City and county officials said housing development will be a focus for Morehead this year.
Jason Slone is the President and CEO of the Morehead-Rowan County Chamber of Commerce. He said the chamber has established a committee to work on providing more housing opportunities for the community, something that Slone said is desperately needed.
“For the last year we’ve done a lot of research on areas, what other communities have done. We’ve laid out a framework that we think that we’re going to have to figure out policy on in order to support future growth to that. If you go back to the study that we conducted a year ago, the most telling tape to that is inventory. We just simply don’t have enough,” he said. “We are 1,800 units short by 2027 regardless of if it’s for rent or it’s for-sale units.”
This news came at the same time the Morehead City Planning Commission approved their recommendation for a zoning density rate increase.
City Planner Rodney Fouch said before 2013, the zoning code was interpreted to allow up to 15 dwelling units per acre. In 2013, the city planner at the time asked for the zoning to instead be interpreted by square footage, and that decreased the number of units able to be placed per lot.
Now, Fouch said the commission has voted to reinstate the previous zoning code.
“Now, if you have a half-acre lot, and you can fit 15 units on it, and you can get the parking and the setbacks and street yard and landscaping et cetera, then you can do that,” Fouch said. “So, it could be a pretty significant boost to the amount of dwellings that could be put on an acre.”
The Planning Commission’s zoning density rate recommendation will soon go before city council for a vote.