Rebuilding Place in the Urban Space

"A community’s physical form, rather than its land uses, is its most intrinsic and enduring characteristic." [Katz, EPA] This blog focuses on place and placemaking and all that makes it work--historic preservation, urban design, transportation, asset-based community development, arts & cultural development, commercial district revitalization, tourism & destination development, and quality of life advocacy--along with doses of civic engagement and good governance watchdogging.

Friday, June 12, 2020

CNU 28: Virtual Conference | Session: Housing Advocacy Amid the Affordability Crisis

I was a presenter for a session of this week's Congress for the New Urbanism conference. It was supposed to be in Minneapolis, but with the pandemic, it switched to a virtual format. The session is described thusly:

Housing Advocacy Amid the Affordability Crisis

As housing prices rose in the late 2010s, a growing body of scholarly commentary argued that the solution to this problem was to change zoning law to allow more housing in cities. But because of Not In My Back Yard (NIMBY) neighborhood resistance, housing supply in high-cost cities continued to lag behind job growth. In some cities (especially in the West Coast) a Yes In My Back Yard (YIMBY) movement seeks to translate economic scholarship into zoning reform. Some scholars seek to split the difference between NIMBYs and YIMBYs, arguing for Public Housing In My Back Yard (PHIMBY)- a set of policies that promote public housing but not market-rate housing.

Presenters: Josh Stephens, editor of the California Planning and Development Report; Michael Lewyn, a professor at Pace University Law School, organizers of the session; Shaun Scott, of Seattle, a past Councilmember candidate; Patrick Condon, a professor at University of British Columbia; Laura Foote, Executive Director of YIMBY Action in San Francisco, and me.


Here's how I started out:

I focus on center cities and these comments are based on that experience.

And are about what I think we can learn from contrasting yimbyism with nimbyism.

Most center cities were built up by 1930, when the US population was 40% of today's.

Compared to then, households are smaller, there are many more single person households, and dwelling units are bigger.

In 2020, lack of enough housing, especially in desirable places, is why housing prices have gone up so much.

When it comes to planning, I argue the processes are often set up to fail because they don't distinguish and define overall community planning goals, simultaneously, with planning goals of residents

City goals focus on benefiting from and managing growth. Residents aim to ward off change.

Planners try to optimize both sets of goals, residents focus only on their neighborhoods. There is no consensus.

This is complicated by the fact that planning generally doesn't make clear that most residential blocks won't change much, that growth is directed to commercial areas and areas served by high capacity transit.

Residents often complain too, that additions to housing supply don't decrease prices and pejoratively, make the claim only developers benefit. Why this seems to be true needs to be unpacked.

Today's housing is built at current costs, so of course it's priced at the top of the market. And even with additions to housing supply, if demand is greater still, prices don't decline.

And in a market prioritizing top dollar, low cost housing gets converted to high cost housing. If governments aren't actively supporting, maintaining and building affordable housing it disappears.

New housing additions do lead to price stabilization, but over decades, and people aren't thinking about their communities in decades.

Supporting new development is made even harder because planners, elected officials, and developers are terrible at articulating the benefits from growth and the addition of new residents.

Benefits include:

- more tax revenues;
- which fund the programs people say they want
- new, more and improved amenities of all types
- more customers for locally provided businesses
- improved commercial districts;
- more trips shifted to sustainable modes;
- the ability to accomplish more over shorter distances;
- greater equity and access opportunities;
- and economically more robust and resilient communities.

New urbanist projects can be a more welcome addition, because they offer city appropriate architecture and urban design, reducing some, but not all, of the objections to development.

Here's some complications:

We need to redefine and come to grips with changes in what is considered appropriate density, mass and height. Density doesn't mean 20 story buildings.

Note that in areas with weak transit, new development adds car trips categorically, so opposition is understandable.

Going forward, expanding the range of housing types in existing single family neighborhoods should be a priority, as it will make neighborhoods more resilient and accessible to a wider range of households. But this will be controversial.

Finally, market-based real estate development processes aren't great for delivering social housing. The government needs to be actively engaged in housing planning, and the government and the nonprofit sectors need to be actively engaged in social housing development.


Thanks. I look forward to the discussion.


Labels: , , , , ,

5 Comments:

At 10:15 PM, Anonymous Paul said...

