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https://www.transylvaniatimes.com/news/affordable-housing-to-be-lost-due-to-road-project/article_6895d8b2-9771-11ee-8219-03ba542c1fee.html Below is the article linked here, please take a read and reach out to your local officials to try to help make affordable housing a priority again.
The cost of progress can be measured in many different ways. The Wilson Road project, designed to increase safety along the 3.6-mile, two-lane route which connects US-276 and Old Hendersonville Highway in Transylvania County, will cost $66.4 million. Among the impacts, the N.C. Department of Transportation project will relocate up to 29 residential units and four businesses and displace about 60 people currently living in affordable rental homes.
The NCDOT has been planning the project since roughly 2017 with contractor bids set to start November 2024; construction to begin in early-2025 and completion expected to take between two and four years.
The project will raise the road out of the 50-year flood zone, reroute traffic over a newly constructed bridge crossing the French Broad River, widen the road and create a roundabout intersection where the current Blythe Trailer Park is located in Pisgah Forest. Also impacted will be the Exxon gas station and the vacant green building across the street (1321 Ecusta Road), an Air BnB rental and Charlie’s welding machine shop.
‘DEVASTATING’
“Wiping out what’s barely there is devastating,” said Amanda, 43, who works at Brevard’s Comfort Inn & Suites and lives in the Laurelwood apartments on Wilson Road with her three daughters. For three years she has rented a two-bedroom, one-bathroom unit with her 15-year-old twins and her 19-year-old daughter who works as a waitress and rents the apartment next door with her own two children.
“Those apartments are everything to us right now,” she said. “To take away those apartments just does not seem fair to the community to take something that’s such a good resource for us.”
About 30 people live in the Laurelwood apartments, said Duke Parrish, of Norma Clayton Realty which manages the apartments. “We got retirees, we got people who deliver mail, we got waitresses, we’ve got nurses, students, just a good diversity of people there,” he said.
The 12 units each have two bedrooms and one bathroom and rent costs between $1,000-$1,100 a month.
“(NCDOT) said they’re going to take care of them; they have a special fund to house them, but the problem is that there’s no housing around here,” said Parrish. “We don’t have any place to put them.”
Parrish also manages the Blythe Trailer Park which includes another 30 people.
Pisgah Forest’s Thomas Blythe, owner of Blythe Trailer Park, said an appraiser came out to his property four weeks ago but no prices or dates have been provided yet for the government to acquire his property through eminent domain.
Eminent domain allows the government to take private property from owners and convert it into public use, and pay a just compensation to owners, as stipulated in the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.
“The appraisal company that (NCDOT’s) using is not appraising the properties fairly; they’re doing it for the state,” said Blythe. “They didn’t take into account my rental income.”
His property contains one trailer lot which rents for $175 per month and eight trailers and a small apartment which rent for between $325-$750 per month.
“Now it’s coming back to bite me because I’ve had the rent down low,” Blythe said. “So if they go by the rental value, then that’s going to hurt me.”
“I’m going be losing my income but they’re losing their homes,” he added.
Three families have lived at the park since he purchased it more than 25 years ago. One family includes two men, Blythe said, who walk to and from work everyday to Transylvania Vocational Services.
“Housing in general in Transylvania County is not for working people anymore,” he said. “More places — like my trailer park and Laurelwood — they’re disappearing and I don’t know where all these people are going to go. I really don’t.”
‘UNINTENDED
CONSEQUENCES’
Stephen and Judy Perras live in Atlanta and work as real estate agents.
They purchased the 12-unit Laurelwood apartment complex in 2016 for rental income and as an investment for retirement. They had been told a couple of years ago some of their property close to the road as part of the Wilson Road project would be acquired by NCDOT. It included the apartment complex’s septic tank.
“We received a verbal reassurance that the NCDOT and city of Brevard would collaborate in extending public sewer to our property and others in the same situation along Wilson Road,” said Judy and Stephen in an email.
