The neighborhood of Doherty Heights has seen better days. Once a vibrant residential neighborhood that was home to families and retail businesses close to the downtown core, Doherty Heights is now better known for its vacant storefronts and dilapidated houses. The majority of the city’s housing code … Read more

The Development Finance Initiative (DFI) and the Kenan Institute at UNC have teamed up to prepare a comprehensive housing assessment for the City of Kinston. The housing assessment, which combines public records with qualitative data collected through an on-the-ground property survey, will provide C … Read more

[UPDATE: The General Assembly enacted changes in 2017. Those changes are discussed in this law bulletin: Residential Rental Property Inspections, Permits, and Registration: Changes in 2017. See Questions 19 and 20 in the bulletin for a discussion of targeted inspections.] Along Broken Dreams Bouleva … Read more

Adam Parker, MPA 2010, is a student at the UNC School of Law. On March 6, 2012, twenty UNC Law students volunteered at the Kinston Business Enterprise Center to write wills and advanced directive documents for low-income residents of Lenoir County. This was the second consecutive year that students … Read more

Tim Taylor is both a housing inspector and the appointed minimum housing public officer for the town of Tooltime, North Carolina. For years he has conducted periodic inspections of dwellings throughout the town in accordance with his town’s periodic inspection program. When those inspections reveale … Read more

Kendra Jensen is a UNC-Chapel Hill graduate student pursuing a master’s degree in Public Administration. She is currently working with the Kerr-Tar Council of Governments through the Carolina Economic Revitalization Corps (CERC) Through the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 the US Department … Read more

Tyler Mulligan is a School of Government faculty member. As part of its comprehensive planning process, a town commissioned a housing study to determine whether its current and projected housing stock is adequate to meet the needs of its local residents and workforce. The results weren’t terribly su … Read more

Kendra Jensen is a UNC-Chapel Hill graduate student pursuing a master’s degree in Public Administration. She is currently working with the Kerr-Tar Council of Governments through the Carolina Economic Revitalization Corps (CERC) One does not have to travel far in Henderson, North Carolina to notice … Read more

2009 was a record year for foreclosures in North Carolina. Now it looks like 2010 is going to be worse. In the first five months of this year, North Carolina experienced 35% more foreclosure starts as compared to the same period in 2009. (2012 update: a GAO report on vacant homes and foreclosures ca … Read more

[2011 UPDATE: For more detail on this topic, see the following 2011 book: Housing Codes for Repair and Maintenance: Using the General Police Power and Minimum Housing Statutes to Prevent Dwelling Deterioration] An earlier post on minimum housing ordinances (MHOs) explained how MHOs can be employed b … Read more