Tag Archives: affordable housing

Increasing the density of London’s suburbs

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The mayor of London recently released a new planning document for the city and it includes more housing in the city’s suburban areas:

Often, [suburbia] stays under the radar of urban theorists and policymakers. But it is emerging as a major untapped resource and, therefore, a battleground in the struggle to find somewhere, anywhere, to put new housing. Last week, the mayor, Sadiq Khan, revealed his draft for the new London Plan, the document that will guide the planning decisions of the city’s boroughs. He wants – and who wouldn’t? – more housing, more of it affordable, well designed and energy-efficient, complete with spaces that encourage walking, cycling and the use of public transport. He has limited powers – he can’t, for example, ordain the large-scale public housing programmes that even the estate agents Savills now thinks are necessary – but he can manipulate the planning system to promote some kinds of development over others.

His eyes alighted on the suburbs. Between the First and Second World Wars, while London’s population increased by 17%, its land area doubled, a reflection of its rapid suburban expansion at a much lower density than its historic centre. In theory, this means that if suburban densities could be nudged up, very many more homes could be accommodated within London’s boundaries. As Professor Tony Travers, of the London School of Economics, says, Greater London could house 20 million people if it was all built to the same density as the inner borough of Islington.

So Khan wants to encourage, within 800 metres of transport links, developments that provide more housing in the same space. In doing so, he hopes to encourage smaller-scale developers and lower-cost housing, in contrast to the luxury towers promoted by his predecessor, Boris Johnson, in the name of meeting housing needs. This might mean building on gardens or building at four storeys instead of two.

He has, say Tory opponents, “declared war on the suburbs” and will make them “overcrowded and harder to get around”. Yet making suburbs denser could make them better. In principle, having more inhabitants means more life in town centres and high streets, which makes shops and businesses more viable and makes it easier to sustain such things as local bus services.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out in one of the most expensive cities in the world. Building suburbs to higher densities is a popular idea among a number of architects, planners, and urbanists in the United States for many of the same reasons but opposition from established suburbanites can be fierce as increased density is perceived to threaten a suburban way of life (more land, more driving, more exclusivity in terms of class and race).

I wonder if the solution in the London area is in the part cited above: keep the higher densities to mass transit nodes. Plans do not necessarily have to include higher densities everywhere in suburbs; rather, transit-oriented development could concentrate more and cheaper housing in locations where new residents can easily access mass transit options for the entire region.

Portlanders turn conservative when cheaper housing is proposed near them

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The Oregonian addresses housing issues in the Portland area:

As progressive as Portlanders like to believe themselves to be, there’s no issue like population growth and housing to bring out their inner conservative. As the city’s population has surged, established neighborhoods have sought historic designation to guard against change. Homeowners in wealthy enclaves are posting yard signs decrying demolitions. And longtime residents are bemoaning the loss of “neighborhood character” amid the growth.

So it’s not surprising that the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability is pulled in different directions, trying to calm irked neighbors while laying the groundwork for how the city will absorb new residents. Unfortunately, some of the proposals in the bureau’s draft “Residential Infill Project” – a plan for updating development rules in single-family neighborhoods – lean too heavily on ensuring the comfort of existing homeowners rather than helping create new ones…

But Tracy said the bureau felt it important to continue discussion about the challenges and opportunities that these narrow lots provide. The bureau’s right and deserves both credit and support for being willing to push forward the issue. Because for as much as people want to blame Portland’s housing crisis on greedy landlords or “McMansion” developers or rich California transplants, the problem boils down to the dispassionate laws of supply and demand. There are far too few homes and apartments in the city at far too few affordable price points for far too many people who need them.

I do not think it is easy anywhere in the United States to convince wealthier homeowners that cheaper housing should be built near them. It is one thing to suggest that wealthier residents should pay more taxes or promote affordable housing in the abstract. It is whole other deal to suggest that such homeowners should have to live near those people who need the affordable housing.

Another way to put it: if Portland with its well-known liberal politics and metropolitan planning boundary cannot promote affordable housing, who can?

