Affordable Housing and Transit Series 

Transit-oriented development (TOD) is a planning strategy that promotes high density, mixed-use (residential and commercial) development centered around public transportation services. Focusing development in the vicinity of public transit increases potential ridership and fare revenue while also generating less traffic and household transportation costs for the new development. While TOD can improve access and mobility, it can also increase housing prices, which poses the risk of gentrification. As a result, some governments have turned to equitable TOD (ETOD) as a strategy to ensure a more inclusive environment around transit developments, and affordable housing is a key element in ETOD strategies. 

This is the eighth installment in Eno’s continuing series examining how metropolitan areas across the country are approaching TOD work, including how agencies coordinate across housing, land use, and transportation, what tools they use, and what constraints they encounter on affordable housing and transit policy.  

This week: Raleigh 

Issues in Housing Affordability 

According to the National Association of Realtors’ Affordability Index, the Raleigh metropolitan ranks towards the middle among ten selected metro areas in terms of homeownership affordability. The index measures whether the typical family in each region earns enough income to qualify for a mortgage loan on a typical single-family home. An index above 100 signifies that a family earning the median income has more than enough income to qualify for a mortgage loan on a median-priced single-family home, assuming a 20 percent down payment. 

On the rental side, the number of affordable and available rental units per 100 households in Raleigh is at the national average of 54. However, the area is not immune to the housing affordability crisis. The Raleigh metropolitan area has a shortage of 37,087 available and affordable units at or below 50 percent of the area median income. 

Table 1. Housing Affordability Index 

 The housing affordability pressure has become a defining local political issue. In her March 2026 State of the City address, Mayor Janet Cowell noted that while rental prices have decreased   about 10 percent from their 2022 peak, the income required to afford a typical home roughly doubled in two years. Population growth continues to outpace housing production, and advocates argue that even with recent gains, the city is not building affordable units fast enough to close the gap. 

New Transit Projects and ETOD 

The city of Raleigh has been planning around a major transit expansion for nearly a decade. In November 2016, county voters approved a half cent sales tax increase to fund the Wake County Transit Plan, with a network of four bus rapid transit (BRT) corridors radiating from downtown Raleigh as the centerpiece of the plan. These corridors include the Southern, Western, and Northern and New Bern Ave Corridors. 

GoRaleigh, the city-run transit system, had led the BRT route design while the city’s Planning and Development department has taken the lead on station area planning. In 2020, the city published an Equitable Transit Oriented (ETOD) Guidebook which lays out development goals, TOD design principles, station area types, and a policy toolkit for promoting equitable growth around planned BRT corridors. According to the Guidebook, ETOD advances all six goals of Raleigh’s long-range plan: economic prosperity and equity, expanding housing choices, managing growth, coordinating land use and transportation, sustainable development, and growing successful neighborhoods. 

Design Principles 

The Guidebook lays out six design principles that shape station area plans: encourage a mix of complementary uses with active ground-floor retail near transit; concentrate density around BRT stations with minimum building heights and graceful transitions to neighboring areas; prioritize infill and repurposing of vacant or underutilized parcels; build complete streets that improve connectivity and safety for pedestrians and cyclists; manage parking by eliminating minimums near stations and integrating any parking structures into surrounding development; and create engaging public spaces that feel safe and walkable.  

Station Area Types 

Raleigh has classified its 30-plus planned BRT stations into five types, each with guidance for land use and building height. 

Table 2. Raleigh Station Area Types 

Zoning Tools 

In October 2021, the City Council updated the Transit Overlay District component of its zoning code (the Unified Development Ordinance) to allow for TOD (TOD in this case refers to transit-oriented development) with more affordable housing. The Transit Overlay District is applied mostly to the properties around the proposed BRT corridors that are already zoned for commercial and multi-family development. The Transit Overlay District supports the level of density that is needed for BRT to have enough riders. It also makes sure that the public spaces around the transit stations are walkable. Since the change, the city has rezoned more than 700 parcels to the Transit Overlay District designation, first along the Southern and Western corridors in 2022 and the New Bern Ave corridor in 2024.  

