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AHAB Regular Monthly Meeting, Agenda and

Orange County · Affordable Housing Advisory Board
Tuesday, May 13, 2025

Advisory board meeting Homelessness and shelterHousing and affordabilityBonds and debtGrants and outside funding

Agenda document Minutes Watch Meeting recap

What was decided

  1. Approved IIApproval of minutes Approved

Read from the agenda's recorded outcomes. Where the board published minutes, those are the record — this is a pointer to them.

What's on this agenda

Orange County's Affordable Housing Advisory Board spent an hour on 13 May 2025 with the developers who apply for its capital and bond money, asking what the county's process is like from their side. Five organisations came: EmPOWERment, CASA, Pee Wee Homes, Habitat for Humanity and the Community Empowerment Fund.

Summarized from the published agenda. Read the agenda itself before acting on it.

Meeting recap

What happened, drawn from the records published after the meeting. Minutes

Land and the calendar came up from nearly everyone. EmPOWERment, which holds about 70 units, said bond funds are much easier to reach than HOME funds because both processes run annually and neither can move fast enough to take an acquisition opportunity, and put the county's unmet need at 1,200 units a year, concentrated between 30 and 60 percent of area median income. Its PEACH project of ten units took five years. CASA said applying for bond money was smooth and staff responsive, but that land and zoning are harder here than in Wake County, and that the low-income housing tax credit tie-breaker favours Chapel Hill over Hillsborough. Pee Wee Homes said finding land is extremely difficult and that three houses it is finishing in Carrboro were possible only because the county subsidised more than half the cost and Carrboro supplied the land.

Habitat for Humanity said its emphasis is shifting to preservation, with a repair budget aimed at $500,000, and that bond-funded work now costs about four times what it did. It runs about a six-month waiting list and aims at 40 to 50 repairs a year. UNC has identified roughly $2 million of repair need across about 195 households that have applied, against a cap of $60,000 a house, and many need more than that.

On the county's own process, developers said the scoring rubric disadvantages smaller projects, that submitting several applications repeats the same information, that large files by email do not work and quarterly reporting should go through a portal, and that prequalifying applicants would save everyone the full process. Members also raised churches with land who do not know how to reach county money, mobile home parks that fall outside bond funding rules, and the fact that the county has one shelter for men and one for women.

Staff reported that the draft consolidated plan puts preservation and homelessness services first, with homeownership assistance a distant third, and that they are recommending an increase to the Long Time Homeowner Assistance programme to meet the tax increases.

How the votes went

Two votes, both carried: the previous minutes and adjournment.

From the published minutes.

Speaking at this meeting

Orange County's own rules for public comment — check them before you rely on anything here.

Agenda items (4)

Procedural · 1Minutes approval · 1Staff or committee report · 1Discussion item · 1
  1. I Call to Order
    Procedural
  2. II Approval of minutes
    Minutes approval
    Approved
  3. III Updates
    Staff or committee report Grants and outside fundingHomelessness and shelterHousing and affordability
    The draft consolidated plan puts preservation and homelessness services ahead of homeownership assistance. The annual action plan and five-year plan go to the commissioners before the June recess. Staff are recommending more money for the Long Time Homeowner Assistance programme because of tax increases.
  4. IV Meet with CIP/Bond applicants to discuss Scoring Matrix
    Discussion item Bonds and debtHomelessness and shelterHousing and affordability
    Five affordable housing developers described what applying for county money is like: annual cycles that cannot match acquisition timing, a scoring rubric that disadvantages small projects, applications and quarterly reports handled by email rather than a portal, and land and zoning as the binding constraint. They asked for pipeline coordination with the towns so projects do not cancel each other out in tax credit scoring.

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