It’s a continuing problem in Charlotte: Neighborhood gentrification (e.g. NoDa), combined with relentless and wasteful demolition of old buildings shrinks the spaces for artists, even while the city’s arts community is trying to grow. And while the role of the arts in redeveloping ailing neighborhoods gets much lip service, the city and its major NGOs (non-governmental organizations, for the non-wonks reading) haven’t succeeded in doing much to help provide housing.
Here’s a piece about a program run through the Boston Redevelopment Authority, that uses the affordable-housing requirement for large projects (and note that it’s a REQUIREMENT) as well other city-offered incentives. (Interesting factoid: The BRA director is John Palmieri, who from 2002 to 2004 was the City of Charlotte’s director of economic development.)
Note this line in the linked-to piece above: “Boston already requires that at least 15 percent of units in large new residential buildings be priced based on income limits.”
Hmmm. The recently released “Housing Charlotte 2007 Implementation Committee” had a subcommittee to look at that kind of idea, called “inclusionary zoning,” but the name of the subcommittee was “Incentive-Based Inclusionary Housing Policies.” A mole on the committee tells me anytime anyone mentioned anything about “mandatory” they were reprimanded and told the recommendation would be for only “incentive-based” techniques (i.e. voluntary).