An affordable housing development that drew a lawsuit and years of opposition in 2013 is moving forward on Weddington Road in south Charlotte.

DreamKey Partners plans to build 85 affordable units at 3924 Weddington Road, on a 7.23-acre site on the road's west side. The nonprofit first proposed 70 units at the same address 13 years ago, when it operated as the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Housing Partnership. Neighbors fought that plan so fiercely it ended up in court.

Nothing was built.

The organization filed a new rezoning petition in 2022 for a slightly larger project. This time, only one person spoke against it at the public hearing, DreamKey president Julie Porter told The Charlotte Ledger in a Tuesday, Aug. 25 report.

"It was like night and day from our experience in 2013," Porter said. "I can't tell you what the difference was other than, I think, there's a much wider acknowledgement that affordable housing is needed everywhere."

The city's rezoning record shows the petition, numbered 2022-162, would change the site's zoning to allow denser multi-family development of up to 90 residential units.

Local elected officials have made it a stated priority to place low-income housing in high-opportunity areas near schools, jobs and services. But developers face steep obstacles in neighborhoods like Ballantyne: higher land costs, fewer available tax incentives and, historically, political resistance from wealthier enclaves, according to the Ledger's reporting.

Charlotte's affordable-housing gap is large and growing. The city lacks more than 40,000 units for households earning at or below 50% of the area median income (AMI), up from a 35,025-unit deficit in 2023, Axios Charlotte reported in a Jan. 23 report.

Charlotte City Council approved $26.4 million in Housing Trust Fund investments on May 12 to support 13 affordable housing developments citywide, according to a city announcement. Those investments are expected to create about 816 affordable homes. Whether the Weddington Road project received any of that funding could not be confirmed from available records.

DreamKey Partners, founded in 1989, rebranded from the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Housing Partnership in March 2021 and has completed more than $392 million in real estate development across the Charlotte region, South Carolina and Georgia.

WCNC previously reported a groundbreaking was expected by mid-2026, but DreamKey has not publicly confirmed a construction start date.