Below, a letter reprinted from one of Triangle Blog Blog’s contributors to the Chapel Hill Town Council.

Dear Town Council Members,

I would like to thank you, and your predecessors, for allowing my home to be built in the Blue Hill district. On a graduate student stipend, I am able to live within a ten minute walk of multiple grocery stores, several doctors, a park, and a beautiful greenway. I drive less often here than I did when I lived in downtown Durham. This is a wonderful community.

I have been surprised to see my home portrayed as an unaffordable dystopia by some Chapel Hillians. I can live in Blue Hill on a graduate student stipend and young families with children live in my apartment building. However, there is not one single family home in Chapel Hill affordable to a family that earns the median household income for Orange County. It is strange that people living in single family houses worth hundreds of thousands of dollars criticize my home in Blue Hill for being expensive.

I would also like to bring to your attention anti-renter prejudice among some opponents of new housing. I have been told that because I live in a Blue Hill apartment, I must be wealthy, my neighbors are elitist, and that I should not live in Chapel Hill at all. We renters are as much members of the Chapel Hill community as homeowners. We are also poorer and more vulnerable to housing shortages. When you are considering whether new housing should be built, please be cognizant of this bias against people who don’t own their homes.

Sincerely,

Andrew Kane

In the last municipal election cycle, we helped increase turnout by over 20 percent. We're all volunteers who care deeply about Chapel Hill and Carrboro, and we're working to make Chapel Hill and Carrboro more vibrant, accessible, fun, and sustainable.  Please consider a small donation to help us keep our digital lights on, host events, and hire students to do data deep-dives.

Andrew Kane is a PhD candidate in Financial Economics at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business. His interests are in asset pricing, nominal rigidities, and macro-finance.