EOT 368- Eye on the Triangle Election Special (Housing, Zoning, CAC, Food Desert)

WKNC Content Creator, Owen Martin, interviews several candidates for the Raleigh City Council.
The candidates interviewed are Joshua Bradley, Jonathon Melton, James Bledsoe and Anne Franklin.
Due to the length of these interviews, the episode has been segmented based on discussed topics.
In this podcast segment, the candidates will discuss Housing, Zoning, CAC and Food Desert.

Show Notes

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What is Eye on the Triangle?

Eye on the Triangle is WKNC 88.1 FM HD-1/HD-2’s weekly public affairs programming with news, interviews, opinion, weather, sports, arts, music, events and issues that matter to NC State, Raleigh and the Triangle.

00:00
Brian Jurado
The views and opinions expressed on Eye on the Triangle do not represent WKNC or NC State student media. Hello everyone. This is Brian Jurado, the Public Affairs Director at WKNC and host of Eye on the Triangle. In continuation of our WKNC Eye on the Triangle election episode, we've added some podcast episodes to fully post these interviews. The candidates being interviewed are Joshua Bradley, James Bledsoe, Jennifer Jonathan Melton and Anne Franklin. These candidates are running for Raleigh City Council. For this podcast segment, the candidates will be discussing housing zoning, CACs and food desert. The interview is being conducted by WKNC content creator Owen Martin.

00:44
Owen Martin
In the current 2019-2022 city council term, there have been a lot of controversies surrounding the dissolution of the Citizen Advisory Council's as well as how the current council has handled zoning. And this is a response to those questions as well as how they are going to handle affordable housing. What does housing justice look like in Raleigh?

01:08
Joshua Bradley
Housing justice? There's a lot of points that looks in that. I think that one thing that we need to do for renters is to do what we can to organize tenant unions.

01:21
Owen Martin
What is a tenant union?

01:22
Joshua Bradley
A tenant union is a group of residents and it's. I've seen it either organized by a city or by actually apartment buildings or.

01:32
Owen Martin
Groups, sort of like a co op, like a hoa. That's not fascist.

01:38
Joshua Bradley
Yeah, it's basically the idea is that you're stronger together. So if your apartment complex or building or however you organize it has issues. If I have an issue and call my landlord, maybe they'll get to it, maybe they won't. It depends on it. I've lived in some, I've rented from some little lords and Raleigh. They didn't care. But if everybody comes together and pushes the issue, chances are you get stuff done. And that when you talk about collective action, you know, a rent strike with one person is an eviction.

02:13
Owen Martin
Right.

02:13
Joshua Bradley
But if the entire building does it, then that actually affects, you know, the, you know, the money of the landlord. So that I think there are people that are heard. Now if you're in section 8 housing or HUD housing, actually HUD has something set up called a residence council. And in theory residence councils actually should be getting government money to help organize. And in theory they shouldn't be listened to by the housing authority. They just have to be organized. So I think for people that are on Section 8 housing or in social housing, if they're not already organized, because we've lost a lot of that kind of housing in Raleigh in the last several years. And we need to do what we can to push it out, because everybody's important.

03:06
Joshua Bradley
Like, housing is a human right, so we need to treat it as a human right. Another thing is, I mean, there are. The city holds a lot of property, and what they've traditionally been doing is they've been offering it at a discount for big developers to get some kind of guarantee of like 80 have 5% of housing units, you know, for people that are. Make 80% of AMI affordable for people at 80% of AMI. Do you understand area median income and that kind of stuff? Which really doesn't help that much because right now we have a surplus of homes for housing above for people that make above 80% of the area median income. So rather than do that, why don't we just build it? Why don't we just hire a contractor? Why don't we just. You know, I mean, we have the land.

04:04
Joshua Bradley
I mean, people complain that we have a lot of empty parking lots that we want to deemphasize, but why don't. And they've said we need to build housing there, but why do we have.

04:12
Owen Martin
To give it, Wait for a developer to do it?

04:14
Joshua Bradley
Yeah, I mean, there are housing nonprofits to work with, too. I mean, there's lots of ways.

04:20
Owen Martin
There are people that know how to get it done if you put in the right hands.

04:23
Joshua Bradley
Right. And you've got to listen to the people that are on the ground, too. Like, there are people that have been working on housing in Raleigh forever. Like, the Wake County Housing Justice Coalition have been on this for a while. And I've got.

04:36
Owen Martin
There's the property at Moore Square.

04:39
Joshua Bradley
Yeah, well, yeah, and you've got people like Food Not Bombs and Meals for the Masses that actually use part of More Square to do that. And if the city were to sell that to even 80% AMI or higher, it would just push out the. It would make it more difficult to distribute food and offer services and. Yeah. Shout out to Meals for the Masses and Food Not Bombs. Raleigh, they're good people and do good work. And when it comes to Moore Square, the other thing that you want to realize is that was donated to the city for the poor of the city. And basically, years ago, they. They took it. They closed it for two years and kept everybody out. Cut out most of the trees, sodded it and put a hamburger place there.

05:26
Owen Martin
So.

05:26
Joshua Bradley
And at the cost of about $12 million of city funds, imagine how much housing you could.

05:32
Owen Martin
Yeah, like, housing, like, isn't that expensive to build? Like, you can Build a lot of buildings, like at cost, right?

05:43
Joshua Bradley
Yeah, it's just, it's taking it up. I mean they're concerned about the money the, you know about for profit housing.

05:51
Owen Martin
Stop paying developers to do it. Yeah.

05:53
Joshua Bradley
And when it comes down to things that are important for, to sustain life shouldn't be nonfiction profit. Healthcare shouldn't be done for profit. Housing shouldn't be done for profit. You know, to some degree food shouldn't be done for profit. I mean, because, you know, we're a species that is actually contrary to popular belief, the only reason that we survived as a species is because we work together. Right. We would have died out a couple of times back in the day if we didn't work together. And it seems like to me, and it could just be me, that people in my parents generation and afterward and to some degree my generation, even though Gen X was really small, started focusing on the individual.