(A side thought: it would be interesting to hear more from local experts how race plays into this. Portland may be a progressive city but it is also quite white – “the whitest big city in America.”)

Could the loss of SALT deductions lead to cheaper and denser housing?

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Perhaps a solution to the affordable housing issue affecting many major American cities and their surrounding regions is in the contentious current tax cut debates: removing the SALT (state and local taxes) deductions. The consistent commentary on this is that it will hurt residents and homeowners in blue states where local property taxes and sales taxes tend to be higher. But, could this drive people, developers and builders, and local officials toward cheaper and denser housing?

The reasoning could work like this: larger homes and lots mean more taxes that cannot be deducted from federal taxes. To avoid this, people might prefer smaller and cheaper houses. Communities could balance out the reduction in property tax value per housing unit by building more units. (This leads to another issue many communities do not want to face: providing more services for more residents, particularly schools.) Or, communities could pursue other kinds of development that could pay those higher property taxes – businesses, for example – or pursue creative solutions (merging public services? revenue sharing?) to address funding issues.

Could this help break the affordable housing logjam in places like New Jersey or the Bay Area? Wealthier neighborhoods and suburbs would still resist.

(Perhaps this should be part of a series of creative ways to address affordable housing issues. It reminds me of an earlier post where I suggested the lack of affordable housing could lead to population growth in less desirable locations.)

Fighting over affordable housing in Cedar Rapids

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Lest you think NIMBY responses to new housing are limited to expensive cities, here is a case of opposition to 45 affordable housing units in Cedar Rapids, Iowa:

Neighbors said they didn’t oppose affordable housing per se, but that they feared the burden of the construction on their area, citing issues such as an increase in traffic and car accidents, potential flooding, and a lack of walkability for incoming residents. The developer said it had selected the site because it would immerse residents in a middle-density community with access to family amenities, including a bus stop, parks, and an elementary school.

At first, it looked like NIMBYism had prevailed: The petition and complaints convinced the city planning commission to vote against the request to rezone the property at an April 2016 meeting. But a few months later, the proposal was revived, becoming a test of what it would take to defeat neighborhood concerns and develop affordable housing that was integrated into rather than segregated from low-poverty communities.

That’s when the real animosity started to emerge, according to Phoebe Trepp, the director of Willis Dady, the local homeless services organization that would provide assistance at the development…

City leaders are also interested in spreading affordable housing throughout the city, rather than clustering it in the poorer southeast quadrant. Susie Weinacht, a City Council member at large, says that city staff want “housing options available throughout the community.”

This sounds fairly typical. A decent-sized community has difficulty providing affordable housing as well as dealing with homelessness. The city wants to spread the affordable units throughout the city so that poorer residents are not concentrated in one area (and perhaps to limit political opposition if one area had to host more units). Residents are not happy about this. They raise all sorts of common concerns about new developments – traffic, too much density near single-family homes, water issues, negative effects on property values – while also hinting at issues of race, ethnicity, and class (not cited in the excerpt above but more details are in the full article). A public debate ensues, one side wins, and the other side is not happy.

Is there a better way to do this whole process? Toward the end of the article, an official says that affordable housing initiatives work best when the support is from the grassroots (rather than planned by local or larger governments). This is probably true. Yet, how does one convince working-class to upper-class residents that it is in their interests to live near affordable housing? This is an incredibly tough sell to make to many Americans.

It is also worth asking about how the neighborhood fares within five, ten, twenty years of the construction of affordable housing units. Are the fears of Cedar Rapids neighbors unfounded? Does a denser development significantly alter the character of the community and drive existing residents away? Having some of these facts may not matter to some residents but showing some data could help ground the discussions in reality rather than emphasizing possible negative effects.

