gentrification
I signed a new housing lease about a month ago in mid-October – a lease that won’t start until June of next year. This is how competitive student off-campus housing is in Chapel Hill, and the ever-high demand for student housing in Chapel Hill continues to negatively affect non-student renters.
Niche.com estimates that 90 percent of houses near campus fill up by October. From my experience, students looking to rent an affordable house (as opposed to a townhouse or apartment) begin the search as early as September. Every year this fight to find the closest, nicest and most affordable home puts additional stress on UNC students, and our desperation to sign a lease as soon as possible pits students against each other, increasing competition and driving prices up.
According to a 2010 report prepared by Development Concepts Inc., students make up about a third of all rented units in Chapel Hill (and rented housing comprises over half of all housing in Chapel Hill). We are a huge market for property owners and developers – on-campus housing can only accommodate 9,700 students, so the remaining 9,000 or so undergrads must find off-campus places.
UNC Student Government and Campus Y host candidate forum: What do candidates really think about town-and-gown relations?
As a student of social justice at Chapel Hill’s largest employer, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, I am acutely aware of the impact my education plays on the economic and demographic make-up of our community. With the UNC Student Government and Campus Y (the center for social justice on campus) coming together on November 3, 2011, to host a candidate forum, I had hoped students would finally have their most salient concerns heard by potential council representatives. Even more, I was optimistic that students without cars or a thorough understanding of the intricate bus system would finally gain access to the campaign process, which has built to a climax over the past weeks.
This morning, the west end of downtown Chapel Hill was immobilized when someone called in a bomb threat against the rising Greenbridge development. I understand that some people have issues with tall buildings in Chapel Hill, although I don't especially. But I do share the concerns that many have about the gentrification of Northside. However, the fact is that Greenbridge didn't create either of those problems, and stopping it isn't going to help solve them either.
Receuved via e-mail:
"Why Stories Matter: An evening of performance and discussion about development and gentrification in Chapel Hill-Carrboro."
>
> Tuesday, Nov 11
> 8:00 PM
> Bingham 103
Join us as we watch sections of a promotional DVD put together by Greenbridge developers during their plans to build ten story building adjacent to Northside. We will watch the film in sections, with group discussion and performances by Spoken Word artists and others in between.
-Come out and learn how Chapel Hill and the University are caught up in the globalizing force of development, and the discourse that produces certain understandings of progress and progressive.
-Come out and see the amazing power of performance as an intervention in oppressive discourses and practices.
-Come out and help us think about how the stories we tell about ourselves and others have material and real impacts on humans and communities, how contested definitions of sustainability and community come out of different histories.
Greenbridge is a $50 million mixed-use project going up on the Graham, Rosemary and Merritt Mill Road block of Chapel Hill, bordering the Northside neighborhood, one of the few historically African-American communities in Chapel Hill. The building will be 10 stories high, more than three times as tall as any surrounding building. As the group started working on their application for a Special Use Permit from the Town Council for their project, they produced a "documentary" of the history of the community, weaving stories of elderly residents in the area and their vision of "sustainability" in the LEED certified building.
Northside, one of Chapel Hill's most historic neighborhoods, has been a community of African American families for more than a hundred years. It was an active site of Civil Rights activism, a pioneer in public education for African-Americans in the South, and a place known for vital church communities. In the 90s there was a community push to clean up the neighborhood, which also made it more lucrative for development. Now student renters and bigger developments like Greenbridge threaten to price out people on fixed income, long-term residents and keep out families from moving to the area.
Date:
Tuesday, November 11, 2008 - 2:00pm
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