06:35
Joshua Bradley
I mean it goes back to Reaganomics and Thatcherism and Thatcher said that, you know, we're not a community, we're a bunch of individuals. And that doesn't make sense because like if we're going to survive and we're going to, I mean, because this country, this planet has a lot of issues that we're going to need to work together on. Right. That's why I'm not the anarchist I was, you know, 20 years ago. Right. Because we don't have that much time, I think left anarchism is beautiful. It is slow as molasses though. And we've got like 40 years, y'all. I didn't like that.

07:08
Owen Martin
Now let's transition more to property taxes and such. I know we had talked about kind of putting a freeze on some things that there's a lot of limitations placed on it by the General Assembly. But how would you combat kind of the artificial shortage created by sort of short term rentals like Airbnb and stuff and then unoccupied second or nth homes. And what are you going to do to protect citizens whose property taxes are going. Are skyrocketing because their homes are being speculated upon and gentrified around.

07:54
Joshua Bradley
Wow, that's a big one too. There's, I mean what we should do is we should find the funding to help cover people whose taxes are gone up. If we, if the city is not allowed to, if the General assembly doesn't let us give tax forgiveness or grandfather in old tax rates for people in gentrified communities, I think we should come with the money to cover that and what however we need to do it, I mean, if it's not directly to the tax bill, we'll give you this to cover ex utility to bring you up to the point to where you could do it. You know, I think that, you know, we need to really work. We need to really get a General assembly that will give us a little leeway because there's lots of things that you could do when it comes to tax.

08:38
Joshua Bradley
If we had a ideally and before 2019 and we'd really talking about a progressive property tax where it would be a small tax decrease for people under 250,000 value and then stay the same for the next hundred thousand. And then for every $100,000 of valuation, you would get like $0.10 per $100,000 or $1,000 evaluation, which we can't do anymore because of the General Assembly. But that would at one time slow down the speculation and it would slow down building McMansions in the places that used to be affordable and then you could put that money into actually building more affordable housing. So that's a discussion that needs to be had and should be had with the city council. But as far as Airbnb and short term rentals, I'm of the opinion that we should ban them.

09:29
Joshua Bradley
Except with the exception of maybe in the house that you live in your primary residence, you can rent like.

09:34
Owen Martin
An extra room or something.

09:36
Joshua Bradley
You can do an Airbnb or even.

09:38
Owen Martin
The like accessory buildings.

09:40
Joshua Bradley
Well, see, I don't agree with. Okay, like the problem with ADUs is they passed Adus thinking it's going to save affordability and then they deregulated airbnbs at the same time. So what's going to happen is people are going to be building ADUs and they're going to use them for a B and B Airbnbs, which don't do anything to help local.

10:00
Owen Martin
The supply.

10:01
Joshua Bradley
Yeah, it doesn't do anything to housing supply. There's nothing that has been recently that is a fact that has really had a positive impact on the supply of low cost housing.

10:13
Owen Martin
How do you, what is your position on the properties adjacent to Moore Square and how to develop them into affordable housing?

10:23
Jonathan Melton
The city owned properties. So there are I think two big city owned properties near Moore Square. One is right behind City Market. There's a surface parking lot right now and then there is a bunch of gravel, maybe some surface parking and some grass on the other side of Moore Square. Kind of like behind where the Salvation army is right there. And the plan for that the city has proposed is the bigger piece by the Salvation army. Put a request for proposals out to build affordable housing there. Give us your best shot. Mixed use, so folks don't have to have a car to get what they need. The surface parking lot behind City Market.

11:04
Jonathan Melton
I believe the plan is for that to be sold to the highest bidder and then the proceeds so the money we can receive from it invested into the affordable housing fund. I agree with that approach. We also have a bunch of city owned lots scattered around the city, specifically downtown. Not big pieces like that, but maybe a lot or two in an existing neighborhood. It has sat vacant for decades. And one thing that I've pushed for since I've been on council is like empty dirt is not helping anybody. Why is the city owning vacant land when we could be housing people on that land? So one thing we're doing with those properties is for most of them upzoning them so you can build more units there.

11:42
Jonathan Melton
And then the city's going to retain ownership, but do long term land leases with some nonprofit partners or private partners to build deeply affordable housing. Like aiming at like 30%, 40% AMI thinking that if the city owns the land and does a long term land lease, we can control the affordability because what normally happens is it's affordable for the first couple years and then it flips.

12:05
Owen Martin
Why can't the city of Raleigh just build themselves or get a contractor but then retain ownership?

12:12
Jonathan Melton
So the lots, we are doing a land lease but the city doesn't actually build housing. That's where the public private partnerships come in and it actually extends the city dollar significantly. I was looking at this the other day and I don't have it in front, but the amount of money we have invested in public private partnerships, the return on that is like five or six fold. So we are able to work with groups like CASA Habitat, dhc, the Raleigh Area Land Trust on either conveying land below fair market value, offering low income housing tax credits or some other subsidy so that we can produce more affordable units than we would have been able to do if the city was trying to build themselves.

12:58
Owen Martin
Yeah, I just, I don't, I'm not, I don't know a lot about it and I don't like growing up I'd always heard about projects and stuff like housing projects and you know, just kind of it. Yeah, just. Why can't the city just build apartment blocks and stuff like that?

