GUILFORD COUNTY, N.C. — Guilford County presented plans for the future on Tuesday within a report that was steered by community input.
The extensive report called the "Comprehensive Plan" outlines the communities' vision for the next 15-20 years.
To gather community input, the county has been sending out surveys and hosting workshops this summer.
Tuesday, two community meetings were held where stakeholders outlined their findings, organized them into seven planning themes, and addressed policies for how to achieve those goals.
Through public response, the county found affordable housing was the number one item people would like to improve.
Kyle Tyner is a realtor and broker with Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices. He knows the numbers and explains the limited options available within Greensboro for his clients.
"You can look at the stats. Homes available on the market in Greensboro, overall Greensboro has 346 homes for sale, but if you look at the homes available below the median sales price which is around $280,000 there's less than 150 homes for sale in all of Greensboro," said Tyner.
Attainable housing is one of seven planning themes outlined within the plan. During Tuesday's earlier meeting, Leslie Bell, the county's planning and development director discussed the following strategy.
"One of the things we can do is reduce the lot size for duplexes. For example: allow duplexes, encourage duplexes, where we traditionally just have single-family residential housing," Bell explained.
There are other planning themes including transportation, the environment, infrastructure and more.
Within the meeting, leaders said they hope to finish and finalize the plans by the end of summer 2023 to submit to commissioners.