The mechanics are straightforward: in the Transit Overlay District, a building can be up to 50 percent taller than the underlying district’s maximum height if it includes affordable housing units. At least 20 percent of the bonus units must be affordable to households earning 60 percent of area median income or below, and the units must remain affordable for at least 30 years. In keeping with the citywide policy, no parking is required in the Transit Overlay District or anywhere else in Raleigh.  

Mapping Tool (iMAPS) 

The city’s iMAPS tool is an interactive map that allows users to see information that includes a wide variety of geographical information including property boundaries, city parks, and transit overlay districts. The map is a useful tool for communities and developers to understand where these districts are located and their relationship to other land uses. 

Financing Affordable Housing 

In 2020, 72 percent of Raleigh voters approved an $80 million affordable housing bond program. Funded by a surcharge on property tax bills, it supports homebuyer assistance, rental development, public-private partnerships, owner-occupied home repair, and TOD site acquisition/preservation. As of the end of FY24-25, roughly 79 percent of the bond has been committed, helping to create or preserve about 1,800 affordable housing units. In April 2026 alone, the city council approved an additional $9.9 million from the bond to support 491 new affordable rental homes across five developments. 

The bond also operates within a broader policy frame. The 2026-2030 Home for Every Neighbor plan sets a goal of increasing affordable housing supply, housing affordability, and reducing/eliminating homelessness. The city is continuing its mission to expand affordable housing with another proposed $100 bond measure that will appear on the November ballot. The new bond measure will support new construction, mixed-income housing development, homelessness-mitigation efforts, and homebuyer assistance. While the proposed bond is providing more funding than the last bond, it is less than $200 million that advocacy organizations like ONE Wake were hoping for. 

Community Organizations 

Raleigh has several community organizations that are vocal on issues related to TOD and affordable housing. For example, Wake Up Wake County is active in promoting the benefits of TOD and affordable housing, and it provides the community with resources on city meetings, events, and open citizen positions on local committees/boards. Another advocacy organization, the Wake County Housing Justice Coalition, is vocal about the impact of gentrification and pushes the city to be more active in involving the public in planning and housing decisions.  

Barriers to TOD and Affordable Housing 

The city has faced some pushback to dense residential development in traditional single-family areas. Residents in the North Hills area, for example, organized against “missing middle” townhome construction near single-family homes, citing concerns about property values and neighborhood character. The state-level legal landscape adds another constraint: North Carolina law does not permit municipalities to mandate inclusionary zoning, ruling out a tool that other jurisdictions rely on heavily. 

Key Lessons  

Integration of land use and transit 

The relationship between land use and transit is very strong in Raleigh since GoRaleigh (the transit provider) is a unit of the city’s transportation department. This makes it easier to design and implement BRT and TOD since one entity controls zoning, roadway design, and transit services.  

Overcoming inclusionary zoning mandate 

North Carolina prohibits mandatory inclusionary zoning, but Raleigh has built a voluntary substitute by offering height and density bonuses for affordable housing, both inside the Transit Overlay Districts and in the residential “missing middle” districts updated in 2021 and 2022.  

Understanding the real estate market 

Before adopting the density bonuses for affordable housing, the city’s planning department conducted a study to determine the optimal incentives. An important component of their research was talking to local developers, so that the planners would better understand construction costs and the demand for different types of housing. 

Growing in a transit friendly manner 

Because of the coordinated ETOD and BRT planning and policies, the city is positioned to grow around its future BRT lines in an equitable manner that tries to minimize displacement and gentrification. 

Identifying with those who need affordable housing 

Transit officials in the Raleigh area have prepared materials about affordable housing that have resonated with the public, helped people visualize who would benefit from new policies, made the need for affordable housing more relatable, and highlighted the real-life impacts of housing affordability.