Crossing the line into NIMBYism

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Author Margaret Atwood is opposed to an eight story residential building that would back up to her home in pricey Toronto. In some exchanges on social media, Atwood was accused of a NIMBY attitude. This raises an interesting question: when does one’s actions move from normal concerns about a home or neighborhood and into NIMBYism? Here is a description of Atwood’s concerns:

As the debate escalated, Atwood threw shade at a prominent local urbanist, accusing him of being in the pocket of developers, and went toe-to-toe with the architecture critic of a major Canadian newspaper.

The exchanges were confusing because, historically, Atwood has championed urban issues. She fought cuts to the Toronto Public Library under Mayor Rob Ford and opposed a plan by the University of Toronto to cover one of its historic green spaces in artificial turf.

In actuality, the opposition Atwood officially registered with the city was muted compared to those of others, particularly her husband, author Graeme Gibson.

“[The condo] hover[s] close to a brutal and arrogant assault on a community that has been here since the 19th Century,” he wrote in an email to the local city councillor.

In her email, Atwood focused on potential damage to several trees with roots in the development area, and later insisted on Twitter she would prefer affordable housing and a community center in the building.

In really expensive markets, perhaps anyone opposed to new housing units could be accused of NIMBYism. In many cities, there is a shortage of affordable housing and, as the article notes, it seems like wealthier residents do not want to live near cheaper housing and they have the clout to contest development. Additionally, it is difficult to imagine how sufficient housing units could be provided without making major changes to neighborhoods and cities as a whole.

But, is there also a way that NIMBYism is particularly expressed? This particular article hints at three possible distinctions. First, her husband used particular language. Perhaps taking a haughty or dismissive tone does not help. Second, Atwood has fought for the people regarding other city issues so perhaps she is not the average, out-of-touch wealthy resident. Third, Atwood may be trying to make a more nuanced argument – not opposed to the building but opposed to its uses – but this is difficult to relay through social media and it may not matter in a city like Toronto where housing is a controversial issue.

For better or worse, NIMBY is in the eye of the beholder. When arguments about land use and personal property arise, they are often heated. Accusing an opponent of NIMBY and the related idea that they are trying to keep people away from what they already have is a common tactic. Whether this application of a label helps the process in the long run is another matter to consider.

No cheap homes left at the bottom of the housing market

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One downside of increasing housing values is that the lower end of the market also rises:

More telling is that at the start of 2013, when home prices were just beginning to bounce off the bottom of the housing crash, the share of homes sold above $500,000 was just 9 percent of all sales. Today that share is more than 14 percent. The share of lowest-priced home sales today is less than half of what it was then as well.

“On the lower end, there is virtually no property at a very low price level anymore,” said Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the National Association of Realtors. “The same property has been moved up to a different price bucket just because the prices have been rising strongly, over 40 percent price appreciation in the past five years. We are not getting the transactions on the lower end because there is virtually no inventory on the lower end.”

In the wake of the housing crisis, investors bought thousands of low-priced, distressed homes, putting a price bottom on the market but also removing lower-priced inventory. The expectation at the time was that if prices jumped, the investors would sell. For the most part, they did not. In fact, investors continue to buy properties, even at peak prices today because both the rental market and the market to flip these homes are so lucrative…

Homebuilders are continuing to increase production and selling homes they haven’t even built at a historically fast pace. They are not, however, putting up low-priced homes, even though demand there is high. They argue they cannot make the margins work, given the high costs of land, labor, materials and regulation. The median price of a newly built home recently hit a record high.

Two quick thoughts:

  1. I thought letting this go to the markets would solve the problem. In other words, if there is a need for cheaper housing, shouldn’t the market correct? It does not appear this is happening as builders do not want to have smaller margins. Some interventions may be necessary if no businesses see an opportunity.
  2. This makes the issue of affordable housing even more difficult. Many big cities already have major shortages of affordable housing. If prices keep increasing and little is being built at the lower end, might be drastic consequences?

Over decades, luxury housing can become affordable housing

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Several examples suggest one source of affordable housing today is luxury housing built decades ago:

One of these complexes was the Timberlee in suburban Raleigh Hills, a close-in suburban neighborhood. According to The Oregonian, the Timberlee on SW 38th Place was one of the most prosperous of the 13 apartment complexes it examined in its story, with 97 percent of its 214 units rented.

