Political | Process

Chappelle was among a group of citizens in Yellow Springs, Ohio, who expressed concerns at a Monday town hall about a residential development plan that incorporated low-cost housing options into the design.

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• Chappelle even went as far as to threaten to withdraw his future business plans if the housing options were approved.

“I am not bluffing,” he said at the council meeting. “I will take it all off the table.” The comedian then walked abruptly away from the mic.

• Chappelle currently lives on the outskirts of Yellow Springs on a 39-acre farm that the comedian purchased in 2015. The plans could have potentially reached the borders of Chappelle’s property, reported the Daily Mail.

• The comedian had also bought an old firehouse in Yellow Springs in 2020, with plans to convert it into a restaurant and comedy club.

• The town had worked with Ohio housing company Oberer Homes to produce a plan that included low-cost housing options in a 53-acre area, reported the Dayton Daily News.

• The village council voted 2-2 with one abstention, forcing the plan to revert to the previously approved plan, which would provide 143 single-family homes, each valued at $300,000.

• The new plan would have had “64 single-family homes, 52 duplexes and 24 townhomes with an additional 1.75 acres to be donated to the community for low-cost housing to be built later,”

• Chappelle and other residents expressed concerns about more mundane aspects of the construction affecting the town, including traffic flow, the nature of the proposed homeowner’s association, and water management.

• “Dave Chappelle didn’t kill affordable housing,” Carla Sims, spokesperson for Dave Chapelle told the Washington Examiner. “Concerned residents  and a responding Village Council ‘killed’ a half-baked plan which never actually offered affordable housing.”

• Chappelle did not have an issue with affordable housing, Sims claims. What he had an issue with was the “poorly vetted, cookie-cutter, sprawl-style development deal which has little regard for the community, culture and infrastructure” of Yellow Springs.