Blowing Rock council directs staff to study workforce-housing incentives after overview of options

Blowing Rock — At its April 8 meeting, the Blowing Rock Town Council heard an extended staff briefing on workforce housing and directed planning staff and the planning board to study incentive-based overlay districts and other tools to encourage housing affordable to middle-income workers.

Staff member Shane Fox told the council that workforce housing targets households earning roughly 60%–120% of area median income (AMI), and that Watauga County’s most recent AMI figure used in the presentation was $51,000. Fox said the goal is to make housing affordable for employees such as teachers, first responders, health-care and hospitality workers so they can live in the community where they work.

Kevin (planning staff) reviewed policy options used in other North Carolina towns: voluntary overlay districts that relax density or setback rules in exchange for reserved workforce units, accessory dwelling units, conditional zoning, and mandatory inclusionary zoning used in a few places. He told the council that overlay districts can be structured by zoning district and by housing type, and that incentives are commonly calibrated differently for duplexes, four‑plexes and larger multifamily projects.

Town attorney Joey flagged legal uncertainty around mandatory inclusionary zoning. “It’s really unsettled in the courts,” he said, adding that Chapel Hill and Davidson have long-standing programs that have been challenged but continue in operation. Staff also noted House Bill 306, introduced by Rep. Pickett, as a local enabling measure that would expressly provide participating municipalities, school systems and counties the authority to pursue employee housing partnerships.

Staff framed the local scale of the housing affordability gap with market data used in the presentation: Fox said the 2025 average sale price in Blowing Rock was about $888,000, and that a typical three‑bedroom home had a recent average sale price of roughly $793,000. Using the $51,000 AMI and a 30% housing‑cost burden standard, staff showed many working households would be priced out of local ownership without new options.

Council members discussed tradeoffs between voluntary overlay incentives and mandatory inclusionary requirements. Several members expressed a preference to avoid the unresolved legal route and to begin by exploring overlay incentives targeted to specific zoning districts (for example, general business and selected R‑10/R‑6 areas) and by examining density, setback and parking concessions that might entice developers. Concerns included how to monitor qualifying occupants and whether incentive programs would actually produce units.

The council’s action: members directed Kevin and the planning board to study overlay‑district approaches, identify candidate zoning districts, and return with concrete options and proposed metrics for developer incentives. Staff said it would prioritize examples from similarly sized towns and report back before beginning any formal ordinance process.

Next steps: planning staff will prepare a scope for the planning board’s study, provide draft incentive numbers for different housing types, and present findings at a future meeting so the council can decide whether to proceed to public hearings and ordinance changes.