Source: City of Raleigh website
South west Raleigh is one of the most affordable places to live in the area. One of the main reasons is the variety of housing options available. From single-family homes to apartments to townhomes, this area has housing options that fit a variety of price ranges and living styles.
What about affordable housing? It’s a topic that not too many like to discuss, but is needed for the entire city in order to provide places to live for our workforce. Should this type of housing be bundled together? Perhaps we should have a mix of price ranges that would create diverse communities like Gateway Park close to downtown Raleigh?
If you are interested in how affordable housing and quality design can work together, you should join the Department of City Planning at the Raleigh Urban Design Center (133 Fayetteville Street, Suite 100) for a Lunch Forum on Wednesday, February 16, 2011 from 12:00 to 1:30 p.m.
Quality Design and Affordable Housing
- Georgia Bizios, FAIA, Professor of Architecture, College of Design and
- Katie Wakeford, NCSU Home Environments Design Initiative
Some of the topics being covered will address:
- How can design guidelines empower a community?
- Why is quality design so important in affordable housing?
- What are the opportunities to collaborate with NCSU
- Home Environments Design Initiative
Contact [email protected], 919-807-8480, with questions or concerns or visit the Lunch Forums website for more details. All events are free and open to the public.
I hope our city decision-makers remember there’s really two types of “affordable housing”.
One is subsidized housing for the working poor (usually rentals like Gateway Park and the DHIC properties with income restrictions). And the other is just the general housing that’s affordable to the lower-middle class, who make more than those income restrictions on subsidized housing.
Within Raleigh…especially downtown…the latter of those two is definitely in critical short supply. Last time I was needing to move, I had a heck of a time—I wasn’t “poor enough” for subsidized rentals, but not well-off enough to live in the vast majority of available homes in this city. (Unless it was run by a slumlord.) Frustrating, for sure!