Triplex, 472 East Granite Avenue, City of South Salt Lake, with a painting propped up against the house

When I took the photo I didn't notice the painting propped against the facade.

I've been collecting photos of small multunit "single family" properties that are embedded within Salt Lake City, but also neighboring communities and other cities in the Salt Lake Valley.

Often a duplex will be on a corner, with entrances on each side of the street.  Or on an arterial.  Or a few next to each other.

There may be triplexes or even larger properties.

First I started trying to photograph these buildings because to me, compared to "everywhere else" this kind of property sensitively located within a neighborhood extends the range of housing types available to people representing a wider range of needs and incomes.  Not every house in a neighborhood should be a big single family detached house, especially as more households nationally are as small as one person.

Arlington County Board Chair Katie Cristol hears from citizens holding signs demanding more affordable housing at a county board meeting in Arlington, Virginia, on Nov. 12, 2022. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)

Second, I think it's a better way to visually express how a change in the zoning of traditionally single family residences to up to fourplexes can be done without wrecking community character.  

My photo album, Duplexes, Triplexes, Quads etc., demonstrates this.  Plenty of the buildings date to the 1930s and before, while others are more contemporary--to me less attractive but still illustrative.

Duplex, English Tudor style, 1601-1605 700 East, Salt Lake City.

I love the great variety of brick used in the Prairie style era of homebuilding in Salt Lake.  Unlike DC, which is dominated by red brick, red brick is rare here but there are so many other colors.  This isn't Prairie style but it's around the same time.

I plan on putting together a few pages of a brick color pattern book, partly as a way to guide architectural style decision making in the Sugar House area.

This is important because of the trend nationally to do this kind of rezoning in places like Minneapolis, Arlington County, Virginia, etc. ("Single-family Zoning: Can History be Reversed?," Joint Center for Housing Studies).

And the opposition to it, not just in Arlington County.  Although Brookings says that's because of bad messaging, "‘End single-family zoning’ is bad political messaging."

The funny thing is Salt Lake City is "considering" changing single family zoning, and many people are against, while there are all kinds of positive examples within the city already.  It's just that it's so subtle people may not realize it.

Different smaller housing types other than large apartments

Micro-apartments.   The Boston Globe ("Micro-apartments will become a cost-effective solution for renters — eventually"), reports on the provision of small apartments in the city, 450 s.f. or less, with kitchens and community amenities.  They are a form of what used to be called SRO, or Single Room Occupancy housing, but flashier.  (Also see this BG article from 2015, "Developers, city hope tiny apartments will keep families in Boston").

From the current article:

The idea of living in a micro-unit, or an apartment roughly less than 400 square feet, might send some renters heading for the wide-open spaces of the suburbs. But for others, a small, manageable, and ideally affordable living space would make living closer to downtown feel more approachable. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it’s the affordability piece that Bostonians are still seeking.

In 2016, the city’s Housing Innovation Lab rolled out a traveling model apartment called the Urban Housing Unit, or UHU. At 385 square feet, this micro-apartment traveled to eight neighborhoods across the city, showing Bostonians what life in such a small space could look like. During its tour, the Housing iLab gathered feedback from roughly 2,000 residents to help draft guidelines for a compact living program.

... “We worked with the city of Boston to create these compact-living regulations that changed the [square footage] downward and basically made it so that it was more like an open-ended thing,” Roy said. “You had to just show it to the Boston Planning Department, go through the design, and make sure that you fulfilled certain requirements — there’s some storage, there’s a decent kitchen, there’s a place to put your bed, and there’s a certain amount of light and air.”

... Six years later, micro-units have proliferated throughout Boston — like the ones for rent at Micropolis in Beacon Hill and the studios at Troy Boston in the South End — but they aren’t quite nailing the goal of UHU yet. That’s because many of the micro-apartments for rent today aren’t exactly affordable. A 250-square-foot unit at Micropolis, for example, fetches more than $2,000 per month.

 ... Smaller homes can present advantages, too. Though there’s a shortage of space, there’s also less cleaning and maintenance to be done, Salpoglou said. Utility bills will be smaller, and you’ll likely be buying less “stuff,” like furniture, accessories, and things that might constitute clutter. “There’s no question there’s an added benefit to them,” he said.

