NAGS HEAD, N.C. — Two years ago, Nags Head town leaders made the decision to put a moratorium on their ordinance for multi-family housing units.
"There was a period of time we had no multi-family ordinance at all, and multi-family development was not permitted in the town," said Ben Cahoon, mayor of Nags Head.
That's not the case anymore, as a new multi-family housing ordinance was adopted in early October. The focus? Long term rentals for people working and living in Dare County for more than three months.
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“We decided, if we put a multi-family ordinance back in place, it really did not need to increase the visitorship. They did not need to be more short term rentals, which, if we hadn't put any precautions in place, they easily could have become short term rentals and investor owned properties.”
Some of the highlights of the ordinance include future multi-family developments requiring at least a three month lease for renters. Another is that for developments of up to six units, at least one person needs to be living and working in Dare County.
"In our ordinance, we wanted to make it easier for folks to build small projects, because that's what we would really much prefer to see, and that's really what we have the land and the infrastructure for. For up to six units, I believe it is 100% of those units must be occupied by someone who is employed in the county. For projects larger than six units, I believe it is either 60% or 70% of the occupants of the the units must be rented to someone who's employed in the county."
The passing of this ordinance is the cultivation of many months of collaboration between town officials and residents, something that town leaders are extremely proud of.
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"We appointed another short term committee, a task force that included some representatives of the real estate and the construction industry, a business owner and our board members, and we took a look at the ordinance and made some tweaks to it. There was a lot of community interest, and we, we had a public hearing, and then we had an additional meeting to let people answer their questions and get comfortable with the ordinance."
Leaders understand that the Outer Banks is a vacation destination, but know there needs to be more options for the people living in the Outer Banks full-time.
"Our businesses want to provide good service, and finding employees who can live here is really difficult, and we want to continue to thrive with the kind of economy that we have, and that means that our businesses need to be able to find the employees and keep them, which means we need to be able to house them."
Leaders feel it can be a step in the right direction for addressing the housing crisis.
“It remains to be seen whether we'll get any take up from developers or property owners who are interested in building these but we think it's a really good start."
