Workforce Housing

Submitted by Rodger on 11 August 2009 - 7:46pm

Building affordably priced housing for people that provide important quality-of-life services is not a feel-good issue any longer. For example, this link (http://www.thompsondorfman.com/mediacenter.cfm?ID=53) talks about the fact that a school district in the Bay Area (N. Calif.) has to build teacher housing to avoid facing 40% attrition rates each year.

Clearly, Raleigh still has a way to go, but prices of homes inside the beltline are already pretty much out of range for someone earning, say, $40K per year.

Beyond attrition and staffing problems there's also the issue of traffic congestion and pollution. The farther we force people to live from their workplaces, the worse the commuting patterns we create. Thus, I think it's important we begin building incentives to ensure workforce housing for teachers, nurses, cops, firefighters, etc. will happen sooner rather than later.

Rodger