(Sent to Raleigh City Council)

I urge you to support Z-92-22, the New Bern Avenue TOD overlay mapping.

As a student at Enloe High School in 1996 (photograph at right), I gained some unpopularity for suggesting that students ought not to complain about parking and press for a costly parking garage, because other options existed — i.e., the city bus. 30 years later, a faster and better city bus could be an option for more residents, but only if City Council lets people live nearby.

In short, this is a vote on whether or not Raleigh transit succeeds. Transit succeeds when it has a mass of people to transport, and without TOD this BRT will fail, just like the many other transit plans that Raleigh has drawn up over my lifetime.

In a 2016 referendum, 262,634 Wake County voters said yes to this specific Bus Rapid Transit line, obliging the city of Raleigh to create a mass transit system — not just to deliver the transit project, but also to ensure its success by making it useful for a mass of people. The federal government, which is funding half of this project, is closely evaluating whether federal taxpayers’ monies are well-spent in places whose zoning laws truly welcome transit. The federal government has made it amply clear that it has learned the lessons of places like Los Angeles and Denver (as amply reported in NPR’s series “Ghost Train”) which wasted billions in federal funds on building empty new transit lines in locations that lacked a mass of residents and businesses.

Raleigh’s failure to federal transit funding in the past was entirely because our land use plans have not supported transit. This has been the story since I was a child, and now I’m middle-aged. You finally have a golden chance to make transit work in Raleigh by passing Z-92-22.

Most of the fearmongering around this rezoning has centered on displacement. TOD overlay zoning is the only Inclusionary Zoning tool that Raleigh has at its disposal, and therefore voting FOR this rezoning is a vote to bring inclusionary zoning here. This rezoning will focus more development on under-used commercial land and large-lot houses, reducing the pressure for flippers who are already displacing residents from nearby neighborhoods.

As Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says, “the reason why people are on the streets isn’t just some elusive housing or market phenomenon. It’s because we’ve chosen not to build.” The voters of the city of Raleigh have risen to the challenge by approving funding for affordable housing, but now we need places to put it – and Z-92-22 does just that. The city has invested mightily to prepare by buying affordable housing sites within this overlay district.

Zoning for housing is the progressive thing to do. Data For Progress analyzed every 2020 presidential platform and found that “every major Democratic candidate for president endorsed an explicitly pro-housing platform, calling for an end to exclusionary zoning,” while many Republican leaders have attacked Missing Middle zoning reforms using thinly veiled racist language. In his final act in Congress, the Triangle’s own David Price passed the Yes In My Back Yard Act grant program as part of the 2023 federal budget.

A “no” vote on Z-92-22 is not a vote for some magical, supernatural, and completely nonexistent perfection that might exist in the future. Instead, a “no” vote on Z-92-22 is a vote to perpetuate an unjust, unsustainable status quo of cars and sprawl: for bulldozing thousands more acres in Wendell, more deadly car crashes on the Beltline, more carbon pollution to drown our precious beaches, to perpetuate the exclusionary covenants that banned both people of color and renters from Longview Gardens.

There has been enough study and delay; the Equitable Transit-Oriented Development Guidebook recommending this rezoning was issued in July 2020, almost three years ago. Now is the time for action.

I thank you for your attention. I look forward to further working with the City of Raleigh to advance our shared vision of a greater Raleigh.