What a decline in funding will look like for Chapel Hill’s affordable housing plan

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – The Town of Chapel Hill will soon face significant drops of funding for affordable housing by fiscal year 2024.

The Town of Chapel Hill’s fiscal year runs from July 1 to June 30.

For the previous fiscal year, funding was granted by three town sources, the Affordable Housing Fund, the Affordable Housing Development Reserve, and the Affordable Housing Bond, along with four federal resources, totaling up to $11.4 million. These funds were primarily allocated for future development planning, land acquisition, home repairs and rehabilitation, and rental and utility assistance. Out of the seven sources, three will have already been fully allocated for fiscal year 2023, including a pandemic-related fund totaling up to $9 million dollars.

The Affordable Housing Bond was approved by Chapel Hill residential voters in 2018 for $10 million. According to Broman-Fulks, about five million was allocated in 2020.

However, despite the funding shortage in the upcoming fiscal year, Nate Broman-Fulks, assistant director of affordable housing and community connections for the Town Chapel Hill, said that the town still projects over 500 housing units in the next three to five years.

“Most have already received funding approval from the previous fiscal year. They’re just waiting to be developed,” said Broman-Fulks.

While funding is projected to decline moving forward, Broman-Fulks said that the town anticipates having a couple of million dollars a year, for the next five years, to support affordable housing preservation projects as well as revamp the town’s affordable housing investment plan.

“About five years ago, the town established an affordable housing investment plan for times like this. The investment strategy identifies what our funding will look like to continue to work at the level we’re doing right now, and what it would be if we were to ramp up our work,” said Broman-Fulks.

“So that’ll involve things like recommendation to do another Affordable Housing Bond, much larger scale than the 10 million, probably more like $30 or $40 million for our housing fund, and then also recommendation to increase the funding allocated from what we have now, which is about a million from the town, to about two,” he said.

Broman-Fulks said that the investment plan request will be brought to the Town of Chapel Hill Council.

“So we’ve been to council a couple of times already and got their feedback and support on different stages of the plan and our draft strategies, so we feel really good that the plan is going to be supported by council when it comes to them,” said Broman-Fulks.

Broman-Fulks said that the plan will hopefully be approved by the council in September 2023.