My Priorities
My leadership experience in affordable housing, land use, disaster recovery, and public service makes me an ideal candidate to address the City's most pressing issues:
Community Development: I will help protect what we all love about Wilmington while making room for new families and businesses.
Housing Stability: I understand why this is so hard and so important. I will bring together different perspectives to develop the best solutions for our community.
Green Infrastructure: I will help preserve our natural resources for stormwater management, air quality, public health, and -of course!- recreation.
SPECIFICALLY...
Community Development
We are blessed to live in a beautiful, thriving City. Wilmington is among the top 10 fastest-growing metro areas in the country. In general, new businesses and people are assets to our community. If you are one of them, welcome to Wilmington!
Being ready for this growth is an enormous responsibility. During my 6 years on the Planning Commission, I heard a lot of concerns about growth and its impact on the environment, housing affordability, disaster preparedness, and traffic. I am eager to carry these concerns with me to govern our great City.
City Council will soon be updating the 2016 Comprehensive Plan, which guides all development policies. This process needs leaders with a deep practical understanding of the issues to evaluate competing priorities and a commitment to act in Wilmington’s best interest.
We will not agree on everything, but I will be there to ensure the public’s hopes, dreams, and concerns remain at the center of the process.
Green Infrastructure
Nature is so powerful! Trees and green space increase our resilience to storms, enhance our quality of life, and clean our air and water.
Unfortunately, this natural protection is in jeopardy. Our tree canopy has been decreasing by about 1% per year, caused in part by efforts to address our housing shortage.
Our City leaders had the commitment and foresight to commission an Urban Forestry Master Plan in 2022. To be successful, the City must invest in ways that better leverage private resources.
Recreational space is key to our health, well-being, and economic development. Our City Council understands this and has made critical investments such as the Riverwalk and Greenfield Lake. As the population grows, we will need to aggressively seek more opportunities for these impactful projects, as well as neighborhood pocket parks, public kayak launches, and other facilities that bring us closer to our natural environment.
Housing Stability
Housing in our community has become unaffordable for those we depend on to keep our economy running and provide critical services in hospitality, construction, public safety, education, and business.
The housing crisis is nationwide; its root causes are complex and have developed over generations. This is not a problem that developers and homebuilders created, and they cannot fix it on their own. That is where the government intervenes: to take care of what the market doesn’t.
My track record includes hands-on experience implementing strategies to address the housing crisis.
Supply: simply building more homes is critical; it doesn’t matter how effective our social service programs are if there are just not enough homes for everyone who lives here.
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Planning Commission recommended approval of thousands of housing units during my tenure, helping rental rates in Wilmington level off over the past few years.
Support: support services help families get in and stay in safe homes
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My work with WARM NC to make home repairs for those who couldn’t afford them helped over 2,000 families stay in their homes.
Subsidy: providing housing at below market rates – by definition – will always require financial help.
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My current role in affordable housing development requires careful stewardship of Low Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTC) and renting to seniors and families with rental assistance vouchers.
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In 2018, I was appointed by the General Assembly to the board that oversees the NC Housing Trust Fund; making difficult decisions about how and where millions of state funds are invested. Wilmington has the need, the resources, and the talent to create and manage our own.
