In proposed 2040 plan change, residents in ‘fragile’ Charlotte areas won’t be kicked out
Start an “anti-displacement” group to protect residents in “fragile” Charlotte neighborhoods from being displaced by new development.
Make impact fees and affordable housing mandates on developers long-term, not immediate goals.
Allow duplexes and triplexes in all the various types of neighborhoods across the city, but only to certain parts of each community, not just willy-nilly on any lot.
Those are among key changes proposed by city planners to a draft of Charlotte’s 2040 Comprehensive Plan.
The plan will help guide how the city grows over the next 20 years, from housing to the arts, transportation to the environment.
City Manager Marcus Jones outlined the proposed changes in a memo to Mayor Vi Lyles and the City Council on Thursday.
The City Council will further discuss the plan during special remote meetings at 4 p.m. Monday and 3 p.m. May 17, the city announced on Friday. No action will be taken at those meetings.
More than 100 people spoke at a public hearing on a draft of the plan in March.
The city received so much pushback over various aspects of the plan from community advocates, developers and other residents that the City Council nixed an April 26 vote on the plan.
According to Jones’ memo, city staff would expect to release a second draft of the plan on May 19 and a final draft on June 7. The City Council then would vote on the plan June 21.
Among the most hotly-debated issues to date: How the plan encouraged duplexes, triplexes and, in some cases, quadraplexes on single-family lots. The goal has been to offer many options and encourage more affordable housing in neighborhoods, the Observer previously reported. But there was immediate, and vocal, opposition to that idea, with single-family zoning preferred in some areas.
Other proposed changes
Over a year, the new “anti-displacement stakeholder group” would research how best to protect people from having to move because of far pricier housing trying to take over their neighborhoods. The group would offer their recommendations ultimately to the City Council for action.
The group would include neighborhood leaders, housing advocates, community organizers, developers, and “residents threatened by housing displacement,” according the city plan.
And making impact fees and housing requirements of developers long-term goals also would appear in a new “preamble” to the plan that states the city’s intentions behind the “living document.”
Most developers and real estate professionals who spoke at the March hearing raised concerns about the plan. Marta Tataje, however, said her National Association of Hispanic Real Estate Professionals backed the plan as a protection against ever-rising home prices.
“We’ve reached a critical time where current market prices are quickly becoming out of reach, not only for the Hispanic buyer, who is increasingly the fastest-growing market, but also the first-time homebuyer in general,” Tataje said at the hearing.
And city planners have pointed out how single-family zoning has perpetuated racial segregation. Deed restrictions and other policies locked Black homebuyers out of single-family neighborhoods for many years, the Observer reported.
Some information was provided by Observer reporters Danielle Chemtob and Alison Kuznitz.
