Tag Archives: affordable housing

Making a clear contrast: “Micro-apartments: The anti-McMansions”

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CNN profiles micro-apartments and frames them as the opposite of McMansions:

Move over McMansions: These days, pint-sized, micro-apartments are all the rage.

Typically ranging between 180 and 300 square-feet, these tiny apartments are becoming increasingly popular among the young-and-single set and even some retirees, seeking affordable places to live in the nation’s costliest cities.

Nowhere is the micro trend hotter than in Seattle. More than 40 micro-apartment developments have been built in the city in the past three years, according to Jim Potter, chairman of Kauri Group, a Seattle-based developer. Many of these apartment buildings offer shared patios, roof decks and even communal kitchens. (Zoning laws in Seattle allow up to eight apartments to share one kitchen)…

The key selling point is affordability. In Seattle, 250-square-foot apartments rent for under $800 a month, almost half the average $1,400 people pay for newly built studios of 400 square feet or more in the city, according to Potter.

The first comparison is not surprising: as McMansions came to be the symbol of large houses, micro-apartments are just the opposite. The whole unit is the size of perhaps a smaller owner’s suite in a McMansion and often features space-saving designs.

The second comparison is less common: micro-apartments are also cheap compared to McMansions. Particularly in the cities cited in this article, places like Seattle or San Francisco, affordable housing is in short supply. Micro-apartments may be small but more importantly, they give people an opportunity to live closer to work and in or near places they couldn’t afford otherwise. McMansions were also known for their price, or at least for the mortgages that owners had to take on. The comparison is not perfect since McMansions are assumed to be in the suburbs and less of an issue in the big city.

It will be interesting to see how this comparison plays out down the road. McMansions are a powerful symbol while micro-apartments are on the rise and still could change quite a bit as they grow in number and spread to more places. The article hints at one change: the micro-apartments might be popular with retirees. Such a development could set up some interesting stories of

Continued lack of affordable housing in Chicago’s northern suburbs

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Affordable housing is a problem throughout the Chicago region but here is a closer look at the current state of affordable housing in Chicago’s North Shore suburbs:

Under the law, the Illinois Housing Development Authority in 2004 identified 49 communities where less than 10 percent of the housing was deemed affordable. At least nine of them are on the North Shore, including Winnetka, Wilmette, Highland Park, Deerfield, Northbrook, and Lake Forest.

Reactions to the law varied in those communities. Highland Park aggressively pursued ways to make affordable housing available. Northbrook took a more casual approach and set general goals. In Winnetka, after years of heated debate, officials voted in 2011 to just stop talking about the issue…

But over the last ten years, the affordable housing that has been added “is a drop in a bucket,” she said.

“The economy is bouncing back, but a lot of these communities are still catering to the rich,” said Schechter.

A significant barrier for affordable housing in the North Shore is the lack of undeveloped land and the high price of properties, said Richard Koenig, executive director of the Housing Opportunity Development Corporation.

It doesn’t look to me like much has changed. The 2004 Illinois law hasn’t done much as many communities already met the requirements (based on a formula that may then be too lax), it has little ability to enforce anything, and there are still continuing issues of affordable housing. I think there is also some disconnect about who the affordable housing is supposed to serve. In my experience, when suburbs like those on the North Shore talk about affordable housing, they are more willing to do something when they are talking about public servants, like teachers, police officers, and firefighters, or people who have been in the community before, like kids who grew up in the suburb or retired residents, who have difficulty living there on limited incomes. These suburbs are not thinking as much about the retail or service industry or laborers that might work in their communities.

This shouldn’t be too surprising: given the opportunity, most wealthier suburbs will zone land in such a way that the housing prices and options cater to a wealthier crowd. Affordable housing is an issue that should be taken care of by other suburbs, such as more working- or lower-class communities.

Housing for the poor in Hong Kong

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Like in many global cities, affordable housing is a big issue in Hong Kong:

Some 100,000 people in the former British colony live in what’s known as inadequate housing, according to the Society for Community Organization, a social welfare group. The category also includes apartments subdivided into tiny cubicles or filled with coffin-sized wood and metal sleeping compartments as well as rooftop shacks. They’re a grim counterpoint to the southern Chinese city’s renowned material affluence.

