Public Spending to Eliminate Worker Housing: Did It Have to Happen?

Laurelwood Apartments offer an extreme local rarity — market-rate rents affordable to workers. Despite preservation efforts, the complex will be vacated to accommodate improvements to Wilson Road.

Scott Cook standing outside soon-to-be vacated Laurelwood Apartments, where he and his wife have lived for 11 years

BREVARD — Scott and Nancy Cook don’t know when they will have to move from Laurelwood Apartments, which must be vacated to make room for the planned upgrade to Wilson Road.

They don’t know where they will move or how much the state Department of Transportation will compensate them for their displacement.

But the Cooks, who depend solely on Social Security income, do know they’ve been happy living at the 12-unit complex for the last 11 years. They know they are unlikely to find a lower rent than the $850 they pay for their two-bedroom apartment.

And they definitely know their opinion about spending taxpayer money to eliminate one of Transylvania County’s greatest needs — reasonably priced housing.

“I think it’s ridiculous,” said Scott Cook, 68.

The state Department of Transportation arrived at the decision to vacate the complex only after extensive discussions with both the city of Brevard and Transylvania County.

The two-building apartment complex doesn’t lie in the path of the widened road. Only its septic system does, meaning it could have been saved with a connection to city sewage service.

DOT offered to pay roughly half the estimated $4.4 million cost of extending pipes to the apartments from Brevard’s wastewater treatment plant on Wilson, and both the county and city sought grant money to pay the remainder.

But the county couldn’t move forward without a commitment from the city, County Manager Jaime Laughter wrote in an email.

And the city, facing time pressure to make this commitment, could not do so without a firm assurance outside funding would be available, said Mayor Maureen Copelof.

 “The amount the city was looking at was about $2.5 million,” she said. “That’s a huge funding amount for the city . . . You can’t expect city residents to take on that kind of debt.”

But the expense of vacating the property will also be significant, said Duke Parrish, of Norma Clayton Realty, Laurelwood’s property manager.

DOT has not reached an agreement to buy Laurelwood, and neither the Department nor owner Stephen Perras of Atlanta would discuss the terms of the negotiation.

But Perras said he has spent “hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars” on renovations since buying the complex for $416,000 in 2016, and Parrish estimates the state will end up paying more than $1.7 million for the property — on top of DOT’s estimated total of $650,000 in relocation costs to Laurelwood residents.

The ones that NewsBeat reached out to include a postal worker, a beer brewer, a physical therapist and a hotel cleaner.

Spending money to uproot such tenants “seems preposterous,” Parrish said.  “Housing is very rare around here . . . and what we do have we should keep as a trust, as a jewel basically, like a gem.”

The Plan, The Offer

Plans for the $66.4-million modernization of Wilson call for the frequently inundated roadbed to be raised out of the 50-year flood zone, for its narrow lanes to be widened to 12 feet and for the construction of shoulders with four feet of pavement and four feet of grass.

A roundabout and a new bridge over the French Broad River will connect Wilson directly to Ecusta Road, according to an email from DOT spokesman David Uchiyama. The Department will begin seeking bids for the project in September of 2025 and expects it to be completed about four years after that.

In one way, this work presents a rare opportunity for utility expansion; laying pipes while earth is being moved for road reconstruction cuts installation costs roughly in half.

And the price to the city would have been cut again according to the terms of an email sent last May from a Department engineer to the city and county.

DOT offered to pay $2.4 million in construction and preliminary engineering costs to lay 1.3-miles of pipe between Laurelwood and the site of a planned resort containing about 200 RV sites and lodging units on Glen Cannon Drive.

That left the city on the hook for the mile of line needed to connect its wastewater treatment plant on Wilson to the site of the resort, proposed last year by the Michigan-based Sun Communities Inc. DOT estimated the cost of this segment at about $2 million, the city at the higher amount mentioned by Copelof.

Why It Didn’t Work Out

After receiving the email from DOT in May, Laughter wrote, “we started brainstorming funding opportunities” with the Transylvania Economic Alliance and Land of Sky Regional Council.

Outside funding is widely available for utility expansions that serve economic development projects, she wrote, offering the example of money previously secured to extend Town of Rosman utilities to serve Gaia Herbs.

The Sun resort, which last year received a pledge of $2.3 million in county tax incentives, would also likely have qualified for such funding, she wrote, and with its connection to the city plant “we could possibly save the apartments and get sewer service to other properties along Wilson.”

She listed a half-dozen potential funding sources, but said the city would have had to apply for the grants and commit to the extension.