“This was good news for us and our tenants given the lack of affordable housing in Brevard,” they said. “However, after the election of 2022 all of that changed. The city of Brevard decided to use those funds for something else.”
Stephen said DOT is “going to take that front part of the property and because there’s no other place to put septic on the property or the neighboring properties and since nobody’s willing to run sewer lines out there, DOT’s going to take the property.”
“(DOT) is doing their job, but in a way that doesn’t seem to be considering anything other than the road, i.e. not the people involved,” Judy said.
“Our main concern, even if they buy the property and relocate the tenants, is there’s just no housing available for these tenants to move into,” Stephen said.
While appraisers have been to the property and tenants have received notification of needing to move, no dates or prices have yet been presented.
“We have spent a lot of money doing upgrades there and this is, for us, this is a big chunk of our retirement package,” said Stephen. “As well as being concerned about the tenants, if they start relocating the tenants and we’re losing rent before they buy the place, then everybody’s kind of getting the short end of the stick.”
Brevard City Manager Wilson Hooper said due to timing and cost the city of Brevard could not build septic lines to the apartments. He said he also engaged Transylvania County and Land of Sky Regional Council to evaluate grant opportunities but none were obtained for the project.
“Our early estimates were that it would be $10 million,” said Hooper. “The fact that the ground was about to be dug up during the Wilson Road widening meant that the cost came down to ‘only’ around $5 million. DOT agreed to contribute half of that cost if we could find $2.5 million by fall of this year. But even at that lowered cost, there was no way the city could afford to underwrite the cost of a project bringing on so few new rate payers on our own.”
Mayor Maureen Copelof agreed.
“As much as I would like to add extending the sewer line along Wilson Road as one of our initiatives, the price tag of $2.5 million is simply beyond the ability of the city to fund,” she said.
To put that amount of funding into perspective, Copelof said, two cents of the property tax increase this year was dedicated specifically to the city’s Housing Fund.
“That two-cent tax increase results in just $250,000 a year,” she said. “My heart goes out to those families whose housing will be affected by the DOT road construction. I know DOT has an extensive dislocation program to help these families financially as they look for new housing. I hope that DOT assistance somewhat offsets the disruption and stress caused to our community members impacted by this road project.”
DOT PLAN
DOT research published in 2021 found vehicular crashes were higher on Wilson Road than the statewide crash rate for similar areas.
Annual average traffic ranged from 2,500 to 4,000 vehicles per day and an analysis of crash patterns found 59 crashes were reported during the five-year period between May 1, 2013 and April 30, 2018.
The study found crash types were primarily fixed-object crashes, followed by left-turn different roadway crashes and overturn or rollover crashes. There were no fatal crashes identified and one severe injury crash was reported. No crashes involving pedestrians and one crash involving a bicyclist were recorded.
There are approximately 43 residential driveways and 18 business entrances along Wilson Road. By increasing the two travel lanes’ width from 9 feet to 12 feet and building an 8-foot shoulder on either side (4-foot paved and 4-foot grass) some adjacent private property was acquired through eminent domain.
Right of way costs like the money used to pay property owners for their land and assist tenants relocating were estimated at $16.4. million and utilities at $1.2 million, according the NCDOT. Tenants will be given a minimum of 90 days notice when an offer is made to the property owners, said David Uchiyama with the NCDOT.
“NCDOT right-of-way agents are attempting to contact tenants to offer relocation assistance which may include covering the difference of current rent and future rent,” Uchiyama said.
General relocation information is available online. It provides a number of services tenants will be applicable for including financial assistance with moving costs and information on receiving up to 42 months of the cost difference between the former and new rent.
For more information, those impacted by the Wilson Road project can contact the Right of Way Office, located at 1594 E. Main St. in Sylva, by calling (828) 586-4040. Visit www.ncdot.gov/projects/documents/right-of-way-residential-english.pdf for an online information packet.
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