The Timberlee Apartments are still around today. While none of the units are currently for rent, according to Apartments.com, rents in the area run from about $1,000 for studios and one-bedroom units to $1,300 and more for two-bedroom and larger apartments. By today’s standards, the Timberlee seems modest, and a bit dated, rather than luxurious…

New housing is almost always built for and sold to the high end of the marketplace. It was that way 100 years ago and 50 years ago. But as it ages, housing depreciates and moves down market. The luxury apartments of two or three decades ago have lost most of their luster, and command relatively lower rents. And the truth is, that’s how we’ve always generated more affordable housing, through the process that economists call “filtering.” And the new self-styled “luxury” apartments we’re building today will be the affordable housing of 2040 and 2050 and later.

What causes affordability problems to arise is when we stop building new housing, or build it too slowly to cause aging housing to filter down-market. When new high-priced housing doesn’t get built, demand doesn’t disappear, instead, those higher-income households bid up the price of the existing housing stock, keeping it from becoming more affordable. Which is why otherwise prosaic 1,500-foot ranch houses in Santa Monica sell for a couple of million bucks, while physically similar 1950’s era homes in the rest of the country are either now highly affordable—or candidates for demolition.

If this is one of the larger sources for affordable housing, then the lesson seems to be that we just need to construct lots of housing all the time. Not all of the expensive housing will filter down to cheaper prices but some will as it ages and the neighborhood or community conditions change.

In the bigger picture, this also suggests there is not an easy immediate fix to affordable housing. Once it is identified as a problem in a community or region, it may be too late. Instead, the housing built today – and even housing proposed right now often takes a while to go through the full planning, approval, and construction process – could affect conditions decades later.

Will a major need for affordable housing lead to population gains in less desirable places?

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As I read another story the other day about a need for affordable or reasonably priced housing – this time for aging baby boomers – it led me to a hypothetical question: would people move to less desirable locations if housing there was significantly cheaper? Many Americans have retired to cheaper locations that also have other amenities like nice weather (think Florida and Arizona). But, would they move to cheaper suburbs within a metropolitan region that perhaps has a lower quality of life or move to a new state that is cheaper but less glamorous (think a move from the Chicago region to Kansas or Youngstown, Ohio)? In other words, would they trade fewer amenities for cheaper housing? Is cheap housing so big of an issue that many people will move to acquire it? Conservatives argue that people should vote with their feet. And the continued population gains of the Sunbelt suggest that they do, to some degree. But, people have particular ideas about what they expect when they move. For retiring, they often want to go somewhere warm. For affordable housing, they want to go to nice communities.

These desires strike me as normal in our society: people want a nice yet affordable place to live. However, is this possible? Does the movement of people to particular locations drive up prices and long-term costs (providing a higher quality of life has to be paid for by someone)? In the end, can you really have it all: an affordable place to live but with great care or nice amenities or a high quality of life? Maybe not.

Imagine affordable housing is such an issue in the Bay Area that a large group of retirees decides to move to a small town in North Dakota. With the money made on the sale of their homes in the Bay Area (or the large rents they save), they have money left over to both save for the future and put into the local community. Granted, North Dakota doesn’t have the same kind of life as the Bay Area – no major city, different weather and topography, and social connections left behind – but the housing is certainly cheaper and the anxiety about day to day existence might be reduced. This might sound far-fetched outside of some odd religious group…but if housing is such a need, why couldn’t it happen?

Searching for communities for the under $20k house for poorer residents

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Truly cheap yet good housing is hard to find. Here is a group who thinks they found an answer though the construction may be the least of their issues:

For over a decade, architecture students at Rural Studio, Auburn University’s design-build program in a tiny town in West Alabama, have worked on a nearly impossible problem. How do you design a home that someone living below the poverty line can afford, but that anyone would want–while also providing a living wage for the local construction team that builds it?

