Planning Support Tool for Affordable and Workforce Housing Site Identification

Client: Watauga Housing Council

Watauga County, North Carolina, is currently experiencing a housing shortage that is expected to intensify soon. The shortage is exacerbated by vacation rentals and student housing, which has significantly reduced the available residential housing options.

The Watauga Housing Solutions Committee is partnering with other community and local government organizations looking to develop affordable and workforce housing in order to mitigate the severe decreases in housing affordability. The housing council is currently working with developers to prioritize the most feasible sites to pursue for purchase and development. Because of the extreme physical conditions of the landscape (slope, soils, etc.), there is currently no streamlined system in place to help identify suitable parcels for development.

In response to this issue, the team was contracted to develop an application-based data framework that is designed to identify land parcels based on their likelihood to be developed for affordable workforce housing. This data framework has been designed to function as an interactive application interface that will allow users to input criteria related to land supply and combine it with likelihood estimates to rank each parcel in the county in terms of development suitability.