Janet Cowell

Economy
Cowell frames housing affordability as the city's central economic challenge, arguing that Raleigh's rapid population growth has pushed home prices and rents up faster than local wages, squeezing out teachers, firefighters, and police officers who work in the city but increasingly cannot afford to live in it. Her plan leans on diversifying the housing stock, including duplexes, accessory units, and smaller-footprint homes alongside traditional single-family construction, and on deepening partnerships with nonprofit developers such as DHIC to build income-restricted units for lower-wage workers. She has also pointed to tax-increment financing, used in Charlotte and Durham, as a tool to direct new development revenue toward affordable housing rather than relying solely on the general fund.

Infrastructure
On growth and building, Cowell supports a comprehensive citywide rezoning process, carried out through public hearings and staff review rather than case-by-case fights, to set clearer rules for where and how new housing and commercial space get built. She backs continued construction of the city's Bus Rapid Transit corridors and additional water, sewer, and road investment to keep pace with new development and ease traffic congestion, and she has championed adding shelter beds and permanent supportive housing, developed with service partners, for Raleigh's unhoused population. She also lists protecting the tree canopy and building flood and storm resilience into new infrastructure as priorities as the city keeps growing.

Security
Cowell's public-safety approach centers on fully staffing the police and fire departments, citing reduced vacancy rates and competitive pay increases achieved during her first term, alongside continued investment in equipment, facilities, and training. She has pushed to broaden the city's response to behavioral-health emergencies by building partnerships with Wake County and the state so that mental-health crisis teams, not only police officers, can respond to some 911 calls. Her campaign also points to flat violent-crime rates during her first two years as evidence the current strategy is working and should continue.

Governance
Cowell describes her governing style as building partnerships, with Wake County, state government, nonprofits, and the business community, rather than having the city act alone on major problems, and her campaign has held community forums, including one focused on the Latino community's priorities around housing and safety in September 2026. She points to a new city hall project and the ongoing Smoky Hollow park redevelopment as examples of the kind of long-term, collaboratively planned public projects she wants to keep steering as mayor, while acknowledging pushback from some neighborhood groups over denser approvals, such as a 27-story tower on Peace Street, as a tradeoff of managing the city's growth.