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If you thought Charlotte’s battles over zoning and housing rules were over, think again: “Exclusionary zoning” reared its head again this week at a City Council committee meeting, the latest in an ongoing fight about how Charlotte should grow and who should be allowed, or able, to live where.
Although the new zoning and development rules Charlotte City Council approved last year went into effect June 1 — allowing denser and more mixed-use developments in more places, as well as streamlining the confusing thicket of development rules that sprang up over the decades — many of the details remain to be worked out. Among the most contentious fights during the unified development ordinance (UDO) debate was whether to allow duplexes and triplexes in all neighborhoods.
Advocates of this policy pointed to the fact that in Charlotte, about 84% of the city’s residential land area is zoned for single-family-only housing. Single-family homes by definition take up more land (in part thanks to minimum lot sizes and other requirements), and are often more expensive than duplexes, triplexes, quadplexes and townhouses. UDO supporters like council member Braxton Winston said allowing only single-family houses in big parts of our city, while forcing apartments and all other housing types to cluster in designated areas, is one reason Charlotte ended up looking like this:
Opponents — who include several Black council members — said the city should preserve existing single-family neighborhoods, and that allowing denser developments in the middle of single-family subdivisions is a bad idea. Council member Victoria Watlington said the new policy would expose fast-gentrifying neighborhoods to even more development pressure, speeding up displacement.
Ultimately, the UDO won approval in a 6-4 vote, including the duplex and triplex rules. But there’s still unease around the idea of denser development, even as city planning staff work to implement the nitty-gritty details of new zoning districts covering more than 310 square miles.
On Monday, Charlotte Planning Director Alyson Craig said the city is considering new rules that would forbid new neighborhoods composed entirely of duplexes and triplexes in suburban areas. Instead, they would have to include a minimum of 30% single-family houses.
“Even the 70-30 split is a form of exclusionary zoning,” said Winston. “It's an arbitrary and capricious government regulation.”
The UDO was never quite as expansive or permissive about denser housing as the debate made it seem. The city now allows neighborhoods to apply for “character overlay” districts that would preserve their existing form and potentially block new duplexes and triplexes. Neighborhoods with HOAs and deed restrictions aren’t impacted by the new rules. And neighborhoods like Elizabeth are debating whether to pursue historic designation, with more rules on development.
Winston said these policies — some might call them loopholes — risk perpetuating residential segregation, a policy that’s no longer explicitly enforced through redlining and racist deed restrictions but still shapes our city.
Craig said she understands Winston’s concern, and that the city’s goal is to provide people with a range of housing options in existing neighborhoods. That could help people beyond issues of race and affordability.
“I think about my mom, and she lives in a neighborhood that she's lived in her entire, you know, married life, and at some point, I think she probably wants to move into something that's smaller,” said Craig. “But there's nothing else in her community right there to move into. So she would have to leave.”
Council member Ed Driggs said there’s inherent conflict in any regulatory process, including housing.
“The whole regulation process is a kind of ongoing tension between market forces and us trying to avoid things that we don't think are appropriate,” he said. And Driggs said it’s the city’s job to avoid letting development run amok in established neighborhoods.
City planning staff will study the issue and report back, Craig said.
There have been numerous studies in recent decades connecting strict zoning laws to residential racial segregation. It’s an issue that’s gotten even more attention since the hugely influential 2017 publication of The Color of Law, which highlighted the history and ongoing effect of racist housing policies.
But what the ongoing debates show is that reversing the impact of those policies won’t be fast, simple or straightforward. Opponents of duplexes and triplexes point out that much of the new housing built in this model consists of “duets” (they’re always duets when they’re fancier) in neighborhoods like Dilworth that can fetch $1 million. Retrofitting single-family neighborhoods that took decades to build will also take decades, and face plenty of opposition. A new council (we’ll have one this fall — and Winston is departing) could always amend the rules further.
And there’s no guarantee that allowing denser housing will cure the problems of unaffordable housing and racial segregation we deal with in Charlotte.
The debate also illustrates something else I’ve always found fascinating: The way housing policy, at a local level, can scramble political dividing lines and mix up the red-blue, black-white divides we’ve gotten so used to. Here was Winston, a Democrat and one of the most liberal members of Charlotte City Council, arguing for a free market solution, to remove the yoke of burdensome regulation and let builders build whatever the market wants.
“It seems very arbitrary for us to tell people the type of housing they can and can’t have,” said Winston. To paraphrase Winston: If a developer wants to build a new neighborhood that’s made up of all duplexes and triplexes, who is the City Council to stop them?
And there was Driggs, a Republican, arguing that the government needs to step in and restrain business from its excesses.
“Mr. Winston. I hope you appreciate the irony of you arguing the merits of free enterprise and me pointing out why it (regulation) is necessary,” said Driggs.
