The Greensboro Planning and Zoning Board last Thursday voted to recommend the city council approve what could be the first new housing community priced so teachers, nurses, first responders and workers in stores and restaurants can buy a house in the city where they work.
Only about 13 percent of people who work in Greensboro also live there, according to 2019 Census figures used in the city’s recently approved 2024-28 Comprehensive Development Plan. The plan also says that more than half of Greensboro’s employed population works in the service industry.
There has been a concern for many years about the lack of affordable housing for Greene County’s workforce.
Paladin Inc. owns the Cottages at Baynes Creek, a new senior community on Oconee Avenue. It also owns 52 acres of unused property adjacent to the community.
If Greensboro City Council approves its request to annex the land into the city with the very flexible Commercial Planned Unit Development (CPUD) zoning, Paladin will donate the property to Baynes Creek Development Inc. for the construction of workforce affordable houses.
“We feel that the desperate lack of affordable workforce housing in our community undermines the stability of our entire community,” Jan Broughton, a member of the Baynes Creek Development Board told the Lake Oconee News. “This innovative community will provide an increasingly rare opportunity for essential workers who are aspiring homebuyers to purchase a home at an entry-level price in an environment where there is no inventory.”
Baynes Creek Development still needs funding, but it has proposed building 70 houses priced to sell from $175,000 to the high $200,000s. The homes would range in size from 1,200 to 2,000-plus square feet.
Broughton, who is also on the board of Habitat for Humanity, said all 70 houses will be built by the same commercial builder and about 15 of them will be financed through Habitat For Humanity.
Across town, there is another housing development, already approved by the City Council for annexation and zoning, that will have slightly higher prices than Baynes Creek.
“We may have some overlap on our low end, but our high end will probably be above that,” a representative of Capstone Land Development told the Lake Oconee News. He did not quote price ranges.
Capstone expects to break ground soon on the 121-acre community off Martin Luther King Jr. Drive. The proposal indicates there will be 140 single-family detached houses, ranging from 2,000 to 2,400 square feet, and 42 townhomes, from 1,500 to 1,900 square feet.
“Our primary candidate would be dual-income, single families. Two parents that are working, with kids,” said Capstone’s representative.
Annexation is key
Both Capstone and Baynes Creek need annexation into the city because that will give them access to Greensboro’s water and sewer system.
It’s critical to affordable housing in Greene County. Only Greensboro and Union Point have their own water and sewer systems. Piedmont Water only serves the southern part of the county around the lake. The rest of the county relies on well water and septic tanks, and county zoning laws require much larger lot sizes for septic. Bigger lots mean fewer homes in a development, which means the prices must be higher to make the project profitable.
What is the plan?
The new Greene County Comprehensive Development Plan states that, while the county’s regulations are generally supportive of a diversity of housing types, “the lack of public sewer infrastructure, however, poses the biggest barrier to affordable housing.”
The county’s comprehensive plan indicates that the subject of more housing types, including affordable housing, came up frequently with city and state officials and community leaders while the plan was in development. The final version identifies an area from Union Point to Woodville in the northeastern part of the county as a Transitional Residential Hub.
The plan says, “The Transitional Residential Hub provides an opportunity for new housing types that are available at price points attainable to the local workforce.” Elsewhere the plan suggests, “higher density housing (duplexes, townhouses, apartments) is best suited adjacent to or near city limits.”
For its part, Greensboro’s 2024-28 Comprehensive Plan recommends that “medium-density single-family and multifamily residential developments be built, at a variety of price points, to help address the housing shortfalls.”
But in the list of 40 action items for the city of Greensboro to accomplish over the next four years, there is only a passing reference to affordable housing.
“When reviewing and revising zoning ordinances, consider the community’s needs related to housing quality, affordability, and variety,” the plan says.
The Greensboro City Council is expected to vote on the Baynes Creek proposal at its Feb. 19 regular meeting.