13:16
Jonathan Melton
Right. So typically like I said, we work with someone in the private sector. It's usually a non profit. For example, CASA is A non profit multifamily provider, mostly multifamily. They came to us a couple weeks ago. They wanted to buy a naturally occurring affordable apartment complex that was at risk of being bought by a developer to turn, probably get redeveloped into something that's not affordable. So we conveyed to them $2 million is, I think, a low interest or forgivable loan. So they're going to buy it and then they're going to keep it as an affordable rental and cost is going to maintain it.

13:48
Owen Martin
We had another one with sorry, God, sorry now, sorry. I keep hitting you up. How do you guys maintain or how do you all keep CASA or other organizations like that accountable to make sure that is there some sort of rent control put in place or how does, how is that process created as that process facilitated where affordable? It's made sure that it's affordable housing still ongoing.

14:17
Jonathan Melton
Well, one thing with CASA is that's all they do. So these are groups that only do those types of developments. The enforcement mechanism is actually something I don't know because that would be a staff issue. That'd be housing in neighborhoods or, you know, the Planning and Development Department. What we approve is sort of the overarching policy. Yes, we want to convey $2 million to CASA to keep this affordable. I do know with certain things, like the property at Morse Square, the one that we want affordable housing built on, that would be a condition on.

14:50
Owen Martin
Okay.

14:51
Jonathan Melton
On it. And so it would be enforceable the same way. I think probably all of our other zoning conditions are like, if you have a zoning condition attached to your property, then you have to follow it.

14:59
Owen Martin
Okay, What are some of the developers that city council has been working with or how have you guys been working with developers to make sure that these things happen?

15:20
Jonathan Melton
So anytime, the only way we have real, any influence is if someone comes for a rezoning. I don't think sometimes people understand that if you can build by right, meaning you can already build there, then we, outside of the standard staff reviewing policy and administrative site reviews, there's really no negotiating discretion. And so here's an example. The Seaboard Station project. Logan's owned Seaboard Station for a long time. They never put any historic protection or designation on that train station building. They sold it to a developer. The developer, on the day that sale closed could have knocked that train station down and built seven stories by Right. They did not have to ask permission. They filed a rezoning asking for 20 story buildings.

16:04
Jonathan Melton
So because they were asking to increase the entitlement, that was the opportunity we had to work with them to negotiate preservation conditions for the Seaport Station building. And sometimes I think that's not clear to folks because, you know, we had people show up to our meeting with signs that said, deny the rezoning, Save Seaboard Station. And I said, if you want to save Seaboard Station, and I want to save Seaboard Station, the only chance we have is this rezoning request, because if we deny it's going to get knocked down and seven stories are going to get built. And what were able to do with the community and the developer was to negotiate preservation conditions.

16:39
Owen Martin
How do you feel about lot minimums?

16:41
Jonathan Melton
So when we talk about minimum lot sizes, setbacks, all of that sort of gets wrapped up. Let's take it a step back. I try to provide examples. If you go Oakwood, if you go into Forest park, used to be Cameron park, right here by NC State, you will see neighborhoods that were built before these zoning rules. So you will see missing middle housing. So apartments mixed in with single family homes, duplexes mixed in with single family homes, townhomes mixed in with single family homes close to the street, homes close to each other. All of that was built before exclusionary zoning laws and before laws like minimum lot size setbacks, all of those things.

17:24
Jonathan Melton
And I think some of it, a little bit was put into place for some aesthetic and safety reasons, but a lot of it was to exclude people from moving into areas. And so we have done a lot of zoning reform to reduce minimum lot sizes, to make it easier to build housing, different types of housing in places all over the city. Because quite frankly, for a really long time, so much of the city, and I'll say it was older, wealthy white neighborhoods were closed off or protesting new development. And all that pressure was funneling into areas like southeast Raleigh and other areas that were traditionally underinvested. And the only way we're going to grow equitably is if we open up the whole city for growth and development. No one's going to drop an apartment tower in your backyard.

18:08
Jonathan Melton
But if someone wants to build a townhouse instead of a single family home, I think that should be allowed. If someone wants to build a duplex instead of a single family home, I think that should be allowed. And the great thing is sometimes folks need examples. So the idea seems less scary. You can drive around or walk around Raleigh and see tons of examples of that already. And they exist in our oldest, most beloved neighborhoods because they predate zoning rules.

18:34
Owen Martin
How Denver does a really Good job of, to put it kind of crudely, protecting their citizens against gentrific, kind of educating them about what it means when developers are coming in around them and their property taxes are being increased and they're getting officers, I mean, offers from developers. What a. What would a program like that in Raleigh look like?

19:01
Jonathan Melton
I think that sort of rolls into our new Office of Community Engagement. Quite frankly, that was a little bit of a void before. And one thing that I talked about at our last council meeting is how we can better connect housing and neighborhoods and the neighborhood registry program with our community engagement efforts. I also think that there's more we can do from a funding standpoint to help folks stay in their homes. Because a lot of people are moving to Raleigh. We know that we have to provide access to housing for the new folks, but we have people who have housing now who are at risk of losing it. And once they become displaced, now they need housing and this cycle perpetuates. And so one thing that our affordable housing bond that passed in 2020 does is it increases funding for owner occupied rehabilitation assistance.

19:43
Jonathan Melton
And a lot of times folks feel like they to sell their homes because they can't afford the repairs. And so there will be funds available now for repairs, expanding that program to help folks stay in their homes. And then I do think there is some sort of educational piece. A program we just stood up is really geared towards renters. We're partnering with Campbell for eviction assistance and prevention. So if you're a low income renter and you're at risk of eviction, you can get free legal representation. Now I think there could be a similar program where, you know, quite frankly, some folks may want to sell their homes. They may want to cash in on their generational wealth and be like, now's the time, market's hot. But they may not understand what is a fair offer and how do I negotiate.

20:19
Jonathan Melton
And I think there is probably a program we could stand up to help provide those resources to.