Forced by skyrocketing housing prices to live in cramped, dirty and unsafe conditions, their plight also highlights one of the biggest headaches facing Hong Kong’s unpopular Beijing-backed leader: growing public rage over the city’s housing crisis.

Leung Chun-ying took office as Hong Kong’s chief executive in July pledging to provide more affordable housing in a bid to cool the anger. Home prices rose 23 percent in the first 10 months of 2012 and have doubled since bottoming out in 2008 during the global financial crisis, the International Monetary Fund said in a report last month. Rents have followed a similar trajectory…

His comments mark a distinct shift from predecessor Donald Tsang, who ignored the problem. Legislators and activists, however, slammed Leung for a lack of measures to boost the supply in the short term. Some 210,000 people are on the waiting list for public housing, about double from 2006. About a third of Hong Kong’s 7.1 million population lives in public rental flats. When apartments bought with government subsidies are included, the figure rises to nearly half…

While cage homes, which sprang up in the 1950s to cater mostly to single men coming in from mainland China, are becoming rarer, other types of substandard housing such as cubicle apartments are growing as more families are pushed into poverty. Nearly 1.19 million people were living in poverty in the first half of last year, up from 1.15 million in 2011, according to the Hong Kong Council Of Social Services. There’s no official poverty line but it’s generally defined as half of the city’s median income of HK$12,000 ($1,550) a month.

While many cities face this issue (including long waiting lists for public housing in Chicago), the contrasts are stark in Hong Kong which boasts a world-class business district. Add this to lack of open space, leading to higher housing prices, and this is an issue that likely requires an ambitious plan over many years to even address part of this housing shortage.

Daily Herald encourages new planning regarding housing in northwest Chicago suburbs

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Housing is a metropolitan issue that is often addressed community to community, if at all. The Daily Herald highlights recent efforts in the northwest Chicago suburbs:

In an era when housing development has slowed nearly to a halt, it can feel misguided to be talking about what kind of housing to build in a town and where to build it. But “Homes for a Changing Region” merits attention for a couple of reasons.

One, even the gravest cynic expects the economy will one day turn around and people again will be looking for comfortable homes in inviting communities. So, it’s best to begin preparing now for the types of homes they’ll be looking for.

Plus, the report — produced by the Metropolitan Mayors Caucus, Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning and the regional Metropolitan Planning Council, all with the support of the five communities involved — introduces some new concepts that can help towns be smarter in their development. For one, it encourages cooperation among towns whose development futures seem intrinsically linked. For another, it focuses on reality rather than whim — the needs of residents a town is likely to have in the future rather than of residents it has today or even that it might hope to attract. It envisions an environment in which developers respond to the identifiable marketing needs of particular towns, rather than towns responding to the marketing goals of particular developers.

It’s a worthwhile approach, emphasizing data and efficiency. And it’s about to be applied in another collection of local communities — Carpentersville, East Dundee, Elgin and West Dundee. There, as in the Northwest collaborative, people may find the language more cumbersome and less thrilling than, to make a timely comparison, counting off the stats of a superstar quarterback or comparing defenses of teams from distant towns in the NFL. But. the end result can certainly have a more direct and beneficial impact on their quality of life at home.

Housing is a pressing issue in the Chicago region, particularly since affordable housing is lacking in the city of Chicago. Add to that the trend of decades-long job growth in and movement to the suburbs and there is also a lack of affordable housing in many Chicago suburbs, particularly in wealthier communities. While the Illinois legislature tried to address this in the 2000s, not much has changed.

Even with these new planning efforts, it remains to be seen how much this changes local communities. It sounds like there is a certain number of suburbs in one particular area who are interested but they need more support, not just across suburbs and regional groups, but within their own communities as they go forward with new housing plans. What happens if the suburb of Buffalo Grove, village of just over 41,000 and a median household income of over $91,000 and a poverty rate of 2.9%, and this planning group decides a development of affordable housing needs to be located near an upper-end subdivision? I imagine suburbanites would like the idea of developers responding to needs but what happens if these goals don’t line up?

