Mount Pleasant will stop accepting applications for new apartment complexes for the next 180 days.

Town Council voted 4-3 Tuesday night to impose a moratorium on multifamily developments, according to the council’s minutes. Councilmen Joe Bustos, Bob Brimmer, Will Haynie and Jim Owens voted for it. Councilmen Elton Carrier and Mark Smith and Mayor Linda Page voted against it. Councilmen Paul Gawrych and Gary Santos were absent.

Town Administrator Eric DeMoura said staff’s instructions would be not to accept any new applications for building permits for multifamily structures, the minutes show. Bustos, who made the motion, said the town should not even accept the paperwork. He said the pause is meant to step back from new apartment projects, not to shut down anyone already in the process.

Bustos also said that if council found a way within 60 days to protect the town’s quality of life and expand its infrastructure, it could end the moratorium early.

The case for a pause

Bustos cited the town’s 2015 demographics report, which put Mount Pleasant’s population at 78,988, up 11,145 people, or 16%, from 67,843 in 2010. He said schools in the northern part of town were using more than 30 portable classrooms, and that Fire Department calls rose from 6,677 in 2013 to 8,266 in 2015. Since the Ravenel Bridge was built, he said, the number of added traffic lanes leaving Mount Pleasant is zero.

He also said no affordable housing had been created in the past five to six years. Property set aside for affordable housing was rezoned last year for single-family homes because the developer could not produce it, he said.

Haynie, who seconded the motion, said the town was not closing for business. He then listed apartment projects already approved or underway: 324 units at Bridgeside, which is approved for 573; 254 at Oyster Park; 456 planned at Indigo Square; and up to 530 in two complexes at Carolina Park, among others. A pause, he said, could give the town time to work out affordable housing, schools and steps toward widening Highway 41.

Brimmer voted yes with reservations. Citing the Planning Department’s report on permitted dwelling units, he said multifamily units made up 21% of the units permitted, 235 compared with 721 single-family homes, and that no multifamily units had been permitted so far this year. He said he would not have supported the moratorium if the town did not have 2,000 units already in the process.

The case against

Carrier said the town’s growth rate was 2.91% and that developers will not build without demand. Seniors, firefighters, police officers and public service workers have only one place to live in Mount Pleasant, he said: multifamily housing. He said the East Cooper Habitat board he serves on had 90 applicants for three houses.

Smith said growth has slowed from its peak, from 13.7% in 2000 to 3.84% in 2013, 3.43% in 2014 and 2.91% in 2015. He urged council to find money for unfunded roads, starting with Highway 41.

Page said she would not support a moratorium and did not believe a road or school would be finished in 180 days. She said she wanted to know the plan for those 180 days before final reading.

Patrick Arnold, government affairs director for the Charleston Trident Association of Realtors, told council the association could not support an arbitrary ban on multifamily apartments, according to the minutes. He said Mount Pleasant has a major affordable housing problem and that adding supply is the only way to bring prices down.

Prices and the housing mix

Owens, who voted for the pause, said Charleston County’s median home price in February was $310,000, while two Mount Pleasant market areas came in at $465,000 and $515,000.

Planning Director Christiane Farrell said the town has long tracked a policy goal, set in the 1980s, of about 70% single-family and 30% multifamily housing. Counting everything built, she said, the town stands at 73% single-family and 26% multifamily. She said no law or zoning rule requires the town to keep that ratio.

What comes next

David Pagliarini, the town’s legal counsel, said a town ordinance allows moratoriums in certain circumstances, but that a moratorium should have a defined end and a plan to solve the problem behind it. He said he would give council a detailed memo.

Bustos said the 180 days would let the town study when its infrastructure can absorb what is already built and what is in the pipeline. He asked that the town’s economic development staff be part of that work.