Survey seeks input from Dare business owners, employers on worker housing needs

Dare County and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have partnered to develop a survey seeking input from local business owners and employers regarding their employees’ housing needs and to identify the most significant challenges associated with the shortage of housing options within the county.

The housing survey asks employers to provide information on a wide array of employee housing issues, including the length of an employee’s one-way commute from their residence to their place of employment; whether employers have difficulty attracting and/or retaining employees due to a lack of housing; which types of employees are most often in need of housing; whether employers have offered employment to prospective employees only to have them decline the offer due to difficulty finding housing; whether business owners have had to adjust their hours as a result of a limited workforce; and what business owners believe to be the biggest obstacles to potential employees securing housing within Dare County.

Participants’ responses to the 14-question survey are completely confidential and will be used to inform Dare County officials of the type and scale of housing that is needed in order to better support the local Outer Banks economy.

The survey is the result of a partnership formed between Dare County and the Development Finance Initiative (DFI), a program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s School of Government. The DFI partners with local governments throughout North Carolina and performs specialized finance and development expertise to attract private investment for transformative real estate development projects. The DFI then recruits highly qualified private developers to bring the project from conception to completion.

Dare County’s partnership with the DFI aims to assess the demand for additional housing options in the county and to identify opportunities for new real estate developments that will better serve the community.
To access the Dare County Housing Needs survey and submit your responses, visit darenc.com/EmployerHousingSurvey.

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