ECU faculty, students perform Dare County housing study
In 2024, a lack of understanding surrounding workforce housing caused Dare County to give back $35 million in state funding for affordable housing projects. Now, East Carolina University faculty and students in the Thomas Harriot College of Arts and Sciences and the College of Health and Human Performance are working with the community to provide research data and statistics to help alleviate residents’ concerns and perhaps lead to affordable housing solutions in the future.
Caramia Landis speaks with a Dare County community member at one of the public forums to dispel misunderstandings about the workforce and housing situation. (Contributed photo)
In January 2024, the Dare Community Housing Task Force was formed to explore viable strategies for housing the essential workforce, which includes firefighters, police officers, paramedics, health care workers, teachers, utility personnel and service industry employees. However, the group encountered community opposition.
Later in 2024, ECU’s Dr. Misun Hur, associate professor and director of the planning program in the Department of Geography, Planning and Environment, and Dr. Emily Yeager, assistant professor in the Department of Recreation Sciences, received an ECU Sponsored Activities and Research Catalyst award to investigate the shortage of affordable housing in Dare County.
“Dare County stretches along approximately 110 miles of the Outer Banks’ scenic Atlantic coastline. Known for its pristine natural beauty, historic sites, wildlife refuges and recreational facilities, the county is one of the most popular tourist destinations in the state and the nation,” Hur said. “In 2023, the tourism industry directly supported 12,030 jobs in Dare County. However, the county has long struggled to provide affordable housing for low-to-moderate-income families.”
Hur and Yeager, along with ECU students, partnered with the task force to measure the community’s mindset toward workforce housing and identify effective strategies to mitigate “not in my backyard” attitudes — the local opposition to proposed developments.
“The committee was very welcoming, because they have had a lot of opposition from the people,” Hur said.
She said people’s hesitancy stemmed from the unknown.
“People are afraid of change. So the fear of not knowing is the bottom line,” she said.
For the past year, ECU has been working to discover the unknowns and uncover the real picture of Dare County’s housing situation. To get these answers, the team conducted more than 1,300 surveys of residents and gathered data on population, median income, housing costs and values, essential workforce salaries, where workers live, where they commute from and their commute distances and times.
As part of the ECU team, Kylie Tannenbaum, a graduate student majoring in the Master of Science in planning and development, assisted with initial research. Caramia Landis, an Honors College Brinkley-Lane Scholar pursuing a Bachelor of Science in community and regional planning and a Master of Science in planning and development through the accelerated degree program, performed the data analysis and created posters to inform the community about the need for workforce housing options.
“I think this research is very important. We’re shedding light on the workforce and the struggles that they face,” Landis said. “The people of Dare County may not even realize how important the workforce is; they go to their restaurants, and they get their food. Or they have a fire, and a firefighter comes to help them. But they don’t think about where those people are coming from and the things that they face every day. Some people might have to wake up at 4 or 5 a.m. to catch a shuttle or to drive to Dare County to do their job. They are working so hard to help the people of Dare County, and we are trying to help them get better conditions for how they live each day.”
Recently, Landis conducted six interactive public forums with Dare County community members in Nags Head, Kitty Hawk, Manteo, Buxton and Hatteras to engage residents, gather feedback, address misconceptions and dispel fears.
“I think a lot of people were disarmed by the forums,” she said.
Caramia Landis speaks with a town planner from Kitty Hawk at a public forum in Dare County. (Contributed photo)
She indicated some residents expected a town hall-style meeting and even brought typed comments to give her a piece of their mind. However, Landis said negative attitudes were quickly neutralized by the open, back-and-forth conversation.
“We had useful and constructive conversations,” she said. “Most people were open-minded and willing to talk, because when confronted with the data, it is easy to see the large need for this.”
The biggest question Landis encountered was, “Who is the workforce?” For the county, this isn’t just seasonal workers in the tourism industry, but mainly essential workers like firefighters, police officers, teachers and nurses.
She said 36% of workers commute between 25-50 miles daily to perform their jobs, and their mean annual salaries range from $29,000-$49,000.
Data shows that the monthly salary of most workers is significantly less than the cost of a single mortgage payment. The average home in Dare County costs $533,000, with a monthly mortgage payment of $4,000. Fair market rent in Dare County is $1,400 a month, which requires an annual salary of $56,400, still above the annual salaries of many workers.
The data also shows Dare County has approximately 35,000 total housing units, which are predominantly one type: one-unit detached, also known as single-family. This makes up 78.8% of all occupied housing units in the county. However, housing occupancy rates in Dare County vary significantly by zip code.
The team will share these and other findings with the Dare Community Housing Task Force later this summer.
Research into housing options will continue and may help determine the feasibility of the team’s proposed affordable housing options.
During the next academic year, another undergraduate community and regional planning major, Sam McCormack, will assist Hur in performing geographic information system analysis of commercial land use in the county. Hur said they will collect data on empty commercial land, the size of these properties, and any current commercial buildings where the second floors are vacant to assess the cost-benefit of developing affordable housing.
“We think commercial land has a lot of potential,” she said.
In addition, Landis has received additional funding through ECU’s Undergraduate Research and Creative Activity Awards to extend her research. She will continue to delve into the data for her signature project in the Honors College, looking at the short-term rental aspect in Dare County.
She said short-term vacation rentals are taking away from the housing supply and are only inhabited 19-50% of the year. She said they are very profitable for people who have converted second homes previously used for long-term rentals.
Landis said she is gaining valuable research experience through this study.
She is interested in pursuing a master’s in public administration after completing her undergraduate degree, and she said, “Getting to do hands-on research and getting to interact with citizens and do the data collection and interviews has given me some tangible skills for my future career.”