In January, after years of building prototypes, the team finished their first pilot project in the real world. Partnering with a commercial developer outside Atlanta, in a tiny community called Serenbe, they built two one-bedroom houses, with materials that cost just $14,000 each.

The goal: To figure out how to bring the ultra-low-cost homes, called the 20K Home, to the broader market. “We’re in a kind of experimental stage of the program, where we’re really trying to find out the best practice of getting this house out into the public’s hands,” says Rusty Smith, associate director of Rural Studio. “Really this first field test was to find out all the things that we didn’t know, and to find out all of the kind of wrong assumptions that we had made, and really find out how we had screwed up, honestly.”…

In Serenbe, their first problem was a zoning issue: The houses were too small. (It’s a common problem for anyone trying to build a tiny home.) But they also realized there were numerous other issues, from dealing with insurance, to the bank. In the pilot project, the homes will be owned by the community and shared with artists as part of a residency program. But in a typical case, when someone is buying the house on a limited income and can’t afford the $20,000, banks won’t finance a mortgage for such a small amount of money.

It is worthwhile to consider that the actual construction is not the issue. Rather, how many communities and institutions really want to have cheap housing nearby? This is a common problem with creating cheaper housing: it is often within communities that are already cheaper, leading to issues like a lack of property value appreciation, a concentration of lower income residents, limited local tax revenues, and a stigma for the community.

The real trick with cheaper housing, then, is to be able to intersperse it among more expensive housing. We know this is especially helpful for young kids. (Thinking of the larger picture, this is why school integration wouldn’t go far enough – you don’t just want to bus students to go to school together but you want a range of incomes and groups to live near each other.) Again, who is really open to this?

Legislative options to add more housing in California

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A number of legislative options are on the table in California to encourage the construction of more housing and counter the actions of nearby residents:

Dozens of the solutions floating in the state Legislature aim to address that supply problem, including several that would streamline the process by which housing projects get approved (one, for example, would limit the circumstances in which a special permit could be required to build a granny flat). Others would not-so-subtly make it much harder for local residents and government agencies to block new projects, like by requiring a two-thirds vote for any local ordinance “that would curb, delay, or deter growth or development within a city.”

That latter bill epitomizes the frustration many young working people and families have as they try to attain what was once a milestone of adulthood—homeownership—that is now out of reach for even those making decent money. Some of those folks are YIMBYs, or supporters of a “Yes in My Backyard” agenda. “We know that our housing struggles are not the result of impersonal economic forces or lack of individual effort, but derive from bad policy and bad laws that have restricted housing growth for decades,” said YIMBY leader Brian Hanlon, co-founder of the California Renters Legal Advocacy and Education Fund, at an April Assembly committee hearing….

It’s unclear what the chances for each bill are. Though legislators seem eager to spur more housing construction quickly, some of their allies might not be. Many environmentalists, for example, want new projects to comply with CEQA, the state’s landmark environmental law that requires developers to study and possibly mitigate the environmental impact of whatever they build. And developers are never quick to embrace mandates that they include affordable units in their projects.

If the bills do pass, will any of them actually make a dent in what’s become a crippling problem all across the state? The Sacramento Bee’s Dan Walters recently wrote off the current proposals in the Legislature as “tepid, marginal approaches that would do little to close the gap.” Cuff admits many critics dismiss individual bills as a drop in the bucket. “But on the other hand, let’s put a drop in the bucket,” she says. “A drop is better than a drought.”

This is a long-term issue that may take decades to work out. The issue is complicated as it involves social class, race and ethnicity, understandings of local control, and property values.The article notes that some claim the legislative suggestions thus far are too small and I suspect a number of the bills would lead to lawsuits from communities and residents.

If I had to make a prediction (a near impossible task) based on what has happened in many suburbs throughout the United States, I would guess that the wealthier communities will find ways around these legislative actions. This could happen through the courts as they can better afford the time and money or there could be loopholes in the bills. Either way, the burden of the affordable or cheaper housing will likely fall on communities that are lower income and non-white.