Charlotte historian explores old problem in new book on affordable housing
Back in 1998, Tom Hanchett released a book on how the city of Charlotte was developed.
“Sorting Out the New South City: Race, Class, and Urban Development in Charlotte, 1875-1975,” detailed Charlotte’ growth and development that was fueled by segregation of race, class and wealth.
The community historian’s book also explained how development choices of the past still have an impact on Charlotteans. Yes, even in 2025.
That includes a three-page section on the city’s first approach to affordable housing.
With affordable housing still being a great need, Hanchett decided to reexamine the issue. “I kind of thought I knew something,” Hanchett said, especially tapping into his research into public housing. “Then, I realized that I knew very little about how all of that works.
But it couldn’t be that complicated, Hanchett continued to think. “It’s more complicated than I imagined,” Hanchett said.
Several interviews, surprises and a pandemic later, Hanchett still knows creating and keeping affordable housing is a complex issue, not just in Charlotte but throughout the U.S.
So, he wrote a book about it. “Affordable Housing in Charlotte: What One City’s History Tells Us about America’s Pressing Problem,” was released this month by The University of North Carolina Press, and uses Charlotte as a case-study on the ongoing issue of America’s lack of affordable housing.
Hanchett spoke about the book with The Charlotte Observer in a recent interview. It’s a history lesson, a look at the present and an emphasis on how political will is a solution to a problem exacerbated by ever-growing needs and stagnant wages.
The conversation has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Q: Walk me through the start of the book. How are you reeling readers in?
I start with six myths, three hard truths and two surprising ironies. And the first myth is “Charlotte never does anything about affordable housing.” I kept hearing this joke, “Oh, you’re writing a book about affordable housing. That’ll be a short book.”
But, not true. There are more than 150 projects in Charlotte right now that have been developed as affordable housing with nearly 14,000 units. And that figure just blows people away.
Another myth is, “If affordable housing is built in my neighborhood, my property value will collapse.” Not true. There’s public housing within walking distance of South Park Mall on Providence Road. There’s preserved naturally occurring affordable housing, or NOAH, buildings in Elizabeth, Dilworth and Myers Park.
Q: Touching on the first myth, tell me about the start of Charlotte’s affordable housing. You talk about public housing?
The beginnings of public housing started in the Great Depression when nearly everybody knew somebody who was hurting when it came to housing. Out of the federal initiatives (like the Wagner-Steagall Housing Act of 1937) Charlotte’s first public housing projects were developed, the Fairview Homes and the Piedmont Courts.
Then there were the Belvedere Homes and Southside Homes, which showed that you could build decent housing but because public housing was seen as something that affected “other” people, the housing was often built with minimum accommodations.
The thing that hurt the most was that they were big projects and mostly far from anything. Setting public housing apart led to concentrations of poverty and they weren’t well maintained. That set a negative image in our head of what government assisted housing is.
Q: What came next for public housing?
Hope VI in the ‘90s. A big federal program that tore down and rebuilt public housing into mixed-income housing.
Charlotte used those federal dollars to redevelop the Earle Village public housing in First Ward. But they didn’t figure out the numbers well enough.
What had been 400 units of public housing became 200 units of low-income housing. Clearly, that was a bad thing because it created a lack of housing. But what it did was show that people of different income levels would live together quite happily. That area is still extraordinarily desirable, still subsidized.
The redevelopment that’s really cool is The Park at Oaklawn where the original Fairview Homes were. DreamKey Partners went there, they relocated everybody, paid rent for them as long as was necessary and invited folks back when the place was redeveloped.
It actually now has more low-income units than the public housing did. And it’s mixed income.
What that project proved was that, again, folks could live together, would live together, and that if you paid attention to the numbers and had some experience of doing it, that you could create situations in which there were actually more affordable units than there had been to begin with.
Q. So, it seems Charlotte relies on mixed-income projects to create affordable housing and NOAH properties. Tell me more about NOAH.
Ken Szymanski, the former executive director of the Greater Charlotte Apartment Association, said among the households in Mecklenburg County that earn 30% or less of the area median income, only 25% receive a housing subsidy. The rest live in naturally occurring affordable housing, or NOAH.
NOAH refers to rental units that are inherently affordable without the use of subsidies or any federal programs. They cost less because they tend to be in older buildings that may not have the same amenities as newer properties.
The notion of preserving, maintaining and keeping NOAHs around is really the cutting edge. At the very end of the book I talk a little bit about Ascent Housing, a nonprofit developer focused on preserving housing, and its NOAH preservation investment fund.