Hi Richard,
Thoughts from another similar blog:

"Gov't is not building social housing because that would compete and challenge the private capital ROI rachet that has created the affordability/homelessness problem and will end in us all in chicken coops"

" I am not creating an enclave for the wealthy in Byron Bay that is pure market forces at work and to think that market can provide affordability is bad faith. Certainly the Greens did not create this outcome, you cannot beat groovy marketing and slick efficient real estate agents doing what we all want them to do. And styling architects for that matter. You can expect toiling builders to wanting a piece of the action so upping their rates. Get real about how the situation occurred and you might be in a position to tackle it."

"are we talking development and growth or are we talking affordable housing and homelessness. Don't for a minute conflate the two. I wont accept your pro development stance under a guise of providing affordable housing and or dealing with homelessness - especially in Byron Bay. That is just rubbish. On the other hand developers have the opportunity to realise new and renewed development within the approved planning constraints and I am more than happy to assist."

"Is it affordable? Is it social housing in perpetuity or just a little sweetener to enable development? Is it in a heritage residential area? Are they "chicken coops"? Will it result in cars parked all over the verge? Several social housing projects where undertaken in Byron Bay prior to Howard shutting down the shop - no issues, good well considered housing, decent sized and well built."

 
At 10:46 AM, Blogger Richard Layman said...

I haven't yet blogged about an initiative from Toronto

Growing Up: Planning for Children in New Vertical Communities

https://www.toronto.ca/city-government/planning-development/planning-studies-initiatives/growing-up-planning-for-children-in-new-vertical-communities/

The case studies include the St. Lawrence neighborhood in Toronto, which was built during the period when a lot of public housing was built in the US.

The difference in approach was pronounced. From the outset they included social, civic and community "infrastructure." E.g., the buildings are all mixed use. Some have schools on the ground floor, etc.

https://www.toronto.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/8fc7-St-Lawrence.pdf


This is along the lines of my equity planning outline, which is neighborhoods focused, but it needs to be updated a bit.

http://urbanplacesandspaces.blogspot.com/2017/12/an-outline-for-integrated-equity.html

 
At 10:55 AM, Blogger Richard Layman said...

I guess too, I hadn't quite thought about it this way, is that building crappy public housing (not just "not building") also supports the for profit sector, because it's not a desirable alternative, which is the opposite of the case in cities like Helsinki, and especially Singapore and Vienna.

But another problem with public housing is that at least back then, people didn't think "the government" would build or fund substandard housing--built not to stand up to heavy use--from the outset.

So it became easy and regular to blame the housing residents "for not taking care of the properties" and another way to justify racism.


In any case, I'll check out the Oceanarc stuff. Thanks.

-------
I've been a bit disconnected from stuff going on in Australia and NZ. I had a great e-correspondent from NZ, Nigel Foster, but he passed away from cancer. We had corresponded since the early 2000s, "meeting" on an e-list once run by the Project for Public Spaces. It's a great loss.

(Although I do see images of Melbourne and Sydney and the clock tower in Mudgee, from watching Australian tv shows...)

------
if you don't know about it, there is a great UK blog, "Municipal Dreams" about social housing there.

Best.

 
At 10:22 AM, Anonymous Roger Fox said...

I’m thinking, amid a pandemic, is there a chance that prices will be reduced?

 
At 12:36 PM, Blogger Richard Layman said...

SF has already experienced a not quite 10% drop in rent asking prices.

It's definitely gonna have an effect. Cities which are denser, are going to lose some population on the margins, people who have the means to work remotely.

But the costs of construction both in materials and labor won't decline much. Not sure about land.

So we have a situation where prevailing real estate values might decline, but not costs for construction. This will lead to a decline in development.

I think the important thing is to distinguish between global cities (NYC, SF, Vancouver), and strong and weak markets. So that's three differentiated settings, and there are going to be various gradations within each category in terms of particular submarkets.

I don't have any definitive answer.

Like with markets, the type of real estate will differ. Housing vs. retail vs. office vs. other hospitality (hotels, restaurants), event spaces (concert halls and theaters) etc.

Of course, IF there is a vaccine, things will change somewhat.

But probably the nature of offices will change, and maybe there will be less demand for commercial office space. OTOH, maybe it will increase a bit, allocating more space per worker, which had been shrinking from 250 s.f. on average to under 200 s.f. now.

Retail is a double whammy. Reduced demand is leading many chains to go bankrupt and will close a lot of locations.

That theoretically increases opportunity for new entrants and independent businesses. But then you have the problems of risk and capital formation. Etc.

 

Post a Comment

<< Home