Tag Archives: NIMBY

Data centers as the largest construction project ever in Indiana

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Amazon plans to construct large data center facilities in northwest Indiana:

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Amazon plans to spend $15 billion for the largest construction project in Indiana history, building data center campuses in Northwest Indiana and creating 1,100 new jobs, officials said…

Sites for them have not yet been finalized, although AWS is in negotiations with multiple communities, he said Monday…

Not too many years ago, BP’s $3.8 billion Whiting Refinery expansion was considered the largest construction project in state history. The work at the refinery kept tradespeople working through the Great Recession, Ennis noted. Building data centers will keep tradespeople working in the region for years to come…

This project’s impact on the communities’ tax base can’t be calculated until the communities are chosen and incentives are finalized, but the impact will be huge. When Microsoft chose LaPorte for a $1 billion data center, Mayor Tom Dermody said it would effectively double the city’s tax base.

Indiana is not the largest state in size or population but it is not the smallest either: it is 38th in land area and 17th in population. So I think it means something that this would be the largest project in the state’s history. The amount of money, work, and land is worth noting.

The article mentions briefly that some Indiana communities have said no to data centers. Others seem interested (as noted above). I wonder if data centers and less desirable land uses will cluster in red states or certain communities where they are seen more as business opportunities rather than community liabilities. If tech companies say they need data centers, presumably some places will approve their construction.

In this particular case, what if some of the data center activity that could go in the Chicago suburbs located in Illinois ends up in northwest Indiana? Will some Illinois and Indiana communities look back and think they missed an opportunity or will they be grateful they had the foresight to say no?

When suburbs resist affordable housing proposals, what positive outcomes are possible?

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The Chicago Tribune describes concerns leaders and residents of two North Shore suburbs have regarding affordable housing proposals:

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Case in point: Evanston’s Land Use Commission narrowly voted last Wednesday to recommend denial of a zoning application to build a 31-story, 430-unit apartment building in downtown Evanston. The tower would be among the tallest in all of Chicago’s suburbs. All the apartments would be studios, 1-bedrooms and 2-bedrooms, with 86 of the units deemed “affordable.”

The commission isn’t the last word on the project; the City Council will have that final say. But the 4-3 vote against the project reflected divisions within the community about growth. Speaking at the commission meeting, Chris Dillion, president of Chicago development firm Campbell Coyle (which isn’t developing the 605 Davis project that was the subject of the proceeding), clearly was frustrated: “Downtown Evanston cannot be preserved for only those who already are here. We need to make room for everyone,” he said, according to the Evanston RoundTable.

A majority of commissioners nonetheless thought the project was too big…

In Highland Park, another lakefront community about 14 miles north of Evanston, a fierce debate is underway about the redevelopment of a 28-acre vacant tract once the site of a Solo Cup factory. Prominent Chicago developer The Habitat Co. has proposed building 232 townhomes.

A recent meeting of the village’s Plan Commission on the project featured pointed criticisms, jeering and disruptions from residents complaining about the usual things when substantial residential developments are proposed — traffic and the impact on schools. But one resident complained that because some of the units were envisioned as rentals, the new residents would be “transient” and not invested in the future of Highland Park, according to a Tribune report.

The commission didn’t vote on whether to recommend approval, but a majority of commissioners expressed misgivings. Habitat partner Kathie Jahnke Dale said that any major reduction in the density, which already had been scaled back from a prior proposal, would lead the developer to walk away, likely leaving the site “vacant for another 15 years.”

This resistance is not unusual. For decades, suburbanites in the Chicago and across the United States have often resisted proposed developments that would bring denser and/or affordable units to their communities. Leaders and residents bring up concerns about noise, traffic, density out of line with the surrounding area, threats to property values and local quality of life, and concerns about the residents who would live in new residences.

