NoDa’s Johnston and Mecklenburg mill properties are back in the news. Recall the mills were converted to provide “affordable housing” some years back but the developer went bankrupt, the buildings were declared unsafe from termite damage with the tenants being kicked out, and the city lost most of the $6 million it invested in the process.

Completely understand the desire of NoDa residents and business owners to have the two buildings be sold, be brought up to standard, and be put to productive use. In their current state, they are truly neighborhood-killing hulks.

The issue, as the UPoR story highlights, is the desire by NoDa leaders to have some or most of the buildings again serve as “affordable housing”, with the desired clientele being artists and musicians. After all, musicians and artists are what made NoDa what it is, or at least what it was circa 1995.

But there’s a critical but implicit assumption at work here: that any “affordable housing” that’s created in NoDa would necessarily be filled (mostly) with artists and musicians. I’m absolutely not sure why that need be the case. A relatively small percentage of the overall population are artists and musicians. So how does the NoDa neighborhood hope to assure that any subsidized housing units attracts artists and musicians? Provide enough units and hope that enough painters and piano players get them? Or is the idea that the city will restrict some/all of the affordable units to just artists and musicians?