“We had some preliminary conversations with grantors, but did not get to applications because the city did not approve in the end,” she wrote.

Or, as she put it in an email to County Commissioners in August, “the city is not being cooperative and has determined they are not going to move forward with the extension . . . Not the outcome we were hoping for!”

But City Manager Wilson Hooper said that, with Land of Sky, Brevard also explored funding, particularly grants available to preserve housing. Partly because of the small number of units at Laurelwood, he said, the city determined “the project was unlikely to be awarded” funds.

Among other considerations, he said, was word from a Sun representative reflecting a lack of interest in annexation. Though the City Council has recently discussed making exceptions for economic development projects, it has historically required annexation for utility customers, he said.

Serving the resort would also strain the capacity of the city’s aging wastewater treatment plant, Wilson said.

Finally, the city needed a firm pledge of money, not just the prospect of it, before agreeing to the extension within DOT’s timeline.

“We needed to know as soon as possible if funds were available to build that section,” Uchiyama said, “because time would have been needed to design the sewer lines.”

“It was the timing, the cost, the limited capacity at our plant,” Hooper said. “All those variables conspired against getting that project to work.”

DOT’s Deal

All of which means DOT will now have to compensate the residents of Laurelwood.

The same is true for occupants of eight units at Blythe Mobile Home Park on Old Hendersonville Highway near Wilson, which will be demolished to make way for the roundabout, Uchiyama said.

The Department has pledged to find all displaced residents dwelling units within the county, he said, but will compensate them for a place of their choice within 50 miles of their current location.

The reimbursement covers the difference between the rent they are currently paying and that of the new unit for 42 months.

This can be significant, Parrish said, because rents at Laurelwood typically range between $900 and $1,100 and rents at Blythe run even lower than that, making both properties extreme rarities in the county’s housing stock — market-rate rentals within the reach of moderate-income working residents.

Jordan Harrison, a Blythe resident, said his settlement of $49,000 will be on the high end because he currently pays only $325, plus utilities, for a 400-square-foot manufactured tiny home at the park.

The one-bedroom apartment DOT found for him near Brevard Elementary School, meanwhile, rents for $1,600 a month.

“It’s a really nice place so I’m not complaining, but it’s just super expensive,” he said. “If I wasn’t getting that DOT money I would never be able to afford it on my own.”

Affordability is the Cooks’ long-term concern.

Their monthly rent is less than that of other Laurelwood residents because their unit is one of two that has not received an extensive interior renovation, Nancy Cook said, though she did confirm that extensive overall improvements were completed at the complex after Perras’ purchase.

Though the couple appreciates the prospect of DOT funding, she said, they know that it will likely place them indefinitely in an apartment they can’t afford — maybe with a monthly rent below $2,000 at first but likely rising above that amount over time.

After the 42-month reimbursement period passes, she said, “the price of the place is going to be on us. We can’t afford that. We’re on a fixed income.

Rents “Out of Control”

Laurelwood resident Bobby Wood

Her estimates of future rents are probably about right.

A 2021 regional housing report from Bowen National Research found that even several years ago, the median rent for market-rate two-bedroom apartments in Transylvania, $1,500, was the highest in the area.

Apartments of that size at the new Ecusta Commons complex near Asheville Highway have been listed for $2,050, and a recent housing report commissioned by Brevard found a near-zero vacancy rate for rentals in Transylvania.

Parrish, who said he manages a large percentage of the modestly priced rentals in the county, said his portfolio, once about 200 units, will shrink to 130 after the elimination of Laurelwood and Blythe.

Because this stock is typically made up of older buildings owned by older residents, he expects those numbers to continue to decline as properties are passed on to younger people seeking higher returns.

Meanwhile, the relocation of residents from Laurelwood and Blythe will add to the already fierce demand.

“You’re putting a whole bunch of new tenants in that pool,” he said.

Laurelwood resident Bobby Wood said this crunch is one reason that he and his wife, a physical therapist, now plan to move to Charleston, SC.

And they probably won’t be alone, he said.

In the several years that he has lived in Brevard, he said, “I’ve appreciated seeing it grow, but it’s growing in such a way that middle-class and lower-class workers that help with the restaurants and a lot of business can’t afford to live here.”

“I think when I come back in a few years there’s going to be a hiring crisis,” he said. “I think it’s going to spiral out of control.”

Email: brevardnewsbeat@gmail.com

Correction: Due to information provided by the state Department of Transportation, a previous version of this story stated an incorrect date for letting the project. It is September of 2025.