Wake County presents preliminary 'Wake Insights' survey: affordable housing, growth and infrastructure top residents' concerns

Wake County staff presented initial results from Wake Insights, a countywide community survey, during the March 10 Board of Commissioners work session, saying the technical sample included 1,006 respondents with a 3.1% margin of error.

The survey, which ran from November 2024 through January 2025, was designed to measure resident perceptions rather than service satisfaction. "A community survey is, really the way our approach to it is a public opinion poll," Jason Horton told commissioners, explaining the vendor selection and sampling approach.

Horton said the vendor, ETC Institute, sought a representative statistical sample by gender, age, race, ethnicity, income, education and geography and that the county also provided an open link for additional responses. He said staff plans to share final results with departments and to use the survey to establish baseline metrics for the county’s strategic plan.

Why it matters: commissioners said the findings will shape county priorities and performance targets. Horton said question 1 — an open-ended field asking respondents to name the most important issues — produced a clear ranking. "Number 1 and 2, affordable housing and homelessness as well as growth management infrastructure are by far the most important issues unprompted that residents stated," he said.

Key findings presented by staff - Sample and margin of error: 1,006 technical respondents, 3.1% margin of error; the vendor also collected additional open-link responses. Horton said the vendor achieved roughly a 15% response rate among mailed samples. - Veteran status: about 14.4% of respondents reported active-duty or veteran status; Horton said about 4% reported veteran status alone. - Top issues: unprompted responses ranked affordable housing and homelessness first, and growth management/infrastructure second. Transportation, school funding/public education, public safety, and property taxes/cost of living rounded out the top concerns. - Service strengths: Fire services, access to clean water (approaching 90%), Wake County EMS, Wake Tech partnerships, parks and libraries scored highly in service-quality questions. - Housing access: nearly 46% of respondents disagreed with the statement that they could access affordable housing in the county; Horton said that lack of perceived access showed up across income brackets.

Commissioner response and follow-up Commissioners pressed staff on outreach to vulnerable groups and on sample-size sufficiency for subgroup analysis. Commissioner Waters asked whether people experiencing homelessness were reached; Horton said staff worked with shelters and service providers and that a print option and in-person collection produced additional responses. "I also went to Healing Transitions... and collected, honestly more surveys than I anticipated," Horton said.

On sample size, Horton and commissioners noted statistical tradeoffs: Horton said a representative sample for county-wide results required about 600 responses and that additional responses help only when analyzing small demographic subgroups. He said the county will ask the vendor for geographic aggregation by census tract to support neighborhood-level reporting.

Next steps Horton said staff will continue cross-tab and geographic analysis, provide results to internal focus teams and departments, and return to commissioners with additional breakdowns and recommendations for follow-up engagement, including demographic and census-tract reporting. He said the county plans to repeat the survey about every two years to measure progress against strategic-plan goals.

Provenance: Initial presentation and detailed discussion with commissioners occurred during the March 10, 2025 Wake County Board of Commissioners work session. The vendor was identified as ETC Institute and staff used the Wake Insights brand for public materials.