KDH ponders ways to ease housing crunch

By Michelle Wagner | Outer Banks Voice on October 22, 2022

Commissioner BJ McAvoy questioned government’s role in addressing the long-term housing crisis.

The Kill Devil Hills Board of Commissioners and Planning Board met in a two-hour-long joint work session on October 20 to discuss potential regulatory changes and incentives it could initiate to encourage more long-term housing in the municipality.

“This is something that the Board of Commissioners has focused on for some time now, and has taken strides,” Assistant Planning Director Cameron Ray told the group at the start of the meeting, but he said that the board has expressed interest in continuing their efforts with more dynamic changes.

Morgan Deane, a senior at First Flight High School who is interning with the Kill Devil Hills Planning Department, spoke during the work session and brought home the magnitude of the problem for young people on the Outer Banks.

“I could go through my entire contact list now and ask people if they plan on living on the beach after they graduate and ninety nine percent will say no, because we can’t,” she said. “I think it’s definitely an issue that needs to be addressed everywhere down here because realistically, you’re going to have a fairly large group of young people who are not going to return to be in the professional workforce and eventually that workforce is going to reach retirement age.

“I can say for sure I’m not going to live here unless it gets fixed…I plan on being financially stable, not relying on four jobs just to make rent.”

The efforts the town has undertaken in recent years include changing the setback requirements for mixed use development in the commercial zone to give existing businesses or new businesses the opportunity to add apartments that can be used for employees.

The commissioners have also approved zoning changes to allow accessory dwelling units in the commercial and light industrial zones and adopted an ordinance allowing cluster homes – independent dwelling units between 500 and 2,500 square feet with a shared driveway – in the low-density residential zone with specific restrictions for long-term occupancy.

Additionally, the commissioners have amended the town ordinance by increasing the floor area ratio for multifamily development in the light industrial zone, which Ray said has been successful in encouraging more multifamily projects in the last few years.

After several hours of discussing possibilities to help ease the housing crunch, Mayor Ben Sproul noted that “there is certainly a lot of energy for trying to figure ways to make life better for folks and not just with parks and beach access, but the mix of housing.”

In the end, the group directed planning staff to investigate several avenues, including revising the existing workforce housing ordinance to remove income requirements to allow for flexibility for year-round housing. At the meeting, there was also support for exploring additional regulatory changes that would lessen regulations for duplex dwellings in residential zones as well as lessening setbacks for mixed use development in the Light Industrial Zone.

Another option on the table was to incentivize mixed-use development with zoning concessions for long-term development, including requiring no additional parking for residential uses. Planning staff was also directed to investigate grant funding possibilities for voluntary conversion from short to long-term housing.

Commissioner Terry Gray said he saw a lot of promise in the possibility of lessening setbacks for mixed use development. “There’s been a lot of discussion and a lot of expression from business owners to help solve this problem and I think that if [businesses] can have apartment units overhead, I think that would free up some other areas.”

For his part, Commissioner BJ McAvoy questioned the level of responsibility the municipality   has in solving the problem, “especially our town, as dense as it is, to solve this beach problem…I have a fundamental disagreement with a lot of people in this room on what the role of government is.”

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