Clock Ticks as Council Faces Crucial Decision about Affordable Housing Project

The 72-unit project is badly needed, say both neighbors and Brevard City Council members. But infrastructure is deficient and Council delayed its vote to seek improvements.

BREVARD — Like many neighbors of a proposed 72-unit affordable housing project, Paul Cushman says he isn’t against affordable housing, just against this development’s planned location on Fisher Road.

The road is narrow and lacks storm sewers and sidewalks, said neighbors at Monday night’s Brevard City Council meeting, and runoff from the 5.2-acre site already floods nearby properties.

 “Is this the best five acres in Brevard to build this project?” Cushman asked.

Unfortunately, yes, said Any Fisher, of Fisher Realty, who helped find the parcel for its developer, Workforce Homestead Inc.

“We’re out of options . . . this is it,” Fisher told the Council. “If you vote against this, you are essentially saying you do not want affordable housing in this community.”

This exchange summed up the difficulty of the decision faced by council members and the conflicting concerns that prompted them to pause the discussion with plans to renew it at a special session next Monday.

The property, near Brevard Middle School, is far from an ideal location for a dense multi-unit project, just about everybody at Monday’s meeting said, and the city’s Planning Board last week recommended denial of a needed zoning change because of inadequate surrounding infrastructure.

But parcels suitable for affordable housing are so scarce, and the need for such developments so desperate, that Council members agreed to a last-ditch effort to make the project work.

Jim Yamin, president of Workforce Homestead, faces a May 13 deadline to apply for the federal tax credits needed to finance the project, which would house residents making 60 percent or less of Transylvania County’s median income of $59,092.

But before he Council can vote on whether to approve the project, members agreed, Yamin must commit to improvements that might include enhanced stormwater retention, additional sidewalks or right of way for a multi-use path.

Council member Geraldine Dinkins tried to extract such concessions near the end of a public hearing on the project Monday that lasted about two-and-a-half hours. When that effort failed, Council agreed to resume the discussion at a special session next Monday.

Dinkins and Council member Aaron Baker were the two most forceful backers of the project.

The Council should not override a Planning Board recommendation lightly, Baker said, but “we are desperate for affordable and workforce housing . . . The exact same people we were talking about as essential workers during the (Covid-19) pandemic — these are the people who are being driven out of the city.”

A recent regional housing report from Bowen National Research found a need for nearly 500 income-restricted units in Transylvania County and long waiting lists and a zero vacancy rate for such existing apartments.

Yamin told Council that he has identified a total of five properties in or near the city for potential affordable housing projects but has so far been unable to build.

To receive federal funding, awarded by the North Carolina Housing Finance Agency, projects must be near services such as schools and shopping, Fisher has said. To be financially feasible, they must be easily accessible to water and sewer lines and on properties large enough to accommodate several dozen units.

Workforce Homestead has recently been denied the right to buy a parcel across from Brevard High School owned by Transylvania County Schools and met fierce opposition to plans to build on a site off Woodland Terrace, just west of Brevard city limits.

Most neighbors of the Fisher Road site repeated many of the objections to these previous locations. The three-story buildings are too high, the density too great and the roads inadequate.

The Fisher Road parcel is currently zoned for a maximum of eight units per acre and forbids multi-use development. Workforce Homestead was seeking approval for a conditional zoning district to allow the project.

Though opponents described the neighborhood as residential and dominated by single-family homes, Dinkins and Baker and/or Yamin pointed out that the neighborhood also includes a mix of uses and easily accessible resources; industry, the school, the Estatoe multi-use path and supermarkets.

Yamin agreed to pay to build sidewalks twice the length of the property’s frontage on Fisher. But he didn’t have enough information, he said, to commit to other suggestions that included expanding retention ponds to contain a 25-year floods, building enough sidewalk to connect with the Middle School or providing the trail right of way.

Those potential improvements are expected to be discussed at the meeting next week.

Both Mayor Pro Tem Gary Daniel and Council member Maurice Jones said they were torn between considerations of the acute demand for housing and the inadequacy of the neighborhood’s infrastructure.

Both also expressed frustration with the lack of time available to make such a crucial decision.

“You put us in a very difficult position,” Daniel said to Yamin.

Council member Mac Morrow, however, focused on the parcel’s deficiencies and its targeted tenants — low-income rather than working residents, which he said is the city’s greater need.

“I don’t think if we turn this down, it’s the end of the world,” he said.

But along with the many residents opposing the project, a local business owner said she favored it because of difficulty in hiring workers who can afford to live in the county.

Resident Ellen Mason also offered a different take than most of her neighbors.

“Brevard needs way more affordable housing,” she said. “I want my two-year old son to grow up in a community where people live where they work . . . I picture a quiet, tight complex, hidden by a hill and surrounded by trees.”

Correction: An earlier version of this story misspelled the last name of City Council member Geraldine Dinkins.

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