20:25
Owen Martin
Mm. And there's just also a lot of people, I think. Yeah, it's really important also to protect the people who say, wow, this is a lot of money and you're just gonna hand it to me. But then they realize that they've accepted an offer that prices them out of anywhere they want to live.

20:39
Jonathan Melton
Yeah, I mean, that's a challenge right now.

20:41
James Bledsoe
Right?

20:41
Jonathan Melton
Like you could sell your house for a lot, but then everything else is selling for a lot. So then where are you gonna go? You go into one of the more suburban surrounding counties and now we've increased sprawl, now we've increased traffic, now we've put people further away from their jobs and things that they need. And so all of these issues talking about land use planning and transit and housing, it all really ties together.

21:04
Owen Martin
I did want to ask you about that. Why did you all remove the ban on short term rentals?

21:14
Jonathan Melton
Couple things. When I was running for election in 2019, I met with so many folks who under the old restrictive rules, they were struggling to pay their own mortgages, struggling to pay for daycare. There are folks that depend upon short term rental income to keep a roof over their own heads, to pay for medical expenses, to pay for school expenses. And so I'm a very. Let's come from a place of yes person.

21:36
Owen Martin
Let's start from how long of kind of were those people doing short term rentals? So I don't, I just.

21:44
James Bledsoe
Yeah, it's a, just as.

21:45
Jonathan Melton
Yeah, it's a complex history because there were no short term rental rules in Raleigh. Then the prior city council functionally banned short term rentals. And then when we got elected, before the ban really could take effect, we suspended the rules until we could come up with new rules. And so what we have now is a new set of rules that does let folks rent a whole house, rent rooms in their houses. You have to have a permit if we registered. And then we requested periodic updates from staff so we can try to monitor how many registered short term rentals do we have? What effect is it having on the housing stock? Do we think it's affecting affordability and access? And what we've seen so far is unlike other cities that are more tourist destinations, it's not really affecting us in that way.

22:31
Jonathan Melton
And if it is, then I would be a proponent of scaling it back. But until the data says it's a problem, I would not want to, I don't want to restrict people's abilities to make an income on their own property.

22:42
Owen Martin
Okay. Yeah. I was also curious how that played into the ADUs and sort of kind of protecting, making sure that was used as housing stock and not just short term rentals where people that aren't members of the community are.

23:00
Jonathan Melton
So the ADU piece is kind of just one part of short term rentals because now we've legalized ADUs citywide and I haven't looked at the data recently, but before we allowed them citywide, they were allowed under a very restrictive process before where you basically had to go to all of your surrounding neighbors and ask them if you could Build an adu, then you had to basically ask for a rezoning from city council, which really increased the cost. I mean, you had to hire a lawyer. You would have had to have, you know, gone through this very long process. Now you can build them by right. And so what I'm interested in is now that you can build them by right, there's been a lot more permits applied for them.

23:32
Jonathan Melton
So once we get them out onto the ground, I'm interested to see how are they being used and what else can we do to make them be used in the way we want them to be used. I do know some people will use an ADU as a short term rental to try to make income. But my hope is that a lot of people will offer them up for long term rentals to make some income. And when I was at a law school and moved back to Raleigh, I was trying to find a garage apartment or a basement apartment that I could rent. All my friends were moving to D.C. and other places and renting those types of apartments. And I couldn't afford any of the new apartment buildings downtown.

24:03
Jonathan Melton
And I looked everywhere for something like my friends were renting and I couldn't find any. And I didn't know at the time, but I know now it's because Those are considered ADUs and they weren't leased legal before. So now they are legal. And I think there's a lot of ways that we can, moving forward, try to incentivize their construction and their placement on the market as a more affordable rental. Right now I know the city is gathering plans from architects that they can make available on the city website. So if you want to build an adu, that's one step you can sort of cut out of the process.

24:32
Jonathan Melton
But there are a lot of municipalities, towns and cities out west that offer like forgivable loans or low interest loans or grants for you to build an ADU on your property if you make it a rental, affordable at a low ami. And so I'd be very interested in moving something like that forward.

24:49
Owen Martin
A lot of candidates say therefore affordable housing. How does your plan differentiate from the other candidates?

24:55
James Bledsoe
Mine? I would like to push for denser housing along BRT corridors. I want that ready to go immediately. And with that I want developers to put in a plan where, say along the BRT corridor we have two stories of just business and everything above that would be housing. So I kind of, I want to get rid of the height restrictions that go into place when developers are able to build these larger units, especially on the corridor. I'd like to ask them to reserve, say, maybe 5 to 10% other units for affordable. I mean, for affordable housing. I'm not going to mandate it because that would be illegal in holding them hostage. But I would like to ask them to. I'd like to make it more lucrative for the developer to do so they're not losing money.

25:52
James Bledsoe
If I can create greater density in the city, then that's the possibility of more affordable housing. And that's what I want to do. I want to get as many people that want to stay in the city to be able to live here. And the way I see that is through deregulation and allowing private homeowners to do what they, you know, to give up their units or say X amount of units in their apartment for that affordable housing.

26:21
Owen Martin
Do you think it would beneficial for the city of Raleigh to mandate that developers do that in order to create the house. More housing stock?

26:29
James Bledsoe
No, like I said before, that was. That's illegal. So I did meet with several different groups.

26:34
Owen Martin
That is, I mean, it being illegal doesn't. I mean, when you create the laws, it doesn't matter that much.

26:40
James Bledsoe
Raleigh can't create those laws because that's collective bargaining. Unfortunately, it's the same issue that the firefighters face. I mean, we can't meet up with them and say, hey, you have to do this. This is private land. I mean, that's still private ownership. That's.

26:54
Owen Martin
But it's up to the city to approve any development that occurs.