Given this consistent opposition, what positive outcomes are possible regarding suburban proposals for affordable housing? Some thoughts on the possible options:

  1. Approval of the proposal in its initial form. This is rare. But there must be examples that could serve as models that others could learn from. What factors in suburbs lead to approving needed affordable housing from the start?
  2. A significantly smaller proposal. This happens quite a bit with proposals for suburban development: the initial pitch from the developer is considered and in the discussion with the community, the number of units is reduced. Take the Evanston example above slated for 31 stories and 430 units. Given the concerns expressed, perhaps the community would be okay with 15 stories and 200 or so units. Or with townhouses as in the second example, the density is reduced a bit with more open space provided. These changes can lessen the affordable housing contribution made but at least some affordable housing units are added.
  3. I do not know if proposals that are rejected all together can be positive. Perhaps it encourages an ongoing conversation in the community? Perhaps turning down a reasonable proposal galvanizes local efforts to support affordable housing?

For new affordable housing to be constructed in suburbs, my sense is that significant support needs to come from local leaders and residents who can articulate how this will benefit the community. Since many suburbanites will see such proposals as a threat, what about them adds to the community?

The reasons Americans give for fighting against data centers in their communities

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As the number of data centers in the United States is growing, some residents are fighting back:

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Meanwhile, grassroots resistance to unchecked growth is on the rise. In Memphis, locals are trying to shut down an xAI facility powered by turbines they say are polluting the air in a historically black community that already suffers high rates of respiratory illness. A couple in Georgia told reporters their water taps went dry after Meta broke ground on a $750 million development in Newton County. In suburban northern Virginia, where the massive warehouses have become a fixture of everyday life, citizens complain that the developments are encroaching on neighbourhoods and homes at an alarming rate. In Prince William County, locals have even coalesced to try to change local ordinances and put an end to the incessant low-grade roar produced by data centre cooling systems.

In Alabama, residents in McCalla and in the City of Bessemer are united against Project Marvel. “We might be fighting an uphill battle,” David says, “but we’re going to fight it to the very end.” Locals have spent months pouring over academic reports and technical documents, trying to understand how data centres have been received in other communities and what risks might attend the development. They’ve also built a substantial coalition of allies in opposition to the project location, if not to the project itself, including Jefferson County Commission President Jimmie Stephens, State Representative Leigh Hulsey, and a wide range of environmental and other public advocacy organisations.

Generally, American communities think growth is good but they do reserve the right to try to have growth on their terms.

Reading this article and seeing online conversation opposed to data centers near me, I wonder which if these factors is more influential in the concerns people have:

  1. The environmental costs of data centers including high water and electricity usage plus possible pollution and noise.
  2. The sense that a community could find or approve better uses for the land rather than for a data center. How many jobs will actually be generated? Will the community actually see some benefits?
  3. A sense that tech and/or certain companies are dangerous or they could corrupt communities.
  4. Resistance to a potential change in local character that having a data center might represent.

Some of these are common responses in American communities to proposals for land use and others are more specific to data centers.

According to this article, there are already over 5,000 data centers in the United States. How many communities will say no to data centers and which ones will say yes?

NIMBY wins by reducing the number of residential units

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One observer discusses how NIMBY efforts reach their goals:

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Sometimes working together, sometimes working separately, NIMBYs have manipulated a web of local laws and requirements—such as exclusionary zoning, minimum lot sizes, and parking minimums—to reduce production of homes. As with any production cap, the result is higher prices for new residents and higher profits for incumbents, and a transfer of wealth and power from buyers and renters to existing owners.

The article places this in the context of antitrust efforts. Local residents and officials are able to operate a monopoly with local land and regulations, thus limiting any competition. Loosen the monopoly’s hold, others can promote and build housing, and housing prices might be more reasonable and more units are available to those who could not otherwise more there.

In the suburban context, one of the reasons Americans tend to like suburbs is because of this local control. They want to buy a home in a community, enjoy the benefits of that community, and then see their property values appreciate as they are there for a while. More housing units is perceived to do multiple things: (1) threaten the amenities of the community – through density, traffic, new residents, etc. and (2) threaten property values.

