State Employees CU Eyes Statewide Expansion of Affordable Housing for Teachers

MANTEO, N.C. – Representatives of North Carolina State Employees CU are talking with Dare County officials to expand the giant credit union’s affordable housing program for teachers, piloted in nearby Hertford County earlier this year. A local project, endorsed last week by the Dare County Board of Commissioners, would use a grant from the SECU Foundation to provide apartments at below-market rents to public school teachers. The SECU Foundation provided a $2 million no-interest loan to the nearby Hertford County Board of Education earlier this year to build a 24 apartments of affordable housing for public school teachers in one of the poorest enclaves in the state. The SECU Foundation has introduced a uniform construction plan for the affordable apartments and wants to implement it statewide. The Dare County initiative would include a grant of $2 million or $3 million from the Foundation, which would be used to build as many as five buildings of eight units each, two in Hatteras and three in Kill Devil Hills. In just three years of existence the SECU Foundation has become the largest non-government donor to North Carolina education by virtue of its $7 million annual scholarship program which endows every state-run college in the Tar Heel State.