26:58
James Bledsoe
Right? You can approve it, but that's still. That's, again, that's collective bargaining. That's holding a developer hostage. That's the city saying, hey, you can't build what you want on your land. I mean, that's pretty restrictive. And that's not something that I want to be a part of. I want that opportunity to be there by choice. And if, say we have, you know.

27:18
Owen Martin
What kind of incentive would you propose in order to make that happen?

27:22
James Bledsoe
Definitely a tax relief or at least some sort of financial relief towards the builder saying, hey, you know, we can cut the time needed to approve your land or we can try and expedite it. So create a, you know, an expedit where I'm trying to think of an expedited process. Hey, you're going to build an apartment complex that's, you know, this large. Cool. Can you please set aside this much? And we will try and push it through just as fast that way. Or say, hey, we will waive your fees or we'll waive as much as possible. So create the incentive right there.

28:03
Anne Franklin
To.

28:04
James Bledsoe
Get the housing built, because that's not just helping the folks in need, but that's also, I mean, that are really in need for the affordable housing that's also putting stock into the folks that are going to pay full price. So if I can get that money, those housing units out faster and cheaper for the developers, so that, I mean, that's less red tape for the city government to do, then that'd be a pretty good incentive. And that's not the full, you know, full incentive that we can offer. I'd certainly like to work with lawyers and developers, get their input as like, hey, what works best for you? What can we legally do that will not tie us up and will also not tie you up to get more housing units out there.

28:47
Owen Martin
That makes sense. It just seems like that so far the method of asking nicely hasn't seemed to do very much when developers are able to turn around and just say, oh, we might have built these as affordable housing, but with the rates increasing and whatever, any agreements they might have are able to just pull right out from under them.

29:12
James Bledsoe
Well, I mean, let's look at what happened in the past two elections. So you have. So before this council came on board, we had a really restrictive council on board. We're just getting, say, an accessory dwelling unit or an Airbnb was impossible. I mean, they had theirs, but the rules were for thee, but not for me. That was the saying that we all had towards the council before this one. And I really applaud this council's effort for getting all that stuff going and housing going. However, you know, the pandemic hit that shut everything down. We're on the verge of a recession and inflation is going through the roof right after that. So all those incentives that were there before, they're still there.

29:56
James Bledsoe
But now that it's so expensive just to get housing built right now, and we're five years behind nationally, not just Raleigh, nationally, we're five years behind on building housing. It's going to take a lot to get that affordable housing in place without ratcheting up taxes to get it there. Now, I'm a huge fan of letting the market correct itself, or at least in this case, having inflation come down a little bit. That way we can bring developers back. It's not going to be a fast fix, it's going to be a little bit slow. But once, you know, the economy fixes itself, we can certainly bring a lot of those developers back in and say, hey, this offer still stands, but let us sweeten it for you a little bit.

30:40
James Bledsoe
We need you to start building as quickly as possible to get a lot of these lower income families in there, but also regular income families so we can get more revenue generated towards the city.

30:54
Owen Martin
What is the goal of getting rid of neighborhood conservation overlay districts?

31:01
James Bledsoe
I would like to allow a little bit more, I mean a lot more expansion of the of housing density. And there are some overlay districts that are preventing that from happening. For example, infill, there are a few houses that have become derelict or there are lots that are not being used right now. And because of these overlay districts, there is a lot of red tape to cut through. And, and that's a multi family house like a fourplex or a three story, four story building that just can't exist until the red tape is cut through.

31:45
Owen Martin
So a lot of candidates say there for affordable housing. How does your idea and vision for the city differ from their platforms?

32:00
Anne Franklin
Well, I know good stories are made out of conflict, but I think we're all a little at sea about how we can get a lot more housing built fairly quickly. And it needs to be mixed incomes, but focused on people at the median level and lower. I want the city to set some very sharp goals and the people currently sitting on council have not done that. They put some numbers, but that's not the same. With a goal. You try to get everybody involved. Let's say you want to get 20% of all the housing that's built everywhere to be affordable to somebody who's making 50 or 60% of the median income. And those are our teachers, our firefighters, people who work to support institutions of all kinds.

32:58
Anne Franklin
So if you want to house those people, then you have to say something like we want 20% of all the housing that you build everywhere to be affordable to people at that level, people who are a lot less privileged. Let's say they are 30% of our median income or lower. They are definitely going to need deep subsidies and probably social services or human services to go along so that life is tolerable. But I think we could have a whole lot more affordability. If we say that's what we're looking at and then we provide the staff that shows how you can do it. To date that's been based on funds that are available for special programs. So through the state, some city money.

33:54
Anne Franklin
But until the lending institutions get involved and figure up what the right formulas are, we're not going to make the progress that we need to. So if you don't set a strong goal, then nobody has to try to stretch and reach it. So we're looking for permanently affordable to, let's say 40, 50, 60% of AMI. And I think our people are creative enough to figure that out so that it becomes the expectation. Many years ago we established a policy that for projects that the city supported, that there would be a certain percentage of minority and business and women owned business participation. And at first the private industry said we can't do that, we don't have to. And so we're not doing it because the city can't force them to.

34:46
Anne Franklin
But then we set the goal and we kept checking, you know, somebody got 5, 6, 8%, we say, oh, that's good, we'd pay attention to them. We eventually started getting 12 and 15% participation. So you have to be. You set a strong goal, have be very persistent in expecting everybody in every circumstance to help. So that's. Is that going to solve all our problem? I don't know, but it's certainly a start.

35:20
Owen Martin
Why did you vote to dissolve citizen advisory committees?

35:26
Jonathan Melton
Yeah, so the way we send and receive information has changed substantially from the 1970s when that system was put into place. I'm a lawyer in my full time job and I joke sometimes, I don't mean any disrespect by this, but I think we're one of the only professions that still uses a fax machine, which was also created around the same time. I think we need to decentralize. Citywide surveys showed that very few people in Raleigh knew what a CAC was. Even fewer ever attended a CAC meeting. That cannot be the only city sanctioned form of engagement, quite frankly. Attendees typically skewed, older and not representative of the community. I think we need to do a better job of reaching more people to reach out to a more diverse representative body in person. Meetings are important. I think they'll still play a role.

