While UNC has been lambasted by many a member of the community for its supression of free speech (see every major newspaper in NC), I’d like to take a moment to highlight another fault of the university. In his annual state of the university speech, UNC Chancellor James Moeser stated the university’s intention to go into the housing business.
There are many problems with this announcement. First, the intention of the university is to get, as Tommy Griffin, the chair of UNC’s Employee Forum, “lower-paid folks … closer to work, take the bus and not have to pay $3 a gallon for gas.” In other words, create the need to facilitate our dream to make a community dependent on mass-transit. And, instead of having the consumer take the hit for higher gas prices, spread that cost among all taxpayers in the area buy subsidizing bus services.
Apparently unbeknownst to the administrators of Chapel Hill or the town residents, a plan that requires more tax revenue to run will result in higher taxes, most likely higher property taxes. So, in attempting to build more affordable housing for faculty and staff, the university’s humanitarian goal may have the result of raising property taxes for everyone else. But, perhaps the university can use their state tax dollars to help those professors who aren’t making enough live closer to the university.
If this is the case, then not only will there continue to be, as Tony Waldrop, UNC’s vice chancellor for research and economic development said, a “cost-prohibitive housing market” in Chapel Hill, but business in the town will run even further away from the business-adverse Franklin St., once the economic engine of Chapel Hill.
