Pursue a life of meaning by helping folks in rural North Carolina

By Miles Layton

All across Northeast NC, it is high school commencement season when seniors graduate from high school or college to pursue careers near and far.  

Let’s be honest, many of them will choose not to pursue careers in our region because of lower pay scales and fewer job opportunities. 

However, I’ll counter that: rather than ship off to Wake County, maybe stick around here to pursue a life of meaning by helping those folks in rural North Carolina who need it most by building a better tomorrow for your hometown.  

Sure, a teacher in Tyrrell County can earn more money in Raleigh, but the impact a good teacher has on students in Columbia echoes an eternity.  

Yes, a lawyer in Greensboro will make more money, but that same attorney can be a powerful voice for those who may need a strong advocate in a rural county’s courthouse to uphold the virtue of equal justice under the law.  

An entrepreneur can create a business that employs folks to build a stronger local economy. 

My daughter Samantha is working as a civil engineer intern for the NC Department of Transportation. Most days, she is working at the Alligator River Bridge site – a $523 million project. 

And I’ll say it is fascinating to hear Samantha talk about the engineering aspects of how the new bridge will replace the existing swing-span bridge with a modern two-lane, fixed-span (does not move) high-rise bridge at a new location just north of the current bridge. The new bridge will also include two 12-foot travel lanes with 8-foot breakdown lanes. That new bridge will be a wonder to behold for our region. We are very proud of Samantha!

Though Samantha will set her own path after she graduates from the Virginia Military Institute — skills that may take her anywhere she wants to work — I’m encouraging her to use her talents working in rural places, perhaps in Northeast NC or coastal Virginia, certainly wild and wonderful West Virginia, all places where communities need good roads and strong bridges.  

As folks know, I cover local government meetings between Ahoskie and Swan Quarter. I tell Samantha, when it comes to civil engineering, many NC DOT projects, though they may not always make the headlines, are very important to the communities they serve because investments in local infrastructure pave the way to sustained growth and prosperity.  

But more than a job, Eastern and rural North Carolina offers a quality of life that’s pretty kind and welcoming, particularly compared to the traffic-clogged and crime-ridden cities that were on lockdown during the COVID-19 regime. Maybe that’s why the Tarheel State is growing, particularly in Northeast NC. 

And does anyone really still think it’s cool to live in a cookie-cutter home not knowing your neighbors in a suburban housing development, aka rich people’s trailer parks, with names like Colony Park or Forestdale East!? No.

Small towns – you know your neighbors and you have more opportunities to make meaningful contributions to the communities. If you want, you can have land around your house and walk down the street, talk to people at the town’s only grocery store, attend fireworks or see people you know marching in the parade. That sense of community is very special, something to be treasured. And what comes with that sense of belonging, over time and not overnight, is a deep-rooted sense of place in the land and its people. That’s hard to describe – if you watched the Waltons on television, then you know. Kids who grew up around here know all about this sense of belonging, family ties and lifelong friendships.  

Folks from other parts who may be discovering rural NC for the first time, all we ask is that you don’t come down here and demand that we change our way of life because you’re offended by our culture and sense of well-being. You wouldn’t have moved here if things were rosy in Los Angeles or New York. That said, if you embrace the people and values of our small towns, they will embrace you in return. In that way, I think we’re more forgiving than big cities and even suburban areas, where anonymity has become the norm.

So, to the Class of 2026 and students in college and/or those about to graduate, please consider applying your talents to Northeastern NC and rural America.  

Miles Layton is co-founder of the Albemarle Observer.

No starter homes in your area? Blame local officials

By David Larson

Carolina Journal

Last week, I was a little critical of some more-vocal members of GenZ, mostly because I’m tired of seeing so many of them blame their grandparents, the “Boomers,” for financial difficulties. But one area I have total sympathy for them is in the price and supply of housing.

Boomers were often able to buy their first house younger, despite mortgage rates in the 1970s being consistently over 10%, because there were a lot more “starter homes,” with the size of the average home about 1,000 square feet smaller in the 1970s than today. Of course, larger homes did exist, but, according to the Washington Post, homes with four or more bedrooms were only 20% of homes in the 1970s. Now they’re about 50%. And this dynamic held into the 80s, with the Census Bureau saying that 40% of homes in 1982 were “starter homes,” meaning homes under 1,400 square feet. Only 9% of homes built in 2023 were.

So it’s not just that we have a housing supply problem — which we do, with 5.5 million home national shortfall and a 764,000 shortfall in North Carolina predicted by 2029. It’s that most of the shortfall is in “starter homes.” Plenty of big homes are getting built. But that alone will not fix it. If we had a vehicle shortage that was pricing out young drivers, we couldn’t just increase the supply of BMWs and Ferraris to solve it.

The main cause of high prices

The reason that only large, expensive homes are getting built is not due to Americans’ preferences. Many young prospective homebuyers are begging for more modest options. Builders are very open about the fact that they don’t build smaller homes because they can’t. Local governments won’t let them.

