In this special report from The Charlotte Observer, we looked at the city's dollars and where they're going. The city's recently approved 2023 budget makes provisions for housing, pay raises and parking, and some are optimistic about what changes this could bring. But for some city employees, it's been a hard living. Explore this reporting package for insight on how Charlotte is spending its money, and what changes might be on the horizon.
In the hotel room where he lives near the South Carolina border, city of Charlotte sanitation worker Rory Pegram thinks about owning a home.
On his city salary, though, even renting an apartment is hard. Affording insulin has been a struggle. He sometimes rationed it before he picked up a second job.
But Pegram is hopeful.
A new city budget approved by the City Council on Tuesday will give Pegram and other city workers a raise and set aside money for home ownership assistance.
It will increase the city’s minimum wage from $18.30 to $20 for 40-hour-a-week employees by January 2023, give hourly employees an 8% pay raise over the next year and dedicate $2 million to help city workers afford homes in Charlotte.
It includes other paycheck items as well, including increasing the starting police officer and firefighter pay by 9% in July and to a total of 10.5% by January 2023; and a 2% one-time retention incentive for all full-time employees, excluding managers and executives.
For employees such as Pegram, the money is sorely needed.
Pegram said he makes $18.31 an hour. After taxes, his paychecks come out to less than $500 a week.
More than 2,000 city workers across multiple departments in March didn’t make enough to afford an apartment in Charlotte on their own incomes, according to an analysis by The Charlotte Observer.
Even fewer could afford a home. In solid waste, just 13% could afford an apartment and just over 5% could afford a home. Because the number of city workers changes frequently, those percentages often shift as well. Still, they reflect a reality that holds constant: with the current wage structure, many employees can’t afford to live in Charlotte on a city paycheck alone.
It’s unclear how much the numbers will shift once the city’s new raises take effect. Pegram hopes the raises — combined with the $2 million for home ownership assistance — will make a dent. Someone who goes from $18.30 to $20 per hour would make roughly $3,500 more per year if they work a 40-hour work week.
Rory Pegram sits on his bed in the Stay Lodge extended stay hotel in Charlotte. Pegram says he cannot afford to own a home on his salary of $18.31 an hour. Alex Slitz alslitz@charlotteobserver.com
Among Charlotte city workers, a sense of pride
Pegram, 56, came to Charlotte in 2011. He was homeless and lived in a men’s shelter. Eventually, though, he met his wife and they moved in together. He worked for multiple employers, including Atrium Health, Mecklenburg County and the U.S. Postal Service.
He always wanted to work for the city, though.
Friends from his hometown of Reading, Pennsylvania, worked for the city there. He saw they were paid well and had good benefits. Almost equally important, though, he liked that they represented the city where they lived.
“Representing the city, working for the city, just having that on your shirt ... it meant something to me,” he said.
He got the job as a temporary worker, but became full time within a few months. Speaking about his work — collecting trash from businesses uptown, often cleaning up after events — Pegram glows with pride. He recalled meeting a couple visiting from England. They told him how impressed they were uptown was so well-kept.
“I love it,” he said. “It just makes you feel good when you hear that from people, knowing you’re a big part of what it takes to make the city look good.”
He said that sentiment holds true among many of his co-workers, and that working for the city comes with other benefits. City workers get a good health benefits package, he said, as well as commercial driver’s license training and other perks.
The pay is the drawback.
After Pegram spoke at a City Council meeting in March, where he talked about living in a hotel and having to work two jobs, people he knew said they were shocked by how little he made.
Rory Pegram says he had to ration his insulin before he picked up a second job. Alex Slitz alslitz@charlotteobserver.com
What the data shows
Salary data from the city shows that his housing situation and income aren’t entirely surprising.
Across some departments, there’s a big gap between current wages and Charlotte’s cost of living.
It took a salary of just shy of $80,000 to afford a home in Charlotte at the 2020 median price, according to the 2021 State of Housing report from UNC Charlotte’s Childress Klein Center for Real Estate.
Apartments are notoriously expensive as well. As of January, just 1% of apartments in Mecklenburg County rent for less than $1,000, according to data from Apartment List. A 2022 economic outlook from the county government found that it took an income of about $56,200 annually to afford a one-bedroom apartment in Charlotte.
The average income in the city’s solid waste department was just over $49,000 this spring. The average income for Charlotte Department of Transportation workers was $62,450; it was $62,430 for Housing and Neighborhood Services.
Across five of the city’s lowest-paid departments — solid waste, aviation (Charlotte airport), CATS, CDOT and water — 51% could afford a single-bedroom apartment on their own incomes, according to the Observer’s analysis.
That leaves 1,260 city workers across those five departments who can’t. Of more than 7,100 full-time employees in March across 22 departments, 2,200 couldn’t afford a single-bedroom apartment on their own income. More than 4,700 couldn’t afford a house.
The raises in the new budget are a step in the right direction, city workers and union leaders said in May when they were announced.
Charlotte Water crew chief and union president Dominic Harris said at the time that being able to live in the city on a city salary has long been a concern among employees.
He thanked “everybody that knows that city workers deserve to be able to live in the city we work in.” Harris added: “Hourly wage workers (have) deserved it for a long time.”
City Manager Marcus Jones said he and his office prioritized hourly employees and worked collaboratively with them to raise wages across the board. City workers protested in March, marching from an uptown park to the government center to demand better compensation.
When he and his wife separated earlier this year, he couldn’t afford their $1,100-a-month apartment on his own. He moved into an extended-stay hotel in March, but that proved to be too expensive, as well. He found another one that’s cheaper.
Still, getting by was hard. He had to skip out on some of his insulin, picking and choosing between various necessities like food and medicine.
Pegram recently found a second job that’s helped. It’s meant working longer hours — he starts his work for the city at 6:30 a.m. and sometimes doesn’t get back from his second job until 11 p.m. — but he pulls in enough money to afford his diabetes medication.
Because his hotel is far from uptown, the rising price of gasoline puts a strain on his finances. The lack of money also hampers his ability to follow his passion, creating a program to help Charlotte’s young people build better futures.
In the near-term, his sights are set on a home. At his age, Pegram said he wants a house, not an apartment.
“A lot of us are getting old,” he said. “If you work hard every day, you want to come home to a house.”
Gavin Off and Lauren Lindstrom contributed to this story.
This story was originally published June 5, 2022 at 6:00 AM.
Will Wright covers politics in Charlotte and North Carolina. He previously covered eastern Kentucky for the Lexington Herald-Leader, and worked as a reporting fellow at The New York Times.
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