A thousand people gathered at Watts Chapel Missionary Baptist Church in Raleigh on Saturday to ask the city council one question: Did you keep your campaign promises on affordable housing?
The church’s sanctuary was filled to the brim with members of ONE Wake, a coalition of 40 religious congregations from around the county. More people spilled into two overflow rooms to watch a live stream of the event. At the front of the sanctuary, near the pulpit, sat a jumbo-sized prop report card waiting to be filled out.
Last October, seven of the council’s eight current members (and many of their then-opponents) gathered at the same church, before a similarly large and expectant crowd, at ONE Wake’s invitation. They publicly committed to increasing the city’s affordable housing budget from $30 million to $70 million and reserving 100 acres of public land for new affordable housing units if elected. Their promises felt urgent and refreshingly concrete in the face of Wake County’s staggering 60,000-unit housing shortage…