Beulaville gets $9.7 million for new affordable housing project

The North Carolina Office of Recovery and Resiliency (NCORR) announced on Oct. 31 that Beulaville is one of five local and tribal governments to receive funding from the Affordable Housing Development Fund (AHDF). These funds are earmarked specifically to increase the availability of safe and affordable housing in areas that experienced major damage from Hurricanes Matthew and Florence.

This was the first time Duplin County has received this type of funding, said NCORR Public Information Officer Janet Kelly-Scholle. Municipalities in Bladen, Jones, Pamlico, Pender, and Scotland were also granted funding. This is the third round of funding from the AHDF, with this round prioritizing areas that had not yet received affordable housing funding from NCORR.

The town of Beulaville received $9,706,000 from the AHDF, one of the largest awards in this cycle. The town is working with Carolina Statewide Development, LLC, to build 40 multifamily rental units in an area where few rental options currently exist.

“Beulaville is an old town,” said Mayor Hutch Jones. “We have a lot of rental properties, but not a lot of apartments. Plus, a lot of the properties here date back to the 1940s and ‘50s. We’ve been seeing a lot of expansion from the Onslow County side, so we really need housing to keep up with that.”

Since National Spinning closed in 2017, the town hasn’t had a large employer to keep people living and working in the community, however. “We need something like that again,” Jones said. “We want people to live and work in Beulaville. Right now, it’s kind of a bedroom community for places like Jacksonville, Wilmington, Kinston, and Goldsboro; we want it to be a place where people both live and work.”

The housing funding is something the town board has been working on for the past five to six years, he told the Duplin Journal. “We’ve really been paying attention to bringing housing to Beulaville, so people who want to live in Beulaville can do that. We want Beulaville to be available to people from all walks of life.”

The housing units will likely be a combination of apartments and duplexes, Jones explained. “I haven’t seen the final product yet,” he added. “It’s a matter of, we had this grant opportunity come up, and we’re now in the stages of planning. But the goal is for it to be a place for professionals or semi-professionals working in the community to have a place to live in the community as well.”

The town is also not sure of the exact location of the development. There are three sites in the running, but the board hasn’t made a final decision on one of those yet.

The AHDF funding is only the latest grant that the town has received. A few months ago, the town received a $250,000 matching grant from the North Carolina Parks and Recreation Fund to expand the park that’s currently located behind Town Hall and Beulaville Elementary School. Jones said they hope to break ground on that project in spring or summer of 2024.

“It’s all about having that quality of life,” he added. “We want people to come to Beulaville, but also to stay here, work here, and live here. If you’re living and working in a community, your tax dollars will stay in that community.”

For the NCORR/AHDF funding, local and tribal governments were encouraged to apply for financing for single-family homeownership development, multifamily housing rehabilitation, or new construction outside of the 100-year floodplain, according to a press release from NCORR.

“This third round of affordable housing funding is particularly exciting because five local and tribal governments are first-time recipients of the long-term disaster recovery housing grant program,” said Michele Wiggins, NCORR housing opportunities manager. “The funds will play a critical role in replenishing single and multifamily units damaged and destroyed by past storms.”

The other projects that received funding include:

· The Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina received $7,425,000 to build 30 single-family homes in a tribal territory and service area that is comprised of four adjoining counties: Robeson, Scotland, Hoke and Cumberland.

· Scotland County will use the $9,656,244 it received to finance the I. Ellis Johnson Multifamily Housing site, which will create 55 rental units.

· The town of Maysville in Jones County plans to use its $9,725,000 in award funding to build White Oak Landing Apartments. Like Beulaville, the town is partnering with Carolina Statewide Development, LLC, to build 40 units of affordable multifamily housing.

· Pamlico County will receive $6,688,212 to develop Pamlico Grove Apartments, a 56-unit development, 29 of which will be funded by the AHDF grant.