Residents of a neighborhood in south Charlotte are suing to block a developer from building a triplex. It looks like it’s the first such lawsuit since new building regulations allowing duplexes and triplexes in most single-family neighborhoods took effect last year.
Tony Mecia of the Charlotte Ledger Business Newsletter joins me now for our segment BizWorthy.
Marshall Terry: So you report in the Ledger this week this in the Lansdowne neighborhood. Just what is the project in question? And what’s the argument residents make against it?
Tony Mecia: Developer Aspen City Homes bought a lot last year for $750,000 [and] wants to put three housing units on that property. Neighbors are opposed to that. They say they worry about the effect on traffic and they say that deed restrictions on neighborhood lots. prohibit any structures besides single-family homes, so they have filed suit to try to block that. I've reached out to the developer and the developer's attorney and did not hear back. But they say, in court documents, that they believe those deed restrictions are unenforceable because they expired a few decades ago.
Terry: Often times deeds are decades old and maybe only sporadically enforced. So are they enforceable here?
Mecia: Well, the courts gonna have to look at that. A lot of Charlotte neighborhoods, especially older neighborhoods, do have these deed restrictions that are decades old, that are supposed to run with the property, or maybe they expire after 30 years. The issue, without getting too technical, is a lot of times, if they are not passed along in that chain of title when that house is sold, they become unenforceable under state law. So it's really a question of: Did these deed restrictions in Lansdowne expire in 1989, as the developer said, or were they restated and renewed around that time as the residents are saying. So that's something the courts are going to have to look at.
Terry: What are other neighborhoods doing as duplexes and triplexes pop up?
Mecia: There are a number of neighborhoods looking at how to impose deed restrictions on a neighborhood or reimpose them, if they were there and had previously expired. It's a little bit under the radar. Neighborhoods often don't like to signal to developers that their neighborhood might be right to build triplexes in. You have that going on. At the same time, you have a couple of other neighborhoods — you have Myers Park and Eastover, we've reported, that have hired a lobbyist to try to change state law, to try to reimpose some of these deed restrictions. If there are deed restrictions on a house that prohibit duplexes and triplexes, that sort of supersedes the city's new development rules, in a sort of a way to prevent some of these higher density developments going into neighborhoods.
Terry: Let’s move on now to a story we talked about last week. And that is the higher tax bill people likely face if they’ve been placing online sports bets in North Carolina now that it’s legal. You report the governor is stepping in because of your story. How so?
Mecia: Well, Governor Roy Cooper this week said on X [that] legislators should look at this problem of the taxation of gambling winnings. We reported last week that under North Carolina taxation laws, if you win a bet on sports wagering, you will pay taxes on those winnings. If you lose a bet, you cannot deduct those losses. So what that means is that, over the course of a year, you could wind up losing money on gambling but still pay taxes on the money that you did win. Governor Cooper said on social media that he would like to see the legislature fix that. The legislature in Raleigh is now back in session. They're expected to take up budget issues. It's unclear exactly what they're gonna do on gambling.
Terry: Finally with summer rapidly approaching, many high school and college students are thinking about internships. And the Ledger this week reported it’s a good year for internships. Why is that?
Mecia: Yes, surveys are showing that more employers are open to having internships of high school students and college students. A lot of these have gone virtual. I think that's an appeal to companies. You're able to get maybe a wider pool of people, who can do these sort of internships online, or at least in a hybrid type of way. And then also I think there's the labor market is still pretty tight. You always hear about employers having a hard time hiring full-time workers, so maybe getting some interns in there can kind of help ease that burden a little bit.
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