Median rent soars to $1,900 in Mecklenburg County. Will this help?
In 2022’s second quarter, investors bought more than 25% of for sale Mecklenburg County homes, resulting in rising rents and unfair housing prices, data presented to commissioners Wednesday show.
Mecklenburg’s elected leaders tried to help by including $500,000 to develop strategies around corporate landlords in the 2022-2023 county budget this summer. But since then, rents have continued to rise. In the second quarter, median asking rent for a rental in Charlotte grew to $1,902, commissioners heard during a presentation from county strategic planning and evaluation staff.
“I’m still very, very disturbed, as everyone is, when you look at where these corporate landlords have really put their thumb on the scale is in those most vulnerable communities,” District 4 Commissioner Mark Jerrell said.
County staff offered some solutions to increasing rent prices this week, telling commissioners:
▪ Mecklenburg County should buy land and offer it at less than fair market value for affordable housing. It should purchase land to preserve affordable housing on an ad hoc basis.
▪ Expand affordable housing programs and need-based rental assistance by continuing to invest in affordable housing programs (such as rental subsidies), critical home repair efforts and eviction prevention legal advice.
▪ Allocate public funds to legal help for tenants who face unsafe situations, predatory leasing practices and excessive fees.
▪ Ask legislators in Raleigh to take action that de-incentivizes corporate landlord homeownership.
▪ Support a grassroots community education campaign.
▪ Ask homeowners associations to update bylaws to cap single-family rental properties in communities. County Manager Dena Diorio recommended engaging HOAs in a listening campaign and providing HOA educational resources on a Housing Support Home website.
Diorio said the city’s unified development ordinance passed this year allows for more density in areas that formerly prohibited it. Otherwise, code enforcement, she said, is just a city function.
“While we can certainly encourage them to do certain things, when you have situations where people are in unsafe living conditions, what ends up happening is that those people get displaced,” Diorio said.
Corporations owned approximately 13,600 single family homes as of the summer of 2021, concentrated within six companies, county data show. During the pandemic, median single-family rental prices increased 26.7% in the Charlotte Mecklenburg region.
This story was originally published November 12, 2022 at 6:00 AM.
