ECONOMY

Dr. Matthew Metzgar Dr. Mark DeHaven Donna Schultz Guenevere Abernathy This project is part of the third cohort of Gambrell Faculty Fellows. Read about the fellows progam and other projects here. When it comes to the gap in resources between White, Black and Latinx families, wealth is a bigger factor than income. On average, White […]

Dr. Kendra Jason Dr. Tehia Starker Glass Dr. Janaka Bowman Lewis This project is part of the third cohort of Gambrell Faculty Fellows. Read about the fellows progam and other projects here. The COVID-19 pandemic is an earthquake that shook us all — but not everyone has the same foundation to ride out the quake […]

Buying a house in the Charlotte region has, in many ways, never been more challenging. Buyers face a dizzying array of obstacles: A historic supply crunch, skyrocketing prices and homes that sell faster and faster each month. The reasons are numerous. Housing supply never fully recovered after the 2008 economic crash and Great Recession drove […]

Charlotte’s growth rests, in the end, on the people who actually build our city: The construction industry. In this episode of the “Future Charlotte” podcast, general contractor Myers & Chapman CEO Marcus Rabun talks about the near-term challenges facing the industry such as covid-19, material and labor shortages. Rabun also discusses what might be an […]

“The key to its success will be for residents and leaders to dare to dream big ,” Chris Beynon, Center City Vision Plan team leader, MIG consultants, Charlotte Business Journal, August 9, 2019. “We will see our major employers on a timeline to restore the use of office space. It depends on the workforce coming […]

A study released this week by the UNC Charlotte Urban Institute sheds light on the unique challenges minority-owned small businesses face and how the Charlotte-Mecklenburg community can better support these enterprises, which are key to community well-being and wealth-building. Defined as businesses with fewer than 500 employees, small businesses comprise 99.9% of all businesses. Small […]

Does where you live — and what jobs you have access to — influence whether you work, and how much you earn? The long-held “spatial mismatch” theory posits that inner city unemployment and poverty has been driven in large part by the increasing physical separation of inner city residents from job opportunities, as suburbs boomed […]

For decades, the single-family home rental market was a small-scale industry, made up almost entirely of local landlords who rented out a few houses they bought as investment properties, or perhaps inherited, or held on to after relocating. But the years since the Great Recession have witnessed a dramatic shift, as Wall Street-backed rental companies […]

How does the ability to move around our city influence one’s ability to move up the economic ladder? That was the topic of our second Schul Conversation, a virtual discussion series bringing together experts to discuss different aspects of economic mobility in our region. The panel featured Charlotte’s Assistant City Manager Taiwo Jaiyeoba, UNC Charlotte […]

With straw votes on the controversial elements and the final adoption of Charlotte’s new vision plan looming in the next month, there’s a sense that the city’s reaching a finale in the years-long process of rewriting its development rules. But adopting the vision plan might end up – surprisingly – being one of the easier […]