With the Charlotte area recognized as a hot spot for corporate landlords, Mecklenburg County has included funding in its recently proposed budget to keep studying how to address the industry’s impacts here.
Mecklenburg County Manager Dena Diorio recommended $500,000 in the county’s fiscal 2023 budget, released on Thursday, to “continue our research and develop strategies to address the impacts of corporate-owned housing in Mecklenburg County,” according to the budget document.
County staff has been looking into corporate landlords since earlier this year, as some of the impacts of the industry began to spill out into the open.
Earlier this month, The Charlotte Observer and The News & Observer published Security for Sale, an investigation that found institutional investors owned more than 40,000 single-family homes in North Carolina, primarily in the Charlotte area and the Triangle. The series also revealed how corporate landlords can sometimes frustrate renters and alter neighborhoods.
Mecklenburg County has more than 15,000 corporate-owned homes, the Observer and News & Observer found. That comprises 5% of all single-family homes in the county and one-quarter of all rental houses. Several county officials have expressed alarm at the scale of the industry.