Converting American churches into housing units

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More American churches are being converted into housing units:

The building is one of a number of church-to-home luxury conversions popping up around the country. As dozens of churches close or move to different quarters each year, they’re finding second lives as condo developments and townhouses.

The conversion process is growing more common as shrinking congregations and shifting demographics have made it difficult for some congregations to stay afloat financially. According to a March report from CoStar Group, a real-estate research firm, 138 church-owned properties across the country were sold by banks last year, compared with 24 three years earlier…

Architects have found creative ways to convert these historic buildings—which often have 40- or 50-foot-high ceilings, few or no interior walls and stained-glass windows—into homes and apartments that will sell for millions of dollars.

But it isn’t an easy process: Not only do the structures need intensive interior reconstruction and upgrades to meet modern building codes, but they often have been granted landmark status, further complicating renovations.

This is a good example of retrofitting. As the article notes, hundreds of churches have closed in recent years and converting the churches generally leaves the outside while making the interior reusable. One irony in this story is that I have read in recent years about growing conservative churches making use of vacant shopping structures, often big box stores, rather than building new churches or megachurches. So, in the suburbs, some churches are sacralizing profane spaces while in cities, new residents are secularizing once-sacred spaces.

It would also be interesting to hear how these new residential units were received in the communities in which they were built. The article profiles individual owners and builders but doesn’t talk much about the zoning process or reactions from neighbors. It sounds like people generally want to save the historic church buildings but there might be concerns about adding new residents. On the other hand, converting the churches means the property can be added to the tax rolls and generate revenue for the community.

Also, the examples of this article include fairly expensive condos and housing units. Has anyone turned churches into truly affordable housing? If so, the mission of the church might continue even if a congregation no longer meets there.

Increase in McMansion construction in Australia

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The real growth in McMansions may be taking place in Australia:

But research reveals that while the size of Australian families is shrinking, our appetite for McMansions has supersized, with construction of six-or-more-bedroom homes jumping 21 per cent during the past five years.

And the number of five-bedroom McMansions increased 20 per cent over the same period, according to the 2011 Census data.

Demographer Mark McCrindle said despite forecasts of a McMansion glut in Australia – similar to parts of the US – the McDonald’s of housing is a vision of things to come rather than a relic of the past.

“McMansion popularity is being fuelled by the Sandwich generation, multigenerational households where parents have grown-up children and their own parents living at home,” Mr McCrindle said.

“It’s about affordability. The McMansion is efficient for homebuyers looking for big, cheap housing, it’s also about floor space that is flexible and adapts to a family’s changing needs.”…

Mr McCrindle said while new land blocks are getting smaller, Australians are building the largest houses in the world on those blocks. The average size of a new home is 10 per cent larger than the average new American home.

This raises several questions for me. One, will the fate that befall the United States that was partly attributed to McMansions also befall Australia? The argument made by some in the US is that the overconstruction and overconsumption of McMansions inevitably led to a housing and economic crisis. Is this necessarily the case or are there other factors in Australia that would change the outcome? Second, are these McMansions as bad as critics suggest if a good number of them are housing multigenerational families? McMansions are often criticized for being resource-hungry homes but some may be operating as more affordable housing (for some).

 

A tiny house community in Washington, D.C.

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The Stronghold neighborhood of Washington, D.C. now features a small community of 200-square foot tiny houses:

The group behind Stronghold’s tiny-house community calls itself Boneyard Studios. “As property values and rents rise across the city, we want to showcase this potential option for affordable housing,” the group writes on its Web site. “We decided to live the questions: Can we build and showcase a few tiny homes on wheels in a DC urban alley lot? … Not in the woods, but in a true community, connected to a neighborhood? Yes, we think. Watch out left coast, the DC adventure begins.”

