Our Community’s housing landscape carries with it a painful history of red lining, racial covenants, as well as both du jour and de facto segregation. By the same token, the real estate and building industry is uniquely positioned to take a lead in breaking down the enduring binds of institutional racism and inequity that seem to permeate the housing prospectus. Our Community’s housing landscape carries with it a painful history of red lining, racial covenants, as well as both du jour and de facto segregation. By the same token, the real estate and building industry is uniquely positioned to take a lead in breaking down the enduring binds of institutional racism and inequity that seem to permeate the housing prospectus.
Housing, no matter it’s form, is not racist, in and of itself. However, housing has been used as a tool to discriminate. Let us be mindful of this past and reject any similar transgressions.

What we support:

Canopy Realtor® Association (Canopy), through our government affairs arm, the Real Estate and Building Industry Coalition (REBIC), and our charitable work through the Canopy Housing Foundation, support initiatives and programs to ensure that an adequate and sustainable supply of housing exists for residents at all income levels throughout our community.

Canopy supports public policies that promote incentive-based, free-market solutions to increase the supply of affordable housing. Canopy also supports equitable funding mechanisms to ensure that taxpayers have a stake in the provision of public subsidies for their neighbors most in need of housing assistance.

Realtors® recognize that there is no single solution for affordable housing, and that it cannot be solved by the private sector alone, but rather must be addressed through the use of public-private partnerships.

As such, we support:

• Increasing the city housing bond referendum so we can effectively meet community needs for subsidized, affordable housing.
• The city’s Housing Charlotte Framework to expand and improve the supply of affordable housing by building new affordable housing, preserving existing affordable housing, and supporting family-self-sufficiency initiatives.
• Working with the General Assembly to expand local authorization for tax incentive tools including, but not limited to: Property Tax Abatement, Tax-Increment Financing and Tax-Increment Grants.
• Exploring opportunities to reduce state and local regulatory barriers that add costs to construction and limit the ability of developers to produce affordable housing.
• Considering changes to local zoning and permitting that increase the incentives for the construction of affordable housing, including density bonuses and possibly a by-right Affordable Housing Zoning Overlay.
• Considering the sale of surplus public (city-owned) land or property as a way to off-set costs and encourage the construction of affordable housing developments.
• Dedicating a portion of public funding to the acquisition and rehabilitation of older, dilapidated properties that can be brought into compliance with building code and returned to the market as renovated affordable housing.

We oppose efforts at the local or state levels to mandate construction of housing for residents at specific income levels, or to artificially restrict home prices to ensure continued affordability.

We believe these initiatives not only violate North Carolina law, but also burden tenants or purchasers of new housing with exclusive responsibility of providing for the affordable housing needs of the broader community.

Realtors® care about addressing the entire continuum from homelessness to homeownership. We believe one of our most important roles as Realtors® is to raise awareness and funding for unmet housing needs in our community.

We achieve this through our Canopy Housing Foundation’s many programs and services that support initiatives directly addressing the issue of safe, sustainable and affordable housing.