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It’s hard not to feel bad for everyone involved in the story behind the headline “Town battles owners over ‘death trap’ ” on the front page in the June 2 edition of the Cherokee Scout. The article reinforces one of the most important issues facing Cherokee County in 2021 and beyond – a lack of affordable housing. Consider:
- It’s hard not to feel bad for the owners of the property in the 900 block of Main Street in downtown Andrews. They bought the property to serve as the office for their construction business, which unfortunately declined as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. With bills to pay, you can’t blame them for wanting to put their property to work for them, even if they might have gone about doing it the wrong way.
- It’s hard not to feel bad for the people who live there. Paying $135 per week to rent one room with thin walls, with only one bathroom and sink to share with a few others and no kitchen, doesn’t sound like an ideal situation for anyone. Yet, you can’t blame them for taking what they could get during this tough time.
- It’s hard not to feel bad for town officials. Andrews has zoning ordinances that must be followed if officials expect other businesses zoned for commercial use to follow suit. While making sure this building is up to code and has had a proper residential fire inspection are vital to public safety, possibly forcing four low-income families to find another place to stay is not what anyone wants to do.
It’s great to have folks living here with $450,000 homes overlooking a lake, but according to the U.S. Census, average working folks in the county only make an annual median income of about $29,000. Even households with two people working at that pay rate can struggle to pay the mortgage on a $200,000 home, which qualifies as cheap in the post-COVID real estate boom. And you may need to call a friend just to find a rental within a reasonable price range.
Thankfully, some local developers are working on subdivisions with smaller, more affordable homes, but it’s not nearly enough to meet the growing demand, as there are hundreds of jobs local businesses and industry can’t fill in part because people can’t find a place to live here. Officials say it’s difficult to get contractors to invest in building smaller homes in western North Carolina when larger homes are much more profitable, plus north Georgia is a higher-priced and more builder-friendly market.
One of the reasons why I have served on the Four Square Community Action Board of Directors for the last several years is because it’s one of the few government-funded agencies that works to address the affordable housing shortage. Yet, there’s only so much Four Square can do with limited resources, and much more remains to be done.
Two ideas shared with me in the last month that make a lot of sense involve converting old hotels/motels and school buildings into affordable apartments.
The Mountain Vista Inn located in downtown Murphy would seem to be an ideal place to remodel into such a thing if the sales price is ever right. And if Cherokee County consolidates several schools over the next decade – and we already know of four high school campuses scheduled to fall in this category – that could be an opportunity for county officials to incentivize a housing solution by offering those properties to contractors at little to no cost if they promise to build what we need the most.
Like every other problem facing our area, there is no magic federal wand available to solve the affordable housing shortage. A partnership of local government backing and private investment is going to be key if we want to start growing again in a positive direction.
David Brown is publisher & editor of the Cherokee Scout. You can reach him by phone, 837-5122; or email, dbrown@cherokeescout.com.