The author describes efforts in Washington state to counter local NIMBY efforts. It sounds like efforts at the state level changed what local communities could do. It remains to be seen how much local change will now occur and it is not clear how many states would be willing to go as far as Washington. How many local residents would support state-wide efforts that could overrule community interests regarding housing/

NIMBY has come to sprawling Sun Belt metropolitan areas

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Recent research looks at why housing costs have increased so much around numerous Sun Belt cities:

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Although the Sun Belt continues to build far more housing than the coasts in absolute terms, Glaeser and Gyourko find that the rate of building in most Sun Belt cities has fallen by more than half over the past 25 years, in some cases by much more, even as demand to live in those places has surged. “When it comes to new housing production, the Sun Belt cities today are basically at the point that the big coastal cities were 20 years ago,” Gyourko told me. This explains why home prices in the Sun Belt, though still low compared with those in San Francisco and New York, have risen so sharply since the mid-2010s—a trend that accelerated during the pandemic, as the rise of remote work led to a large migration out of high-cost cities…

The Sun Belt, in short, is subject to the same antidevelopment forces as the coasts; it just took longer to trigger them. Cities in the South and Southwest have portrayed themselves as business-friendly, pro-growth metros. In reality, their land-use laws aren’t so different from those in blue-state cities. According to a 2018 research paper, co-authored by Gyourko, that surveyed 44 major U.S. metro areas, land-use regulations in Miami and Phoenix both ranked in the top 10 most restrictive (just behind Washington, D.C., and L.A. and ahead of Boston), and Dallas and Nashville were in the top 25. Because the survey is based on responses from local governments, it might understate just how bad zoning in the Sun Belt is. “When I first opened up the zoning code for Atlanta, I almost spit out my coffee,” Alex Armlovich, a senior housing-policy analyst at the Niskanen Center, a centrist think tank, told me. “It’s almost identical to L.A. in the 1990s.”

These restrictive rules weren’t a problem back when Sun Belt cities could expand by building new single-family homes at their exurban fringes indefinitely. That kind of development is less likely to be subject to zoning laws; even when it is, obtaining exceptions to those laws is relatively easy because neighbors who might oppose new development don’t exist yet. Recently, however, many Sun Belt cities have begun hitting limits to their outward sprawl, either because they’ve run into natural obstacles (such as the Everglades in Miami and tribal lands near Phoenix) or because they’ve already expanded to the edge of reasonable commute distances (as appears to be the case in Atlanta and Dallas). To keep growing, these cities will have to find ways to increase the density of their existing urban cores and suburbs. That is a much more difficult proposition. “This is exactly what happened in many coastal cities in the 1980s and ’90s,” Armlovich told me. “Once you run out of room to sprawl, suddenly your zoning code starts becoming a real limitation.”

Glaeser and Gyourko go one step further. They hypothesize that as Sun Belt cities have become more affluent and highly educated, their residents have become more willing and able to use existing laws and regulations to block new development. They point to two main pieces of evidence. First, for a given city, the slowdown in new housing development strongly correlates with a rising share of college-educated residents. Second, within cities, the neighborhoods where housing production has slowed the most are lower-density, affluent suburbs populated with relatively well-off, highly educated professionals. In other words, anti-growth NIMBYism might be a perverse but natural consequence of growth: As demand to live in a place increases, it attracts the kind of people who are more likely to oppose new development, and who have the time and resources to do so. “We used to think that people in Miami, Dallas, Phoenix behaved differently than people in Boston and San Francisco,” Gyourko told me. “That clearly isn’t the case.”

This is an interesting American phenomenon: people benefit from moving to new development that they can afford and then later they resist efforts to offer some of the same opportunities to others who might want to live in the same places but happened to get there later. The residents would surely talk about changes more development would bring. Countless examples of arguments about changes in character, more traffic, more noise, how those who live in apartments do not contribute to the community in the same way. These residents found suburbia just as they loved it and they often do not want it to change. I have seen this across my research and unless there is a major movement in the other direction, it seems like it is going to continue.

This puts people today in difficult situations. Can sprawl keep going and going beyond what already exists? How many people have the resources to live in places with higher housing costs? Will new places become the Sun Belt of today? How these questions are answered will affect American metropolitan regions in the decades to come.

Converting suburban houses into group homes – but they cannot look like group homes

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Multiple suburbs in the Chicago region allow for the conversion of suburban single-family houses into group homes for seniors or adults with disabilities. However, they generally agree that the conversion cannot alter the appearance of the home:

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A 2021 Northwest Municipal Conference survey of its members identified 14 suburbs permitting group homes for particular populations, largely those with disabilities.