There’s one problem: The city’s zoning laws don’t allow residential dwellings on alley lots unless they are a minimum of 30 feet wide, or roughly the width of a city street. D.C. is currently discussing lifting the 30-foot restriction. So, as Boneyard Studios continues to advocate more progressive zoning laws, it is using the property to showcase what could be…

Although the diminutive homes are made of high-quality materials, they are priced for a flagging economy. They sell for $20,000 to $50,000, less than the down payment on a two-bedroom condo in a trendy D.C. neighborhood…

Despite the fact that tiny houses are, well, tiny, affordable-housing advocates are researching the possibility that attractive micro homes could one day complement or replace stigmatized trailer parks and low-income housing, especially in places such as the District, where they could be built in unused vacant spaces such as alleys.

This sounds like an interesting project. Still, these tiny houses could face a number of issues before being approved as affordable housing. Besides their size, how many people can fit in each tiny house, and how long each house might last, how many property owners would want to live next to these tiny houses? Even if these houses don’t have the stigma of trailer parks, residents and neighborhoods tend to worry about property values. Simply having smaller and cheaper houses nearby might lower other housing prices.

Additionally, how might these tiny houses be grouped or placed – would they be in rows, scattered in an open space or bigger lot, or on individual lots? Would a concentration of tiny houses fit under the same residential zoning categories as single-family homes or multi-family housing because of a greater density?

I imagine the neighbors will ask some of these questions and want good answers. Interestingly, the article does not cite any neighbors to the Stronghold colony of tiny houses.

Trial of 220 square foot apartments moves forward in San Francisco

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A trial run of “micro-apartments” has been approved in San Francisco:

San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors tentatively approved Tuesday a trial run of 220-square-foot “micro-apartments” — carefully designed compact living spaces that have become all the rage in urban development. Pending ratification and mayoral approval next month, the plan beats, in smallness, Vancouver’s 226-square-foot “micro-lofts,” and make the 275-square-foot units under trial in New York look like airplane hangars…

Depending on your perspective, the tiny living spaces are either a much-needed option for single people crushed by climbing rents, or community-destroying crash pads for young techie weekenders. Either way, the competition is fierce for creative floor-plan designs that do more with much, much less. The San Francisco measure requires of a minimum of 150 square feet of living space, plus a bathroom and kitchen, though the kitchen can be integrated into the living area. The trial approves 375 units total.

For a clue to what the micro-apartments will look like, Wired toured San Francisco’s new “SmartSpace” micro-apartment complex, which was unveiled last week by developer Patrick Kennedy — an advocate for the new, smaller limits. SmartSpace crams 23 units into its footprint, each 285 to 310 square feet. The floor plan is similar to the even smaller units Kennedy plans to build now that the new measure has passed, he says.

SmartSpace contains narrow rooms with a bathroom at the front, a wall-mounted TV over a computer workstation, and a window seat with a hydraulic pop-up table. (They call it “SmartBench.”) In some units, a fold-up bed reveals an integrated dining table. A closet near the bathroom was designed to hold a washer and dryer and some appliances, including a small convection oven. There’s a dishwasher, but no oven under the small, two-burner electric stove. High ceilings, says Kennedy, were key, noting that they had a grad student live in a 160-square-foot prototype in Berkeley, and made some significant design changes based on her input.

It is interesting to note the opposition these apartments have faced in San Francisco. It sounds like there are a few issues: do the units meet some basic requirements for living space, how will they affect the affordable housing market (and who will end up living in the micro-apartments), and where these units will be located and how the residents will interact with the surrounding community. But, if this size of apartment has worked in other cities, why couldn’t San Francisco look at the best examples and set tough regulations?

Also, I was struck in looking at these plans that more space could be created by transforming the unit more. For example, the small spaces in the IKEA showrooms tend to have a loft bed so it frees up more space. Or other small apartments utilize moving walls or space at a slight step-up. These particular plans look more like traditional apartments that have simply been shrunk to the bare essentials although this may be a function of cost.

