A Student Housing stakeholder group scheduled for this Wednesday night has been postponed by City staff, presumably to continue a review of federal Fair Housing regulations that would permit single-bedroom leases. At the present time, no new date has been given for the meeting.
The stakeholder group has been meeting for the past three months to consider a new zoning category for “student housing,” and discuss whether the city should permit leasing by the room. Because a growing number of multifamily communities around UNCC, Johnson C. Smith University and Queens College offer single-room leases, planners hope to introduce a text amendment in the next few months to address this use.
At an October 17 informational meeting attended by multifamily developer and university representatives, city staff said the initiative was spurred by safety issues raised by the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department (CMPD), which have also been participating in the stakeholder process. CMPD has suggested that unregulated student housing that leases by the bedroom is becoming a default low-income housing option for non-students, leading to crime issues in university areas.
Stakeholders have been discussing whether existing multifamily parking requirements should be modified in a new Student Housing category, to accommodate the higher number of cars at each multiroom unit. The full presentations from past Stakeholder Group meetings, along with other information about the Student Housing stakeholder effort, are available HERE.
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