Beyond reach: Charlotte’s affordable housing crisis

HERBERT L. WHITE | THE CHARLOTTE POST

Gentrification of formerly working class Black neighborhoods like Biddleville in west Charlotte has made affordable housing more difficult in the city’s urban core.

Affordable housing can’t keep pace with Charlotte’s growth. 

The Charlotte Post Foundation will host a  Jan. 27 virtual forum on the subject with panelists Nadia Anderson, an urban design professor at UNC Charlotte, Erin Barbee, chief strategy officer at DreamKey Partners and Jeff Elam, manager at Matthews Habitat for Humanity. The webinar will start at 6 p.m. and registration is required. 

Affordability is a barrier to working-class and lower income families. Charlotte has a shortage of more than 40,000 units that the lowest-income households can afford as the median home price rose to $443,850 last year. 
To afford a median-priced home, a Charlotte household needs an income of $138,000, while the actual median household income is roughly $80,000.

“There’s no silver bullet,” Anderson said. “Nothing’s going to solve [the issue alone] but there are some examples of other things that have worked to some degree in different places. This is a crisis everywhere. A lot of places don’t have markets that are growing like ours, but starting to look at a wider kind of spectrum of examples wouldn't be the worst idea.”

Affordability is increasingly hard to find in Charlotte, with only 2% of houses sold for under $150,000 in 2024, and about 19% sold for under $300,000. Homeownership remains elusive for Black people locally. In Mecklenburg County, the rate is 43% compared to 68% for white households. The North Carolina rate is 47% for Black households compared to 75% for their white peers.

Nationally, the Black homeownership rate is 45.7%, compared to 74.3% for their white peers. The peak Black ownership rate was 49% in 2004.

“We're boots on the ground here at Habitat, and over the last seven years, our home prices have gone from $160,000 to over $350,000 so what we’ve seen is the affordability gap that your average borrower, who we could help in the past, you can no longer assist them at this point,” Elam said. “There’s a major issue with affordability and income not keeping up with home prices.”

Starter homes have become more difficult to find, with homes priced under $150,000 representing only 1.88% of the market in 2025. Also, low-cost rentals, generally defined as under $800 a month – make up 8% of Mecklenburg County’s inventory. 

In 2011, they made up 45% of inventory. As a result, 51% of renters in the region are considered cost burdened because they spend more than 30% of their gross income on housing.

Population growth, rising prices and public policy all have an impact on affordability.

An estimated 117 people move to Charlotte daily, which expands pressure on demand. With more than 471,000 people moving to the region from 2014-23, including 49,000 from 2022-23 – roughly the population of Huntersville – workforce housing isn’t keeping up in terms of units or affordability, according to the State of Housing 2024 Report published by UNC Charlotte researchers. That growth paired with a shortage of available housing and high interest rates means a shortfall of housing that low- and moderate-income people can afford.

Rapid development in working-class communities, which has gentrified and raised property values in historically Black neighborhoods in the city’s urban, has cut into affordable housing stock as well. Another element is the presence of corporate landlords buying up older homes and raising rental rates.

Policy also plays a role. State law limits municipalities’ ability to implement potential solutions like inclusionary zoning or barring source of income bias, which pushes affordable housing beyond working. 

Among possible solutions is Charlotte’s commitment last year to a program that supports accessory dwellings, or housing separate from a single-family home on a parcel.

“There are a lot of ways to increase density,” Anderson said. “The accessory dwelling unit is … now possible, I think, in almost all neighborhoods in Charlotte, unless you're in an HOA [community], which is a large number of neighborhoods to add an accessory dwelling unit that can be essentially a small rental. And the city does have some programs.”