A sign may have caught the eyes of students while they rode a bus into College Street Station or walked from west campus to King Street: “Rent is too damn high. Morgan Murray for Town Council,” reads the banner hung in the window of Blue’s Brews.
Murray is the owner of the business, a bottle shop he said he started during the COVID-19 pandemic. He also works remotely for the Biltmore Estate in their IT department. His latest venture is a campaign for Boone Town Council.
Murray said he’s running for town council to give voice to residents’ complaints and return Boone to a “working-class college town.” Housing is a central issue for Murray, especially as it relates to App State students and workers in Boone.
“I want working people living in town, I want students living within walking distance of campus and I want the rent to come down,” Murray said.
According to an affordable housing digest using 2019 United States Census Bureau data, 1,856 of the 12,303 people working in Boone lived inside the city limits.
“Just look out the window at the traffic,” Murray said. “Some of it is students, but so much of it is people driving from their jobs back to where they live.”
Murray said the high percentage of commuters and the high costs of housing in Boone have negative implications for the local economy. If workers have to drive 30 minutes or more to where they live, he said, they’re not hanging out in town and giving money to local businesses.
Similarly, if individuals have to spend a majority of their income on housing, they have less money to spend locally. Instead, Murray said, it’s “siphoned out of state” to big corporations or local organizations “who aren’t necessarily going to spend money here in town.”
When talking about possible housing solutions, Murray said he wants to encourage development on King Street. Having students within walking distance of campus helps to alleviate traffic, he said, and connects students more with the local community.
The manager of Blue’s Brews, senior elementary education major Lily Russell-Pinson, said she has benefited from living downtown.
“I’ve seen firsthand how much having affordable and close housing has enhanced my college experience and I really want other people to be able to have that,” she said.
Russell-Pinson said she really liked one of Murray’s ideas for mixed-use development with retail spaces on the ground floor and residential apartments above. In general, she said she appreciates how Murray looks out for others and is ingrained in the community.
“For students, for the unhoused, for the low-income, he would be someone that was looking out for them and not looking out for the leasing managers and the property owners,” she said.
Murray also said he wanted to address the concerns of students and workers rather than tourists and wealthy residents.
“We need to stop bending over backwards to do things nice for them until we start doing things nice for students and people who need to work here,” Murray said.
Murray moved away from Boone for a period of time, but chose to move back. He said it was partially due to the beauty of the mountains and areas like the Boone Fork Trail. Murray also said he enjoyed living in a college town and being around students.
“I have loved interacting with students. There’s people that are positive, optimistic, despite how much the economy sucks for them right now. I mean, they’re full of energy.”
Community is a large value of Murray’s and he said he hopes to give back to his community both through his business and his town council campaign.
The early voting period for Town of Boone municipal elections has already started and will continue until Nov. 1. Election Day is Nov. 4. You can view your sample ballot and voting location through North Carolina Voter Search.
