The trouble low-income families have in finding affordable housing in Chapel Hill is a natural outcome of current town policy, writes Bjørn Pedersen in a letter published in The Daily Tar Heel today.
The policy limits development in the majority of the town to low-density construction of single-family homes, Pedersen said, often with additional restrictions that further limit the living area available in those residences.
“These sorts of legal limits prevent the supply of housing from rising to meet the demand for it, and the least fortunate among us pay the price,” he said. “Before the government considers market interventions to make housing affordable, it should make market solutions legal.”
Pedersen, a physics major at UNC-Chapel Hill, is an at-large member of the Libertarian Party of North Carolina executive committee.