However, the conversion of homes into assisted living centers for seniors is becoming increasingly prevalent. Schaumburg has seen two proposals in the past year alone. There are also online seminars offered to entrepreneurs looking to flip homes and turn them into assisted living centers, aimed at the nation’s aging population.

Regulations vary in towns that allow such conversions. Some require approval from a village board or city council, while other towns don’t require such approval because these uses are already allowed in its residential code. But all enforce rules against external changes to the houses that would identify them as group homes…

“You’ll be driving down a neighborhood and never know we’re there apart from a van picking people up or dropping them off,” said Little City Foundation CEO Rich Bobby…

While the intention of the homes is to blend in, a degree of engagement with neighbors is sought in advance to paint an accurate picture of those who are going to live there.

A common suburban story regarding proposed changes to houses might go like this: neighbors get wind of a possible change in a subdivision or residential area. They express concerns about such changes altering the character of the community. Perhaps there might be increased traffic, noise, and lights? They share that they moved into this location because it was a quiet, residential space. Changes to that format threaten their day-to-day experiences and their property values.

But what if the changes to that house or residence were minimal in nature? Or, as the regulations above suggest, the exterior of the home does not look any different and there is not a noticeable change in day-to-day life around the home? Would this allay all the concerns?

From this article, it sounds like concerns have been at a minimum thus far. The number of conversions is small. Perhaps there is a tipping point where multiple proposals in the same neighborhood or on the same straight might draw more attention. But if neighbors do not see significant changes on the outside, they might not have many issues.

Given the needs of the suburban population, I suspect more suburbs will face this particular issue in the coming years. Building large facilities can be difficult and costly. If converting homes to group homes can help serve residents and neighbors are okay with it, perhaps this will happen in a lot of places.

(This reminds of a 2013 book looking at affordable housing built in New Jersey where one of the goals was to design the multi-family housing units in a way that people passing by would not identify them as affordable housing. With some design work, this was largely accomplished and relatively few neighbors opposed the project.)

Can pro-housing movements be bipartisan in a polarized era?

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Jerusalem Demsas tackles an interesting question: how can housing advocates navigate a society marked by political polarization?

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One thing that helps bind an ideologically diverse pro-housing movement is that everyone in a community suffers when housing prices soar. Checking Zillow is a nonpartisan activity. The other thing keeping the coalition together is that, well, it’s barely a coalition at all. YIMBYs work in the context of their own states and cities. No national group dictates the bills they support or the messages they send.

On the other hand:

That doesn’t mean the bill will become law. Hobbs told reporters she’s still considering whether or not to sign the Arizona Starter Homes Act, noting that she prefers legislation with support from local jurisdictions, and this bill has been opposed by the local-government lobby. Either way, the political price is low. In a state as divided as Arizona, where the last gubernatorial election was between Hobbs and the right-wing firebrand Kari Lake, no one’s switching their votes over zoning policy.

Not even die-hard YIMBYs. “I’m a Democrat; I voted for the governor,” Solorio told me. “And if she ended up being the biggest NIMBY in our state, I’d still vote for her reelection because zoning, even though I’m one of the biggest zoning-reform advocates in the state … still doesn’t rise high enough for me to flip my vote.”

I have argued before that housing is a local issue. Theoretically, Americans are less partisan at the local government level as they focus more on addressing community needs. Or, perhaps they are just less partisan here compared to the state or national levels.

If the YIMBY movement is able to be less partisan, is this partly because such movements are still rare or not that popular? It takes a lot of work to convince American property owners that more housing should be added near them. It is one thing to support housing in the abstract and another to support it nearby.

Might another path forward be to have third-party candidates that only promote more housing? This means they would not get entangled in other issues and could focus on one issue.

What will nearby suburban residents accept for redeveloped office parks?

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Suburban residents often do not like the idea that a nearby office park will soon be a warehouse or logistics center. But, what will they accept?

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If I had to guess, I would go with open space or park space. Suburbanites would like this for multiple reasons: little noise and traffic, increased recreational opportunities, this limits future development on the location, and improved property values. Suburban homeowners do not want properties next to them to have more intensive land uses; they would prefer less activity.

