Housing
Checking In on Our State, Our Homes, Part 2
Setting Ambitious Goals for Housing
March 18, 2026
by Michael Welker, ncIMPACT Director of Policy and Research Partnerships
Read Part 1 of this update here.
On March 4 and 5, the Our State, Our Homes teams met in Chapel Hill for the final time. Before the final forum, we asked teams to develop a numerical goal around housing supply to work toward in their communities over the next five years. Collectively, the Our State, Our Homes teams committed to creating or preserving 9,795 housing units over that timeframe.
Setting a collective goal at the end of the program may seem counterintuitive, but housing is a long-term challenge. Carolina Across 100 and the Our State, Our Homes teams have always acknowledged that this work will continue beyond the formal end of the program in June. As we thought about how to wrap up our engagement with the teams, we wanted to provide them with a clear north star to continue working toward in the years ahead. Here is how we supported the teams through this process.
Making Goals Achievable
As the saying goes, a goal without a plan is just a wish. Throughout Our State, Our Homes, we have been working to give teams more of the skills, knowledge, and resources they need to address housing issues. For the final forum, we tasked the teams with aligning their numerical goals with everything they learned in the program to present a refined action plan for feedback from the Development Finance Initiative, Carolina Across 100, and their peers.
These critique sessions were designed to allow teams to present strategies that they have identified to develop or preserve affordable housing and receive feedback on their plans' clarity, focus, and feasibility. From establishing housing funds to creating land trusts to strategies for infill development, teams proposed a variety of approaches to address the barriers and opportunities they identified in their communities. Our goal was for teams to leave the activity with greater understanding of the opportunities they have to affect housing outcomes.
We also wanted teams to leave the final forum with a deeper connection to the purpose and potential impact of this work to provide motivation for the path ahead. The forum featured speakers Carolina ties and deep knowledge of the state and national landscape around housing, including Janneke Ratcliffe from the Urban Institute, Chris Estes from the NC Rural Center, Meredith Archie from the NC Chamber Foundation, and Tim Minton from the NC Homebuilders Association. These sessions helped illustrate the ways that housing contributes to households' economic prosperity, North Carolina's future economic development and growth, and communities' overall wellbeing. These insights reminded us all that the housing challenge is also an opportunity to help our state thrive.
Arriving at the Goal
At Forum 4, we highlighted research released in 2025 by the NC Chamber Foundation, the NC Home Builders Association, and NC REALTORS about the housing supply gap in North Carolina. The report found that the state faces a combined rental and for-sale inventory gap of 764,478 units for the next five years, based on current stock and anticipated demand. For the counties covered by Our State, Our Homes teams, the total gap is 124,808 units.
We challenged the teams to commit to filling some part of that gap by setting a clear numerical goal around housing supply in their communities for the next three to five years. The scale of the gap provoked different reactions across members of the cohort. Some were daunted by the amount of work to be done, while others were invigorated by the call to action. But for most, the numbers were clarifying. Teams began thinking more broadly about development already happening in their communities, took a more realistic look at their current resources and capabilities, and infused more ambition and urgency into their planning.
Teams submitted their proposed local goals ahead of Forum 5. When we totaled the numbers, we found that the teams together planned to create or preserve 9,795 units of housing. While this does not represent the full scale of the state's housing challenges, it does represent a meaningful and intentional contribution. If the Our State, Our Homes teams meet this collective goal, in the process they will provide shelter and stability for thousands of families, create jobs and economic activity throughout the state, and positively contribute to community outcomes in health, education, and more. They are likely to also stimulate additional investments in housing.
Making Goals Achievable
As the saying goes, a goal without a plan is just a wish. Throughout Our State, Our Homes, we have been working to give teams more of the skills, knowledge, and resources they need to address housing issues. For the final forum, we tasked the teams with aligning their numerical goals with everything they learned in the program to present a refined action plan for feedback from the Development Finance Initiative, Carolina Across 100, and their peers.
These critique sessions were designed to allow teams to present strategies that they have identified to develop or preserve affordable housing and receive feedback on their plans' clarity, focus, and feasibility. From establishing housing funds to creating land trusts to strategies for infill development, teams proposed a variety of approaches to address the barriers and opportunities they identified in their communities. Our goal was for teams to leave the activity with greater understanding of the opportunities they have to affect housing outcomes.
We also wanted teams to leave the final forum with a deeper connection to the purpose and potential impact of this work to provide motivation for the path ahead. The forum featured speakers Carolina ties and deep knowledge of the state and national landscape around housing, including Janneke Ratcliffe from the Urban Institute, Chris Estes from the NC Rural Center, Meredith Archie from the NC Chamber Foundation, and Tim Minton from the NC Homebuilders Association. These sessions helped illustrate the ways that housing contributes to households' economic prosperity, North Carolina's future economic development and growth, and communities' overall wellbeing. These insights reminded us all that the housing challenge is also an opportunity to help our state thrive.
What's Next?
There is still more work for CX100 and the teams to do in Our State, Our Homes and beyond it as the teams work toward their goals. CX100 and its partners will continue to provide webinars and technical assistance to the teams through June 2026. We will also provide coaching as we collect shared measurement system data from the teams two more times to continue understanding how the work has progressed.
Over the last few months of Our State, Our Homes, stay tuned for more updates on the teams' accomplishments and deeper dives into the topics we have explored with the teams.
Carolina Across 100 is a five-year initiative, led by the ncIMPACT Initiative, seeking to support community-driven recovery and build sustainable efforts in all 100 counties by providing human resources, data insights, coaching, facilitation, coordination efforts, and program design. “Our State, Our Homes” is the fifth program in this larger initiative. Carolina Across 100 is funded by the Office of the Chancellor and private foundations.
The ncIMPACT Initiative coordinates Carolina Across 100. ncIMPACT is a statewide initiative launched by the UNC School of Government in 2017 to help local communities use data and evidence to improve conditions and inform decision making. Visit ncimpact.org.