36:10
Jonathan Melton
Groups called CACs still meet. The city maintains a neighborhood registry program where neighborhoods can register and get access to city resources and community centers for their meetings. But I think we have to also decentralize and reach out in more places. And some of the stuff we've done since I've been on council is we included renters for the first time ever in required notice for city decisions. I think 50% of our city rents and they had not been included before. We funded an Office of Community Engagement that's going to help embed community engagement into all of our departments. We funded a community engagement bus to literally Go into disengaged communities and meet people where they are. So that's the approach I want to take. I think for a long time community engagement in Raleigh was a noun.

36:52
Jonathan Melton
It should be a verb, an action that we're doing, not a place you have to go.

36:57
Owen Martin
Okay. Yeah. I was just curious kind of what. Yeah. Your plan and how. And how you would like to see them get reinstituted because it happened under the. It happened under the name of reform. But there's not reform if there's not a new. That. Yeah, if there wasn't a new plan that got put into place.

37:19
Jonathan Melton
So I don't think there were prior reform efforts before I got on council. I think there were two efforts prior, maybe 17, 20, 15, 2017 that failed because quite frankly, most of the CAC system sort of rejected any reform efforts. And so I think when I got elected in 19 and the idea of coming up with a new system was presented to me, I looked through all the data. I saw how very few people were engaging in the CAC process, how they were prior reform efforts. And I thought it was best to just start with a new system. And I don't think it's going to be a direct apples to apples replacement. Like I said, the way we send and receive information is so different now.

37:56
Jonathan Melton
I think in person meetings like CACs are one piece of the pie, but I don't think that the whole piece.

38:03
Owen Martin
Do you think there's a way that you all could include citizens in the process similar to the power that CACS held?

38:14
Jonathan Melton
Well, I think one big function of the CACS was voting on rezoning requests. And when we did shift away from the cacs, we put into our city code required two neighborhood meetings for rezoning requests which were not part of the code before. And we actually got an update from our community engagement department a couple weeks ago to council meeting. There have been more neighborhood meetings for rezoning cases this term since this new plan was put into place than there were under the CAC system. So that piece still exists. There's also opportunities to engage with the city at our planning commission. They take public comment, public hearing at our council meetings through our boards and commissions. But I'm really excited to see what the new Office of Community Engagement will come up with. Like I said, I think in person neighborhood meetings are important.

38:59
Jonathan Melton
They're going to still play a role, but I'm really excited to see what we can do to actually not put the burden on the residents to have to show up somewhere to engage but how we can bring the city to them.

39:10
Owen Martin
Yeah, yeah. It's hard for people to make that time.

39:14
Jonathan Melton
Yeah. I mean, really, folks that are able to find time to go to a meeting in the evening, during the week are probably folks that are retired or, you know, aren't working two shifts, don't have little kids, things like that.

39:26
Owen Martin
Yeah. What's your position on the dissolution of the Citizen Advisory Council consoles?

39:32
James Bledsoe
I was really disappointed in that. Before I deployed, I would always go to each and every Southeast CAC meeting because that was my finger on the pulse. Like, there was rezoning efforts that were being done that I didn't even know about, that didn't even make the news until they hit council. And when that went away, I had to rely on, say, ABC11 or WRAL or, you know, council post meeting while I was employed just to get any information. However, if I was to submit an email to the cac, like, hey, what is the upcoming agenda? What's going to go on? Because I couldn't be there, then I'd at least get something back and I'd be in the know. I don't like how this council did that.

40:15
James Bledsoe
I want to bring it back and so do several other candidates, because community outreach and having the community involved and everything that is huge for me, I want that to come back.

40:25
Jonathan Melton
Back.

40:26
James Bledsoe
I want CACs to exist. But the caveat on that being I want a stricter covenant in place. Because the largest gripe, or I say, concern that a lot of people had about the CACS was that it was the same people in charge of each CAC that was giving a lot of negative feedback, especially from this council. Councilman Knight, he had an issue with cac, you know, voting on what's going to happen. I mean, mind you, it's the council that has the final say. But that was a way for the community to say, hey, no, we don't want this, or we do want this, and I would love for that to come back. Or, I mean, I'd love for, you know, the CAC is come back.

41:05
Owen Martin
Mm. Yeah, I think it would be. I think there's a way to do it. Right. And I think it'd be complicated to get maybe full participation.

41:15
Jonathan Melton
Right.

41:16
Owen Martin
But, yeah, because that. The way it was at least portrayed to me by Councilman Melton is that it was a very disproportionate group of people that had nothing better to do.

41:27
James Bledsoe
Right.

41:28
Owen Martin
Which, I mean, that's how HOAs are.

41:30
James Bledsoe
Yeah.

41:31
Owen Martin
They suck. Yeah. And I just. Yeah, it would be a lot of Some sort of. It would be a lot of involvement for a. Some sort of quorum of a neighborhood to be able to participate in that process.

41:47
James Bledsoe
The Midtown cac, they're still in existence, I mean, of their own accord right now, because they're not being funded by the city. Yeah, they still have a lot of people coming there. The Southeast CAC that I went to, at most, I think I saw 30 people. You know, that would vary from event to event depending on where it was held. A lot of people had to walk to where. Where it was for mine, because it was either at Barwell or it was off a pull road, the one that was off a pool road. A lot more people showed up, but it was a smaller space, unfortunately. I like that. I could have a police officer there telling me, hey, here's what's going on in your neighborhood. Here's what we're seeing here. Take these precautions.

