The Cary Town Council voted 5-2 on Thursday to table a resolution that would have allowed the Raleigh Housing Authority (RHA) to purchase the Amberwood at Lochmere apartments in southeast Cary, effectively rejecting the proposal and jeopardizing the preservation of 340 units of relatively affordable housing.
Amberwood is a leafy neighborhood of winding streets and two- and three-story garden-style apartment buildings. It’s considered “naturally affordable,” meaning it is not subsidized or income-restricted but is nonetheless priced below market rate so that households earning around 52% of Cary’s area median income, or approximately $70,000 a year, can generally afford to live there.
The owner, Terracap Management LLC, is putting the Amberwood property up for sale. If it sells to a private, for-profit buyer, they will likely raise rents to market rates, pricing out the current tenants and eliminating yet more of Cary’s dwindling stock of affordable housing. Cary doesn’t have its own housing authority, and the RHA, whose mission is to create and preserve affordable housing in Raleigh and the surrounding area, proposed to buy the property and operate it as part of its portfolio of housing for low- and moderate-income residents for a minimum of 30 years.
“The folks who live in these properties are … teachers, child care workers, and other essential workers … and we want to make sure that those people who are living there now will continue to be able to live there,” said RHA’s CEO Ashley Lommers-Johnson ahead of Thursday night’s public hearing on the resolution.
“Nothing will change,” Lommers-Johnson said. “The rents will stay the same, the leases will stay the same, the management company will stay the same, the feel of living there will stay the same.” Town Attorney Lisa Glover said she also believed the property would still be subject to the same homeowners association rules, though she would have to double-check.
RHA needed the Cary Town Council’s permission to operate within town limits. Had Cary granted permission, the town would not have been making a financial commitment or exempting the property from local zoning ordinances. However, Amberwood would have become tax-exempt for the next 30 years since the RHA is a public, tax-exempt agency. Cary town staff estimated that would translate to a property tax loss of $236,984 for the current fiscal year (0.04% of the $573 million budget), multiplied across future years and adjusted for inflation.
The council ultimately voted RHA’s proposal down because, council members said, they didn’t have enough time to consider it. A legal notice of the public hearing was posted on the town website about two weeks ago on July 10. According to Mayor Harold Weinbrecht, the council received a report on RHA’s proposal on the 13th.
It didn’t help that earlier that evening, the council members fielded a barrage of public comments accusing them of corruption and overspending during the disgraced former town manager’s tenure. Approving a tax exemption, however inconsequential in the grand scheme, would have added fuel to some constituents’ anger over the manager’s spending scandal.
The Town Council received written comments from 144 people ahead of Thursday’s vote. Twenty people spoke at the public hearing and dozens more chimed in from their seats in the audience.
Residents opposed to the acquisition—many of them homeowners in the greater Lochmere neighborhood—lived up to the worst stereotypes of Cary as a wealthy, insular community suspicious of outsiders who are less well off than they are.
Speaker Elena Morgan said public ownership would bring “street crime the likes of which Cary cannot comprehend” to Amberwood. She warned ominously of “drive-by shootings, rape, intentional homicide, sexual assault of a child at gunpoint.”
“You will see drug-related crimes,” speaker Paula Mancino piled on. “And let’s remember the child abuse and neglect.”
“Don’t let Raleigh come in and ruin it,” said speaker Elizabeth Slate. “I’m sure those people are really nice, but Cary doesn’t have any control over it once it’s gone. Big mistake.”
Other speakers fretted about lost tax revenue and raised the specter of diminished property values. Many of them seemed to miss the point that Amberwood is already an affordable community. The handful of speakers who supported the acquisition got heckled from the audience.
“I think … it’s important to keep these wonderful people in place that are already here at Amberwood,” said speaker Tim Brock, who said he lives nearby. “I think they’re critical members and valuable members of our community, and I think we need to support them staying here.”
Had the resolution passed, it would have been the first time RHA operated outside of Raleigh and the first time Cary partnered with an out-of-town housing authority.
“We keep calling [Amberwood residents] ‘these people’ as if that’s not us. Where are our priorities?” asked Mary Kintz, a staff member at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church and a member of the pro-housing, interfaith coalition ONE Wake. “Good ideas don’t stop at the boundaries of our town. There’s good ideas in Raleigh.”
When it came time for the council to vote after the two-hour-long hearing, Councilmembers Michelle Craig and Brittany Richards said they were prepared to vote in favor of RHA acquiring the property. Weinbrecht and Councilmembers Bella Huang (whose district includes Amberwood), Sarika Bansal, Lori Bush, and Carissa Kohn-Johnson said they were against it. Huang moved to table the resolution to a future meeting, which she acknowledged would have the same effect as rejecting it since the RHA needed to move quickly on the purchase. Her motion passed with Craig and Richards opposing.
Multiple council members insisted they support affordable housing in principle but this case felt too rushed.
“It’s not … about affordable housing, whether we want this in Cary or not,” said Bansal. “This council has been very, very responsive when it comes to affordable housing.”
“My biggest problem with this whole thing is how it’s been handled,” Weinbrecht said, referencing the short timeline. “I realize we may be missing a grand opportunity. In the future, if you want to work with the Cary council, you have to work with the public first.”
When Craig said she would vote yes on the resolution, she was booed loudly from the audience. Attendees interrupted her multiple times with grumbles and shouted disagreements as she shared her reasoning.
“This is, in my opinion, not a tax loss but an investment,” Craig said. “Instead of collecting money and putting it into affordable housing, we are subsidizing,” via the foregone property taxes, “a small, tiny bit of what could be a great benefit to Cary.”
“I am disappointed by some misinformation that I’ve heard over the last week,” she continued. People who live in subsidized housing “deserve respect, and we can address them on an individual basis instead of making sweeping statements.”
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