G20 spotlight reveals NC’s housing barriers

This week, international G20 leaders met in Asheville, North Carolina, to discuss high-level policy and geopolitics. The meetings come as we near the two-year anniversary of Hurricane Helene. Yet just a few miles away, the region remains more than 5,000 housing units short of putting a roof over every Helene victim’s head.

That is according to a handy dashboard from the Office of the State Auditor, which also reports that $5.1 billion has been spent on Helene recovery so far, with 347 projects completed.

Helene exposed an existing housing shortage in North Carolina that runs deeper than natural disasters. Recovery policy should rebuild what was lost while reducing the regulatory barriers that helped make housing scarce and expensive before the storm. This week, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent made that point; government creates the conditions that allows the private sector to meet community needs.

If state and local leaders want mountain communities to remain viable for working families, recovery efforts should include removing zoning, permitting, and land-use barriers that make it unnecessarily difficult for the private sector to replace and expand the state’s housing supply.

In July, nearly two years after the 2024 storm, Gov. Josh Stein highlighted Renew NC’srebuilding efforts in Asheville. At that point, Renew NC reported 89 single-family homes completed, 71 under construction, and more than 390 applicants in preconstruction. Stein said Renew NC and volunteer partners together had repaired or rebuilt more than 1,000 homes.

Part of Helene recovery has included government-run projects aimed at adding housing rather than simply replacing individual damaged homes. Renew NC has made $70 million available for multifamily construction and repair. The state is also prescreening applicants for a $53.38 million Workforce Housing for Ownership Program intended to keep workers in western North Carolina.

State officials are acknowledging that western North Carolina did not have enough housing before the hurricane struck. A statewide housing needs assessment conducted by the NC Chamber of Commerce estimates that North Carolina faces a five-year inventory gap of 764,478 homes. However, more government programs are not the answer. Instead, we should focus on cutting red tape and letting the free market work.

North Carolina’s residential building code manual is more than 400 pages. The average wait for a builder to obtain government permission to construct an apartment building is more than 18 months. In growing cities like Raleigh, downzoning and restrictive land-use policies enacted since 2019 have cut housing availability by 20%.

Add permitting delays, minimum lot requirements, parking mandates, and other regulations, and supply is constrained, costs rise, and the cost-of-living benefits North Carolina has enjoyed in economic development evaporate.

Public dollars can repair storm damage. They cannot sustainably compensate for a housing market in which government makes new construction unnecessarily difficult or expensive.

This year’s Senate Bill 445, passed by the Republican-led legislature and signed by the Democratic governor, is an example of legislation that could chip away at our behemoth of regulations. The new law reduces some local zoning restrictions involving accessory dwelling units and the residential redevelopment of commercially zoned property. Attention to the real problem in housing, rather than the creation of new programs, is a step in the right direction.

As we approach the anniversary of Helene, remember the impact of housing on a community’s ability to survive a crisis. A teacher, nurse, police officer, contractor, or restaurant worker who loses housing does not necessarily wait indefinitely for the market to recover. That worker may move to Charlotte, the Triad, Tennessee, or elsewhere.

Free-market housing policy is part of economic recovery and survival, not merely social policy.

The measure of success in Helene recovery is not how many hundreds or thousands of units the government can replace or subsidize. It should be whether we create a functioning private market through good policy. A strong housing industry can produce homes year after year, if government permits it to respond to demand.

Donna King serves as editor in chief for the Carolina Journal and Executive Vice President of the John Locke Foundation