42:30
James Bledsoe
I liked how Raleigh traffic would show up, say, hey, we're seeing a lot of traffic in this area. We're thinking about putting, say, a speed bump in this area. You know, here's this. But as far as making sure that the same people that kind of keep doing this, you can put in a measure in place by saying, hey, term limits.

42:50
Owen Martin
So it sounds like it was a really good way for maybe not the council, but certainly the city departments to interface with.

43:01
James Bledsoe
And you can have the same thing as the NC governor does where you can serve two terms, but you cannot. Cannot serve that third term in a row. Same thing with the CACs. You know, you can definitely have that in, say, your. Your covenant or whatever you want to call it. Your rules.

43:14
Owen Martin
Yeah.

43:15
James Bledsoe
And bring that back and, you know, get new people in there, some fresh blood. Say, hey, two terms, you can do whatever position you want, but after those two terms, you got to hang it up for, you know, one or. One or two terms. Let somebody else new come in there.

43:27
Owen Martin
Yeah. How would you like to see the dissolution of. Of CACs be handled? Or like, how do you want to go forward from what has happened?

43:44
Anne Franklin
Yeah, well, the city has hired a new person, and we have a new commission working on community engagement. It's going to take them a little while to work through their organizational issues. I'm hoping that we don't wait until all the. That comes along. Communication is a part. Is a huge part of that. And the city's communication systems, in my not so humble opinion, do not serve citizens as well as they can. So that. And citizens can be demanding. I get that. But I think we could start right away. They could be doing it now. I'd like to see more to upgrade our communication systems that way. When you then are talking with community groups about being advisory to a council or to help a city move forward, then you've at least got the tools in place so they can talk to each other.

44:43
Anne Franklin
It's going to have to be a combination of both virtual and in person. Our city has grown a lot, so mapping out how we could engage whole new groups of people is going to be pretty fundamental to it. We have a neighborhoods, a housing and neighborhoods department and they look after things that are going on, they look after housing. But I think we could do a lot more on the neighborhood communication side. So it needs uplift, it needs an upfit and needs some new realms of investment.

45:24
Joshua Bradley
Like, you know, a bodega on every corner has. I mean that's like getting all your groceries from the sea stores here, right?

45:31
Owen Martin
Yeah.

45:31
Joshua Bradley
I don't know if they're gotten a whole lot cheaper since I've been here, but that was a good way to blow your. They're not great climbing balance card.

45:39
Owen Martin
Right.

45:39
Joshua Bradley
And you don't get it. You don't get a large selection. And that's. That's why saying that having gas stations at every corner, you know, there's owning these commercial residential things to where you could run it out of your house now. But what we need is access to good, cheap, you know, healthy food in areas that are pretty vast food deserts like southeastern Raleigh is a pretty huge. And if we think that bodegas are gonna take up for the lack of like actual, you know, decent food, then people obviously haven't spent a lot of time in.

46:15
Owen Martin
Where do you. Would you incentivize more spaces like the. Like the urban gardens in Raleigh?

46:25
Joshua Bradley
Oh yeah. But I would make sure that they were available closer to the people that need it. Like right now, most of the urban gardens in Raleigh are in pretty. Not exclusively, but a lot of them are pretty bourgeois areas. But we need to encourage it in places that are. That are less so. And also I think the city should incentivize collectively run businesses. And I think that comes into food is they're trying to. They've been trying to start a food co op in southeast Raleigh. I think the city should definitely get on board with that. I think.

46:57
Owen Martin
How does the city do that?

47:00
Joshua Bradley
How does the city do that? If I were the city, what I would do is I would present a case to where. Where here's money. We're going to provide a space and land, we will put money into it and then do what we can to get, you know, to benefit local farmers and stuff. We've got the initial capital investment as the city, we run it, the people that are working there, once the capital expense is paid off, once we've paid off the building the stuff, then we turn it over to the workers. I mean, I think that solves two problem at once. You get people, you know, the fed and you get jobs and you get people fed and you get jobs and you know, and the city backs off.

47:44
Joshua Bradley
Like once we've got our money out of it, then we give it to the employees to run it as they should. And they should be running it all along.

47:51
Jonathan Melton
But I mean, they know what they're doing. They literally work there.

47:54
Joshua Bradley
Yeah, right. Like collectively owned businesses. If you're gonna do business, this is the way to go. Like, you know, because when it comes down to it, if you look at the very base level, socialism is worker control of the means of production, which is, you know, the value that things create. Value because the workers create them.

48:15
Owen Martin
Right, yeah.

48:17
Joshua Bradley
Like the investor class isn't out there producing anything. They're just, they're just taking, making the profits that somebody else did. Maybe they had an initial money investment, but when it comes down to all value and all things are created by the people that do the work to get it there. So right now we live in a society that is tilted much more towards the investor class and not to the working class. And you can't maintain a society.

48:42
Owen Martin
How will city council support uni gardens and other efforts to alleviate food deserts throughout Raleigh? Because on your website you mentioned community gardens and sort of farmer stands as ways to reach people that have traditionally been, have had a harder time accessing stuff, the food and produce that they provide.

49:09
Jonathan Melton
Yeah. So this is something I've really tried to lead on since I've been on council. I want to reduce car dependency and I want to put goods and services closer to people. And I also want to make it easier for folks to open businesses that provide goods and services, especially in areas that are lacking that are food deserts or that don't have the amenities worth that folks need. And for the community garden piece, we made it easier to have a community garden. We allowed on site produce sales. Now it wasn't allowed before in the city, I don't know why, but now you can sell your produce on site.

