- Gov. Josh Stein’s housing executive order correctly identifies North Carolina’s housing shortage as a major driver of rising housing costs
- Although the order improves coordination and expands housing funding programs, it does little to address the regulatory barriers that restrict new housing construction
- Lasting housing affordability will require legislative reforms that expand by-right development, reduce zoning restrictions, and allow the private market to build more homes
Gov. Josh Stein’s new Executive Order No. 36 is a welcome acknowledgment of a problem that has been growing for years: North Carolina does not have enough housing.
The numbers are difficult to ignore. According to a 2024 housing supply analysis commissioned by the NC Chamber Foundation, NC REALTORS®, and the North Carolina Home Builders Association, the state is projected to face a shortage of approximately 764,000 housing units by 2029, including roughly 322,000 rental units and 442,000 owner-occupied homes. At the same time, housing affordability has declined in all 100 counties, and nearly half of renter households are considered housing cost-burdened, meaning they spend more than 30 percent of their income on housing.
These challenges are occurring as North Carolina continues to attract new residents and businesses at one of the fastest rates in the country. Population growth, job creation, and economic investment are all positive developments, but they increase demand for housing. When supply cannot keep pace, prices rise.
To his credit, Stein appears to understand this reality. In announcing the executive order, he emphasized that North Carolina’s housing shortage is fundamentally a supply problem. That alone represents an important shift in the housing conversation. For years, policymakers often treated affordability as primarily a subsidy issue rather than a shortage issue. The governor is at least acknowledging that the state needs more housing of all types.
The executive order itself, however, is relatively limited in what it can accomplish.
At its core, Executive Order No. 36 directs state agencies to coordinate housing policy, prioritize housing considerations in agency decision-making, work with local governments and private-sector stakeholders, and develop statewide housing strategies. It also creates a new Senior Advisor for Housing Policy position within the governor’s office to oversee those efforts.
Those actions may improve communication across agencies, but they do not directly change the regulations that are making housing more difficult and expensive to build.
The solution to housing affordability is not building more government-subsidized housing. It is building more housing, period.
That limitation is not necessarily Stein’s fault. Housing regulation in North Carolina is primarily a legislative and local government issue. Governors have limited authority to reform zoning laws, parking mandates, density restrictions, minimum lot sizes, and permitting processes through executive action alone.
The governor has also proposed expanding two existing housing programs through his budget recommendations: a $35 million increase for the North Carolina Housing Trust Fund and an additional $15 million for the Workforce Housing Loan Program. The Housing Trust Fund provides financing for affordable housing development and preservation projects, while the Workforce Housing Loan Program helps finance housing intended for middle-income workers who often earn too much to qualify for traditional affordable housing assistance but still struggle to afford market-rate housing.
These programs may help fund additional projects at the margins, but they raise an important question: Why focus primarily on subsidizing housing production when government regulations continue to restrict housing supply in the first place?
If developers face density caps, restrictive zoning, lengthy approval timelines, parking mandates, and local opposition that delays projects for years, providing additional financing does not solve the underlying problem. It simply attempts to offset costs that government policies helped create.
This is where legislative reform becomes far more important than executive action.
Last year, lawmakers considered Senate Bill 497, legislation that would have expanded by-right housing development, increased housing flexibility, and limited some of the regulatory barriers that make new construction difficult across the state. Similar reforms have already shown results in cities such as Raleigh, where zoning changes allowing more duplexes, townhomes, accessory dwelling units, and other “missing middle” housing types have led to thousands of housing units being approved that previously would not have been permitted.
The economic case for expanding market-rate housing is stronger than many housing advocates realize. Research consistently finds that new market-rate housing helps reduce pressure throughout the broader housing market. When higher-income households move into newly constructed units, they leave behind older housing stock that becomes available to other households. Economists often refer to this process as “filtering.” Rather than increasing costs, new housing construction tends to moderate price growth across the market over time.
In other words, the solution to housing affordability is not necessarily building more government-subsidized housing. It is building more housing, period.
That is especially important because North Carolina’s housing shortage is enormous. Even substantial increases in housing trust fund spending would produce only a fraction of the hundreds of thousands of units needed to close the projected supply gap. By contrast, removing regulatory barriers can unlock private investment at a scale government programs simply cannot match.
None of this is to suggest that Stein’s executive order is a bad idea. Housing affordability deserves attention from state leaders, and it is encouraging to see the governor publicly recognize that North Carolina needs significantly more housing supply. His proposal to offer grants to local governments that adopt higher-density zoning policies is particularly noteworthy because it acknowledges that local land-use regulations play a major role in driving housing costs.
But if North Carolina is serious about addressing affordability, the conversation cannot stop at executive orders, advisory positions, or additional funding programs. The state must also confront the policies that make housing scarce in the first place.
Ultimately, housing affordability will not be solved from the governor’s office. It will be solved when lawmakers enact meaningful reforms that allow more housing to be built by right, reduce regulatory barriers to development, encourage higher-density construction where appropriate, and allow the private market to respond to demand. Until that happens, North Carolina will continue treating the symptoms of its housing shortage rather than addressing the underlying cause.
