design.
Maximum project development costs (negative 10 points) added back in

Other notable changes:

Increased WHLP maximum award from $2M to $3M.
Took away provision that projects in the Metro geographic set-aside are ineligible to request WHLP funds.
Rent increases – The Agency must approve all rent increases throughout the extended use period for properties receiving Agency funding.
Provision added to Income Averaging requirements – At least ten percent (10%) of qualified low-income units will be affordable to and occupied by households with incomes at or below thirty percent (30%) of area median income.

State Legislative Updates

Candidate filing ended on December 15.

NCGA State lawmakers are set to convene again tomorrow, December 20, as we mentioned last week, they will convene a few more times before the beginning of the short session, which is scheduled to begin on April 24, 2024.

We will continue to monitor any issues brought forward regarding housing or related issues, as well as any potential technical corrections regarding the FY23-25 state budget.

Reminder

The short session is the season held in the second – even – year of the biennium. During this session only certain matters can be considered, and are outlined in the adjournment resolution voted on in order to determine their eligibility. A matter can also be considered if authorized by a joint resolution passed by a two-thirds vote of each chamber’s members present and voting.

We will continue to monitor the bills discussed during the short session, particularly the ones we have already included in our bill tracker that survived crossover, as well as any bills directly affecting the State budget and other key matters that impact housing and community development.

See the Legislative Memo from November 13, 2023 summarizing the NCGA schedule, short session, and crossover bills (not all eligible bills for 2024).

Here is a list of 2023-2024 Legislation that has Effective dates of July 1, 2023 through January 1, 2024.

Local Community Updates

Corporate landlords reduce homeownership in Black Charlotte neighborhoods, study says

Economists from the London School of Economics and UC Boulder recently published findings from their study on the impact of corporate landlords in Charlotte over the past 10 years. The researchers found that 80% of single family homes purchased by corporate landlords are in Black neighborhoods and that black neighborhoods are disproportionately affected by corporate landlords. As the Charlotte Observer explains, this is some of the most direct research examining the effects of corporate landlords purchasing single family homes.

Seven-story, $72 million Homeless Service Center proposed to Durham leaders Tuesday

Last week, leaders from Urban Ministries of Durham and St. Philip’s met with Durham City and County officials to present plans for a 7-story homeless service center. The building would provide emergency shelter for up to 300 people. While the meeting didn’t yield any firm commitments from officials, officials reiterated the need for a unified City & County approach to housing and homelessness.

Construction is Starting on the Bus Rapid Transit Line Along New Bern Avenue, But Some Raleigh Residents Worry It Will do More Harm Than Good – INDY Week

INDY Week published an in depth story last week exploring the potential impacts of rezoning along Raleigh’s Bus Rapid Transit System on the historically Black community in Southeast Raleigh. Activists have voiced concern about gentrification, housing affordability, and displacement. Specifically, many are concerned that density bonuses are targeting people who earn less than 80% of the Area Median Income, as opposed to the lower income families most in need of housing.

Similar sentiments were voiced in Asheville last week when city council members questioned the effectiveness of Land Use Incentive Grants’ to adequately address the pervasive affordable housing shortage and meet the needs of families earning less than the 80% AMI targets. The median income for Black and Latino families in Asheville is below 50% AMI.