49:38
Jonathan Melton
And one thing I've been looking at is how can we make it easier for small Businesses to exist in neighborhoods and sort of break down these walls that were created with the exclusionary zoning to separate the city by uses with jobs over here, retail over here, housing over here. And so breaking down those walls. And we've sort of looked at it incrementally. So yes, we did the allowing produce sales at community gardens, we piloted farmers markets at city parks. Then we moved forward on what's called accessory commercial units. So kind of like an accessory dwelling unit where you can use a portion of your property either connected or separate for a rental. We are allowing folks to use a portion of their property, either separate or connected to do certain home based businesses. We also eliminate the old restrictions on live work.

50:23
Jonathan Melton
Before, if you wanted to do live work, you had to hire a lawyer, you had to go to the board of adjustments, you had to get a special use permit. Now it's a simple permit.

50:30
Owen Martin
What's live work?

50:31
Jonathan Melton
Live work is if you want to teach karate out of your garage, if you want to teach piano out of your house, or violin, if you want to cut hair, if you want to tailor clothes. It's all personal services. You used to have to not have customers and you would have to go through a special use permit which required you to hire a lawyer to go to the board of adjustments to notice your neighbors. And it basically was suppressing gig economy, I mean, quite frankly. And so we have put rules in place now where you can do that out of your house. And my hope is that if you want to get your hair cut and your neighbor cuts hair, you'll walk down the street and get your haircut. And that's one less car trip, you have to make one less vehicle mile traveled.

51:09
Jonathan Melton
The piece that we are still struggling with is the complete grocery store aspect because under North Carolina law, we cannot regulate what a store sells. And so the pie that is causing folks heartburn is if we allow all retail in all places, people say, well, someone's going to open a vape shop, someone's going to open a gun shop. And I quite frankly believe that to be a little bit fear mongering. I don't think the most lucrative businesses in the city are suddenly going to become vape shops and gun shops. And they're going to open in every neighborhood across the city. But I think until we can get some assistance from the General assembly on being able to say we want to legalize groceries, food in neighborhoods, that's going to continue to be a challenge. But for me, that is a second term priority.

51:57
Jonathan Melton
We got accessory commercial units Live work on gardens.

52:03
Owen Martin
For the working spaces of accessory dwelling units. You said that was for specific types of jobs and stuff.

52:12
Jonathan Melton
Home based business. Yeah, yeah.

52:13
Owen Martin
What are some of those.

52:14
Jonathan Melton
I was kind of already giving some of them out.

52:16
Joshua Bradley
Okay.

52:17
Owen Martin
There's a live work, so it's the.

52:20
Jonathan Melton
Same thing, but now it's allowing not only we made live work easier, but we're allowing live work in an accessory commercial unit.

52:26
Owen Martin
Okay.

52:26
Jonathan Melton
So it's basically like you could build your own structure on your property, which could be an ADU accessory dwelling unit if you let someone live in it. But if you're going to run your business out of it's called an accessory commercial unit, an acu. So that would be the dance teachers, the hairdresser, the I can't even. You bake a cake, guitar teachers, painters, things like that.

52:51
Owen Martin
Do you have any plans to address the Food Desert in East Raleigh?

52:55
James Bledsoe
That one. I would certainly like to get a private fund started to build a grocery store on that land. I mean, I live in southeast Raleigh. I've lived there since 2016. That's where I built my house is in southeast Raleigh because that was the cheapest place to live, the only place I could afford. I mean, I've been working for the state for the longest time. And when I first started working, I was making $31,000 a year. And after estate taxes, that's like 27% they take out. That's all I could afford. There are spots that are undeveloped. Unfortunately, there's a lot of places that are now restricted to develop grocery stores because the council said, hey, you cannot develop on this type of land anymore.

53:41
James Bledsoe
But also we need space to build those grocery stores because a lot of places where folks want it, there's already houses there. What are we going to, I mean, this is my honest question to people about this. What are you going to do? Tear down those houses to build a grocery store? That's where people live. That's where lower income folks live. We have to be really smart about where we place these things. The best way I see that we can handle that is, you know, public transit, you know, make it easier for people to ride, say the bus to the grocery store. And I'm glad that it's free and I want it to stay free so I can get people from those bus stops to say grocery store. But you know, where are we going to put these grocery stores?

54:23
James Bledsoe
If somebody has land available, hey, I will, you know, start a GoFundMe for you. We can do community events, whatever else to Help you finance a grocery store, you know, privately, or even if you want to get a chain in there, like say, another food line, you know, on that side of town. I will behind anybody that wants to do that 100%.

54:44
Owen Martin
I think it's a good start. How do you plan to address the food desert in Easter?

54:51
Joshua Bradley
All.

54:59
Anne Franklin
I'll have to be reminded about where the legislation is. But one time it's been illegal to sell produce from your own garden.

55:10
Owen Martin
So that's been rolled back.

55:14
Anne Franklin
It has been rolled back. Well, I'm encouraged to hear that because people growing their own food and then sharing it is a part of it. But then growing your own food and being able to sell some of it is also part of it. And having an exchange place, small markets where you can do that comfortably and inexpensively may be part of that. When we talk about food deserts, it's not just one thing. It's availability of grocery stores that have a wide range of choices. But it's also. The lack of places to eat well, to buy food that is really healthy for us has slipped away. Not just in southeast Raleigh, but really all over. You start looking at fast food diets and the things that people can pick up quickly. You're not necessarily looking at nutrition.

56:23
Anne Franklin
I add to that the fact that they've got. Now you go to a grocery store, a big grocery store, and it's full of everything in addition to food. It's got lawn chairs, it's got, you know, cameras, it's got TVs, it's got a thousand other things. So to me, it sort of dilutes the food choice experience. I don't know if the Raleigh can solve this, but we sure can support people who want to help in it. And there are some simple things like, you know, having cooking classes pretty routinely at our parks and having food, good healthy food available at events, having want to say, well, having vendors that offer food trucks is what I'm trying to say, that offer healthy food. So there are some things we can do.