Property values, city finances, and downtown development: controversy over approved senior housing in downtown Wheaton

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New development projects in already-developed suburban areas can attract controversy. Here is an example from downtown Wheaton, Illinois: the city council just approved a senior housing project but some of the neighbors are not happy with the change to the site and there are some questions about funding and whether the city will be left with a bill.

The council voted 4-3 this week to allow construction of a 167-unit facility on a site once slated for luxury condominiums as part of the Courthouse Square complex at the corner of Naperville Road and Willow Avenue…

The approval came after nine planning and zoning board meetings totaling more than 24 hours with testimony from experts, opponents and supporters. In a nearly unanimous vote in August, that board recommended the council deny the zoning plans.

The original proposal for the complex, supported by the council in 2004, called for a mix of townhouses and condos. But developers cited the housing market crash when they pulled the plug on what were supposed to be the second and third midrise buildings. Northfield-based Focus Development Inc. and West Chicago-based Airhart Construction Corp. partnered on the project.

The saga continued when developers asked to amend the plan to allow senior housing, angering some Courthouse Square residents who argued they were promised a strictly residential community when they bought their units.

I’m not sure how this will all play out in court and whether the current residents have a case against the developers. However, here are a few thoughts about this:

1. Senior citizen housing would be helpful in Wheaton. As a more mature community that is relatively wealthy, there are relatively less places in the community for seniors to live in affordable housing. Indeed, when communities like Wheaton do talk about affordable, they tend to be talking about seniors and young people who would like to be in the community but don’t have the resources due to their stage in life to remain.

2. Wheaton has been on a longer program of introducing more housing into the downtown, starting with the condominiums built in the early 1990s across the street from the downtown train station. While higher-end housing might bring in more revenue and people who have more spending power to spread around the downtown, having some development in this space rather than none might be preferable.

3. Like in many suburban debates about development, it sounds like this is partly (mainly?) about property values. The existing residents don’t want their higher-end units to suffer because senior-citizen housing is built nearby instead of other high end units. This could be one of those situations where it would help to take a bigger view: Wheaton would like to offer more affordable housing for seniors and this land is available so perhaps property values can’t or shouldn’t be the overriding concern here.

4. More than ever because of the economic crisis, revenues matter in these situations. Some are concerned that the city, and therefore, taxpayers, might be on the hook if the development doesn’t work out in a certain way. This would be a strike against downtown redevelopment plans; the goal is to generate new revenues, property and sales taxes, not saddle the municipality with new costs.

Director of embattled DuPage Housing Authority let go

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A leader brought in to reform the DuPage Housing Authority has been let go after eight months:

[David] Hoicka, who had served in senior management for housing agencies in Texas, Louisiana, and Hawaii, was hired in January as part of ongoing efforts to overhaul the Wheaton-based agency that once mismanaged more than $10 million in federal funding.

He replaced John Day, who was forced to resign last year after the U.S. Office of Inspector General released two audits critical of the agency. A third audit concluded the agency improperly spent more than $5.8 million in federal money and failed to adequately document another $4.7 million.

Hoicka took the reins of the agency after the board conducted a nationwide search for an executive director. At the time he was hired, officials said Hoicka’s background made him an ideal choice.

In addition to publishing three handbooks on HUD housing programs, Hoicka served as an adviser for public housing groups in Southeast Asia and Bahrain in the Persian Gulf.

This organization has clearly had its problems (see an earlier post). Unfortunately, I think stories like these distract from the real issues facing the Authority and DuPage County: how to truly tackle issues like affordable housing and housing discrimination in a relatively wealthy county that is also facing demographic change.

While it is not clear here why Hoicka was fired, I have to wonder why he didn’t work out in DuPage County. From an earlier post, here is a longer list of his experience before taking this job:

Hoicka has served as chief operating officer for the housing authority in El Paso, Texas, worked as an adviser to the housing ministry in Bahrain, managed the New Orleans housing authority, and worked as branch chief for Hawaii’s Housing and Community Development Corp. He has written three manuals on HUD regulations.

DuPage County is unique in some ways but Hoicka had a wide range of experience that would seem to be helpful.