In most of North Carolina, a town that sits on thousands of cheap rental apartment units would not consider itself to have a problem with affordable housing.
However, Carrboro is most certainly not like the rest of the towns in North Carolina. Here, in a predominantly rental apartment community, affordable housing becomes affordable hosing of taxpayers.
At a recent town governance meeting, the Boa again demonstrated its keen grasp on the physical realities of Carrboro. Mayor Mark Chilton said, “We have a lot of people who are hurting at a lot lower income levels than we’re currently reaching. Our current system doesn’t ever encourage anybody to create affordable rental housing for people who live on social security/disability income.”
Really, what about the thousands of rental apartments that start at $600 per bedroom a month? Aren’t they affordable housing?
Alderman Jacquie Gist supported Mr. Chilton, saying, “We’re doing great at reaching graduate students and not that great at reaching truly, truly poor people and we got to turn that around. The Orange County partnership on homelessness is slowly working on that, but I’m tired of putting money towards grad students.” Pulpsters will remember that a few years ago Ms. Gist suggested welcoming the homeless into Carrboro with wine and cheese accompanied in the background with sonorous string music.
Mr. Chilton didn’t reserve all of his concern for the working poor. According to Mr. Chilton, the town should be worried about those making as much as $60,000 a year. “At a hundred percent of area median, you’re really stuck. You don’t qualify for any subsidy. You don’t qualify for any help.” As someone living on a trust fund, Mr. Chilton understands the pain of living within one’s means. (See N&O Affordable Hosing Story.)
Representing the not-visibly-employed in Carrboro, Alderman Sammy Slade offered his wisdom. “There’s also a way of seeing how we compare to other places, and how we are a place that doesn’t allow for people…with more means to be in this community.” Did Mr. Slade really run on a platform of increasing tenement housing for the not-visibly-employed?
No word on whether or not the Boa will ask for a special town law capping market housing pricing, thereby enabling more people to live in Carrboro.
No word on how much more “make work” will be created to keep the overstaffed Developer Service Department looking busy rather than reducing the staff to meet actual need.
No word on whether or not Carrboro will adopt the 140 West Franklin parking garage model, where non-affordable housing unit owners park in a private gated garage area, but affordable housing unit owners park in the public garage area. (See Article VI of the Development Agreement.)
As the state of North Carolina grapples with the worst loss of employment since recordkeeping started over 30 years ago, in most of North Carolina elected officials are trying to hold on to diminishing state revenues from the taxation of employment. But then most of North Carolina does not believe in socialistic anarchism that reduces government to line-of–sight tribalism.
Leave it to Chapelboro to promote the latest socialistic anarchistic fad – crop mobbing. What’s that?
According to the crop mobbers, it’s “a group of young, landless, and wannabe farmers who come together to build and empower communities by working side by side. Crop mob is also a group of experienced farmers and gardeners willing to share their knowledge with their peers and the next generation of agrarians. The membership is dynamic, changing and growing with each new mob event.”
Crop mobbers lament the passing of endless hours of backbreaking, menial work on farms that virtually enslaved small farmers to the soil. They believe that farmers were not independent producers. They believe that farming was a community-wide activity in which families rotated working for their neighbors for free. They obviously have not studied the famous literary works of rural American writers from a century ago.
In the words of the farm owner, Mr. Bobby Tucker, heir apparent and co-manager of Tucker Family Farm LLC headquartered in a brick McMansion in suburban Charlotte, he could spend decades trying to perfect a sustainable farm. ”It's a lifestyle. It's a political statement. It's trying to reconnect with your food.” (See N&O Food Touching Story.)
Crop mobbers believe that because no money changes hands that they are exempt from state and federal law regarding employment and the taxation of labor services. They are wrong.
It should come as no surprise to Pulpsters that Carrboro Alderman Sammy Slade is in the middle of the crop mobbers. The N&O featured an article on crop mobbing with a photograph of none other than Mr. Slade working on the Okfuskee farm in Chatham County. Mr. Slade, a self-described carpenter with no visible business, doesn’t explain how the failure to pay taxes on the crop mobbing labor will help the state in its current economic crisis. Neither does “the Obama of Carrboro” explain why he supports tax evasion practices.
Juxtapose Mr. Slade’s crop mobbing with the announcement that the state owes $1,400,000,000 from the current high unemployment rate of almost 12%, the highest ever recorded. The state has been borrowing as much as $20,000,000 from the federal government. That’s per day.
According to Mr. David Clegg, deputy chairman and chief operating officer of the N.C. Employment Security Commission, the total will rise to at least $2,000,000,000 by the end of 2010. For purposes of comparison, the state budget for the current fiscal year is $19,000,000,000. ”It's way beyond precedent”. During the last recession, the state borrowed less than $300,000,000 for its unemployment insurance trust fund. Only five states have borrowed more than North Carolina. (See N&O Unemployment Cost Story.)
Perhaps Mr. Slade doesn’t know that the only source of money for the unemployment insurance fund, other than federal government loans, is the unemployment insurance tax paid by private employers in the state. Farmers don’t pay such taxes for crop mobber labor. Crop mobbers are as oblivous of these taxes as they are of their displacement of immigrant agricultural labor, Mr. Slade's “people”.