At the same time, this puts communities and these suburbanites in a predicament. These office parks served particular purposes. They brought in tax revenues. They provided jobs. They provided status (particular if a big name company occupied the offices). Empty buildings are an eyesore and wasted opportunity. Warehouse and logistic parks would bring in money and jobs. Parks and open space do not generate their own revenues.

Before resisting everything that could replace suburban office parks, the suburban neighbors might want to consider what they would be willing to accept. Are there land uses that could aid the community and preserve some semblance of residential suburban life? Is there any room for compromise?

If NIMBY movements wanted to protect property values, were they wildly successful?

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The last fifty or so years of life in the United States has included numerous NIMBY efforts by residents (see recent examples here, here, and here). One of the reasons for NIMBY activity is to protect property values. Did NIMBY efforts lead to higher property values?

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I was thinking about this recently after reading more Internet/social media chatter about the rise in housing values in recent decades. The appreciation in value is astounding in many places.

NIMBY efforts could have contributed to this in multiple ways. They may have limited housing supply. One common argument regarding promoting more affordable housing prices is to build more housing units. This will reduce demand for existing units.

Or, NIMBY movements may have limited what communities will build. When they do construct housing, it is of similar or better quality of what is already there so as to not create downward pressure on prices.

Or, effective NIMBY efforts have kept less desirable uses away from housing. In particular, single-family homes are often located away from other land uses perceived to threaten property values.

These actions led by residents may not be the only reason housing and property prices have soared. Residents are not the only actors with influence in housing markets and communities; certainly the actions of those involved in real estate, local officials, and others contributed to increased property values.

However, taking the long view, if NIMBYs have acted in order to protect property values, does it appear – whether they directly caused it or not – that this was successful?

What allowing “build[ing] more houses on less land” in Austin could lead to

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Austin, Texas recently changed its regulations to allow property owners to “build more houses on less land”:

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Homeowners now have increased flexibility to build more houses on less land, after the lot size required for a home was reduced from 5,750 square feet to 2,500 via the HOME initiative (Home Options for Middle-income Empowerment). The policy also increases the number of housing structures that can sit on that 2,500 square feet from two to three. 

The debate over these changes continues:

The debate around a policy like this comes down to whether someone believes increased density (more housing for more people on smaller footprints) will help the situation, or will lead to overbuilding, crime, and rental cash grabs. The latter tends to sound a lot like NIMBY talking points more concerned with preserving the charm of longstanding Austin neighborhoods.

Some developers and homeowners feel that the resolution alleviates just a small part of Austin’s building woes, since the zoning codes are still complex and difficult to navigate. Jason Kahle, who owns Small Home Solutions, LLC, says he and his 10 employees are “going to be all over” the changes in a market where it seems everyone with a large-enough lot has considered building a granny pod, mother-in-law suite, or backyard office. 

But being free to build on a smaller lot is not the same as being able to feasibly do it within existing rules, Kahle points out. “There’s a lot of wheels turning at the same time,” he says. “Austin Energy is a challenge. We have protected trees, impervious cover, floor-area ratio rules, the level of detail the city requires on civil engineer plans, the subchapter McMansion ordinance, temp drawings. It’s a lot to deal with.” The McMansion regulations, also known as “Subchapter F” in the city’s housing code, set detailed and strict limits, including height and setbacks from the edges of a lot.

Laura Boas, an Austin physical therapist, is building an “accessory dwelling unit” for her family behind her 1950s-era, 720-square-foot cottage in the Brentwood neighborhood. She’s seen massive 2,500-square-foot homes go up in her area, and her lot is big enough to support additional buildings. Boas lives alone and jokes, “I’m part of the problem.”

It sounds like the goal is to allow for more housing units without changing many existing lots and allowing for smaller lots. This is a different approach than promoting more multi-family housing or larger structures containing more residential units. These changes keep the single-family character and the scale of the neighborhood similar while adding more units and people.

It will be interesting to see if an approach like this solves the problems it was intended to solve. Will the number of new McMansions decrease as property owners pursue other options? Does this add enough units? Does it ease housing affordability? If not, what changes would residents and the city be willing to enact? I hope researchers and policy experts are keeping track of the changes in cities that have enabled similar regulations. This could help determine whether adding ADUs (such as in Portland) is helpful.