Having that pot of money allows them to purchase aging homes, fix them up and keep them affordable, so investor developers don’t purchase them, put in granite counter tops and double the rent. It’s a smart investment and keeps affordable units around.
Q: What is the city doing right and/or wrong when it comes to affordable housing?
I don’t think they’re doing anything wrong, which surprised me. I figured there was somebody who didn’t care. The thing that makes building housing work is the federal tax break called the Low Income Housing Tax Credit, LIHTC, put in place by Ronald Reagan in 1986.
That is what builds almost all affordable housing, whether it is owned by government, which very little is, or is owned by a nonprofit like DreamKey, or a private developer.
It’s a pretty darn good program and has a lot of fans, but because it’s a federal tax break, there’s a very limited amount of credits available. And it’s competitive. And if your proposal isn’t accepted, the project doesn’t get built.
A really good example of that is the Scaleybark station project. The vision had been to have mixed income housing near the light rail. A developer here in Charlotte put together a project and the folks at the state said this is great. But we’re not going to fund it. So there’s no affordable housing immediately adjacent to the Lynx stop at Scaleybark. (Hanchett detailed the project extensively in his book, noting the Observer’s reporting on the issue.)
Q. Well, that’s frustrating. How do you explain to folks that it may seem like the city isn’t doing enough, but the city is basically doing what it can, only for them to not get the needed federal funding?
This is all so complicated, which is why there’s a book. But the piece of funding people do know about is the Charlotte Housing Trust Fund. Charlotteans are very enthusiastic about passing the bonds that go into the trust fund.
And what that is is just a little bit of extra help to make the numbers. If you look at just the LIHTC credits, the numbers don’t work because the land is more expensive or because you may want more heavily subsidized units. The housing trust fund is very important. It’s a part of this bigger puzzle.
So, what do you tell people who are missing housing and who are frustrated because they can’t find housing? There’s not an easy answer, which is really frustrating.
But having a book that lays out what these housing components are, I think, can help people who are willing to dig in and talk to their government officials. We could expand the LIHTC program. We need the political will to do that.
Q. Speaking of political will to help solve affordable housing, one thing I think about is inclusionary zoning, a policy that requires developers to include low-income units.
That is ultimately something that we should consider seriously. In one of the early chapters, I talk about how long it took to make it a requirement, and this is going to sound crazy, that there be indoor bathrooms.
And how long do you think that took? A women’s club started campaigning for that in the 19-teens. They tried again during the New Deal in the 1930s. And they pushed again in the ‘40s.
Thirty years.
People came to see that we really do need this. The women organized and created political will. Inclusionary zoning does exist in many places. Nine hundred municipalities in 25 states have inclusionary zoning. And we don’t because the North Carolina legislature has to specifically enable that. All that’s required is for folks in Raleigh to grant that permission. We’re not there yet but it’s something serious for folks to consider.
Q. Speaking about political will, I also think about the minimum wage, which is still $7 and which baffles me by the way.
There’s a sentence somewhere in one of the later chapters talking about how housing prices have doubled in the last 15 years and I say something like “and in that time the minimum wage has stayed exactly the same $7.25 an hour.” Then I say, “I’m going to say that sentence again,” and I literally repeat the sentence. But that’s really essential for folks to understand the squeeze that so many of us are in.
When you talk about people who are having trouble affording housing in Charlotte, it includes people who make 60% of the area median income, who are nurse assistants and first responder trainees, teachers. It’s really hard for teachers to live in this city the way our real estate prices are.
It’s important to tell the story, explain the need for affordable housing, and how it affects all people, so that people like me who might be oblivious say, “Oh that’s not a problem I personally have but dang my kid’s kindergarten teacher probably does.”
Q. What do you want people to get out of your book?
A sense that A. this is complex but B. it’s understandable. Previously, the affordable housing issue has been this black box behind this black curtain and I’ve wondered what’s going on behind the curtain. For me, I feel much better about what’s going on because the book has helped me understand the various inputs that people who are close to the problem are balancing.
You can see things like LIHTC credits and say, “Hey it works pretty good, what if we lobbied harder to increase it?” There’s not going to be one answer but there are plenty of places to dig into and use that knowledge to make the system work better.
Q. Any final words?
The lack of affordable housing is a crisis in that it’s hurting a lot right now and it would be nice to improve the situation a lot right now. But a crisis can imply that it can be fixed right now.This is a chronic problem. It’s something that is ongoing because of the economic inequalities in our society. It’s a reflection of ways that the basic system that we have doesn’t always work real well for all people.
To change that we need the political will to do that, which means people of many different backgrounds talking to their elected officials in Washington to make that kind of change.
This story was originally published May 19, 2025 at 6:00 AM.