Speaking with those connected to the state’s homebuilding industry, they’ve heard directly from city officials that they simply would not approve homes below a certain price point, with one mayor giving the specific figure of $650,000 as the floor for approval, because lower-priced homes would decrease the tax base and surrounding home values.

Well, not many young adults early in their career can afford that price tag. So they are forced to spend their money on rent payments (which do not build wealth over time) rather than mortgage payments (which do). The long-term effect of that on their net worth is huge.

When I asked Chris Millis of the NC Home Builders Association about the situation, he said, “The starter home is disappearing in North Carolina, not because builders are unwilling to build it, but because the cumulative effect of costly conditions imposed through local government rezoning processes often makes lower price points financially unachievable. NCHBA’s members stand ready to deliver homes at every price point, including the entry-level homes that young families need most.”

One frequent complaint from developers is that local planners and commissioners have preemptively downzoned vast swathes of their county (meaning they reduce the allowable density of housing) so that when someone attempts to build housing, they are forced to enter into a “conditional zoning process” to get the density zoned back. This process involves voluntary concessions from the developer to adjust their plans in ways they cannot be legally forced to do otherwise. But because it’s the only way the planning board will approve the upzoning in density, they “choose” to go along with it.

On this process, Millis told me, “We have seen applicants agree to luxury amenities, mandates on the number of stories, the placement and number of windows, rear-loaded garages, ornamental exterior lighting, prohibitions on materials such as vinyl siding, expanded open space set-asides, and even payments to the local government for ‘affordable housing.’ Each condition drives up the cost of the lot, and prices another young family out of the market.”

The “affordable housing” payments are a cruel irony, allowing local officials to appear as if, and maybe even believe, that they are working to fix this problem, all while they pour gasoline on it.

There is some understandable concern about the pace of growth in North Carolina, with more people moving here than almost anywhere else in the country. Many areas of the state are bursting at the seams and spilling way out into the countryside. But the way we’re dealing with it locally is often the worst of all worlds.

People move to the area, and when they are unable to buy or build close to the city centers, they are forced to move well outside city limits, where it might be a bit easier and more affordable. But it’s much more expensive to extend roads, sewer, water, electricity, and other utilities further and further out than it would be to just let people build in the areas people want to live.

The young workers, moving to our area and graduating from our colleges, want to buy smaller, more-affordable homes. The homebuilders want to build and sell them those homes. But until local governments get out of the way, or are forced to by the state, North Carolina is unlikely to have nearly enough starter homes to meet the demand. And it will cripple many financial futures.

For Millis, the answer is simple: “The first step toward restoring access to lower-priced homes is straightforward: ensure that the conditions attached to local government rezoning approvals are limited to those the law actually permits. Discipline the process, and the market will once again be able to deliver the starter homes North Carolina families need.”

David Larson is managing editor of Carolina Journal.

Rowell’s Words: My Life Changing Event

By William Rowell

We are given life by our parents and it is shaped by a multitude of others that we encounter during our limited time here. Some of this is good and some not so good, though it all blends in to make us who we are.

I say this from experience with many individuals over my 80-plus years. In today’s vernacular, it is my “software”.  There are those whom I have known for many years and benefited from that exposure, both good and bad. 

It is not necessarily the time spent; but, the value of that time. A prime example of such a short expose is an event that remains with me after 20 years or more. I would like to share it now.

My late wife and I lived in Durham, NC for most of the 1990’s. Each year, we would volunteer for the Duke Children’s Classic. It was an annual event that raised money for the children’s hospital there. The main event was a golf tournament at a local golf course, where each team entered would get a celebrity as a part of their team.

One year, we were assigned to a hole on the back side. I was on the tee box, and she was down the fairway. She positioned herself on the left side of the fairway for visibility, but crossed the fairway to a wooded area when necessary to help look for a lost ball there.

The following group came to my tee box and was led by the singer, Larry Gatlin. I welcomed them and as the first player teed up his ball. Larry stopped him after seeing Laura crossing to her position. 

I was being cute by saying, “Oh, it’s just my wife. Go ahead and hit”. Larry instantly looked me in the eye and said, “Hey, don’t even think that. She is the most valuable asset you could have in your life and never forget that.”

Well, I felt about two inches tall, and could not get that thought out of my head for the rest of the tournament. It is still there today. I met him later at the clubhouse and apologized for what I had said. He accepted my apology and we spent the next hour or so talking about how much we loved our spouses, how much they did for us and how fortunate we were to have them. 

He left the next day, but those few seconds on the course and the time since have stayed with me, and I think of them often. It made me a different husband. I lost her to cancer some years later, but those remaining years we were together were a blessing that I had not properly appreciated until Larry Gatlin opened my eyes.

As adults, we all strive to have a nice home, a good job, money and automobiles, but do we recognize our spouse as our biggest asset and treat them as such? Think about it. 

God bless, and have a great day. 

Sage of Perquimans County, William Rowell’s columns have been published in newspapers near and far.