By Kallan Louis
One of Michael Bryant’s early priorities when he was appointed as the new Mecklenburg County Manager in April 2025 was to find solutions to Charlotte’s affordable housing crisis. Bryant, who served as deputy county manager for 5 years before his appointment to the county manager position, was a budget analyst for the county. In his new role, he leads 6,500 employees and oversees a budget of $2.5 billion.
Bryant established the Office of Housing and Community Development Initiative in July 2025 to increase accountability, clarify the County’s role in housing and improve the effectiveness of investments in housing initiatives. One of the office’s early signature programs, the Employee Housing Ownership Pathways (E-HOP) has already helped hundreds of employees and county partners.
“I have the most talented workforce in the nation,” Bryant said. “Creating this program is just one of many ways to say thank you.”
E-HOP was created to help county employees at various points in their homeownership journey to navigate education, financial-readiness, credit assistance, counseling and connections to housing options. The program partners with homebuilders that provide access to financing, credit-repair and education partners at no cost.
Nearly 400 employees attended the kickoff session, and some have started using the program since the launch with a few homes currently under contract.
Bryant named LaShonda Hart as interim director of the newly established Office of Housing and Community Development Initiative. Meanwhile, Bryant continues to refine the vision and shape the design of E-HOP.
“Success is not only someone closing on a home,” Hart explained. “It can also mean improving financial readiness. It can also be participating in counseling or education or simply understanding the next step towards home ownership.”
Bryant and Hart are both long-time county employees who witnessed the region’s growth and transformation firsthand. Charlotte has evolved from a midsize southern city to one of the country’s major metropolitan areas. The city adds 135 new residents every day, according to the census and is expected to reach one million residents in 2028.
Although positive in many ways, this growth has created an affordable housing crisis. The average home price in Charlotte is approximately $445,000. More than half of renters are house burdened, meaning they are spending more than 30% of their income on housing. And there is a shortfall of 40,000 affordable housing units.
In 2018, The Board of County Commissioners identified affordable housing as one of its priorities and invested in critical home repairs and other initiatives that were spread across the entire organization. Bryant believed the county’s efforts needed a more centralized approach — one place where responsibility and accountability for affordable housing could reside.
“I think affordable housing is a community issue,” Bryant said. “It’s not a city of Charlotte or Mecklenburg County issue. It’s a community issue. And I believe that we are poised to contribute and be part of the solution to address it.”
Bryant also pushed back on the stigma surrounding affordable housing and who benefits. He said, “It’s no longer the unemployed and underemployed. You have folks making a decent, reasonable living that still cannot afford to live here.”
He calls this group the “missing middle” — teachers, government workers and police and other professions vital to the community. He believes a better term is “workforce housing.” The type of employees impacted the most by the housing crisis has been teachers, firefighters and law enforcement officers.
Hart added more demographic specifics. “The need concentrates in the ‘crescent’ areas of the county — Districts 2 and 3 — among households at or below 30% of area median income (AMI), often minority and single-family households where rental subsidy is the key lever for stability.”
The county has budgeted roughly $10 million in affordable housing this year including critical home repairs, grants, senior services, and reentry and transitional services.
“There is no silver bullet for it,” Bryant said about the housing crisis. “It’s not just unique to Mecklenburg County. Cities and counties are dealing with this across this entire nation.”
The solution will involve collaboration among the county, city and community partners, he said. “We’re better together and that is the best path forward.”