... It’s the kind of project Roy thinks could benefit Boston, along with more cohousing models. Both would serve demographics like workforce singles and couples, graduate students, single parents, divorcées, the elderly, artists, and recent immigrants, which make up many of the groups currently priced out of Boston’s housing stock. 

“There has to be a way for the city and the state to subsidize nonprofit development to do this,” Roy said. “It’s necessary for the workforce — for people who don’t make $100,000 a year and just need a place to live.”

What I think's interesting about the initiative is the prototyping they did.  There definitely is a need to extend the range of housing choices available to people, especially singles.  Cost of new housing is an issue, so subsidy might be required.   And it is a way to add "gentle density" to a community, especially if such buildings are built in areas with good transit and other amenities.

Two adjacent rowhouses on Chapin Street NW were combined and renovated to form the first Cohabs building in D.C. There is no signage to suggest that the building is different from the other houses on the block. (Aaron Wiener/The Washington Post)

Co-living.  In "Can 35 roommates cure loneliness? This co-living housing firm thinks so," the Washington Post discusses a firm opening a more expensive of group housing that they call co-housing.  From the article:

Brussels-based Cohabs is buying up properties in D.C. with the aim of converting them into “co-living” spaces, where as many as 36 housemates will share common areas, events and — according to the firm’s marketing — a cure for urban loneliness.

The company opened its first D.C. house last month. The property, formerly two adjacent rowhouses in Columbia Heights, has been turned into a warren of 36 bedrooms, 15 bathrooms, two full kitchens, six kitchenettes and two roof decks.

Cohabs has purchased five other properties in D.C. and is aiming for more. In 2025, the company plans to buy a building a month, according to U.S. managing director Daniel Clark. “We could go pretty quickly to 500 beds, and I think 1,000 beds is possible,” Clark said.

... Those rents include cleaning services, utilities, periodic group breakfasts and events, a full-size bed and other furnishings, and basic communal supplies such as toilet paper, soap and olive oil. 

According to the article, other firms offer a similar kind of experiential housing elsewhere in the city, while the WeLive spin off from WeWork failed. 

It does seem like a good way to add housing density without new construction or teardowns of existing historic building stock.  It extends the range of housing types available--not everyone wants their own apartment.  The programming is a nice touch for people more interested in experiences.

The New York Times article refers to co-living as "dorms for adults," ("As Housing Costs Soar, Co-Living Makes a Comeback").

Co-housing.  I was confused at first, thinking they were calling it co-housing.  I've visited the co-housing development in Takoma DC.  The building is U shaped, with separate attached buildings, like rowhouses, with a commonspace in the middle including kitchen, dining, and other facilities.  But each housing unit has its own facilities: kitchen, washer and dryer ("There’s Community and Consensus. But It’s No Commune," New York Times).  

But the intent, like the Cohabs version, is to promote interaction, which isn't necessarily the case with group housing, unless people already know each other.  From the NYT article, "Modern Housing With Village Virtues":

Louise Dunlap, 78, has rented a studio apartment in a nine-unit cohousing community for the last six years. “Interdependence,” she says, “goes beyond turning the compost and fixing the washing machine. I get a chance to share meals and deep conversations. There’s a kind of love that grows out of these connections — not romantic love, not family love, but something about our common humanity. I wish everyone could experience this.”

The problem with co-housing is that the first wave of residents are fully committed, while tenants are replaced individually as units go up for sale, and new residents don't necessarily have the same commitment.  Another problem is financing the building in the first place ("They Took a Chance on Collaborative Living. They Lost Everything," NYT).

Co-operatives.  There are two types of co-operative housing.  One is more communal, the other has separate apartments or buildings, with zero focus on co-living.   For example, in Ann Arbor, there are a large number of communal co-ops serving as a form of student housing.  They prepare common meals, at least for dinner, using an in-building commercial kitchen, and have joint spaces for living, with individual small rooms and shared bathrooms.  Rather than jobbing out cleaning etc. like the co-living spaces, the residents do this collectively.

Single Room Occupancy ("Single-room rentals in America's housing ecosystem," Niskanen Center, Single Room Occupancy Task Force Report, Hennepin County).  Units were significantly smaller than co-living options, with a size of 80 to 140 s.f. on average, with shared restrooms and a living room.  Rooms often had a small kitchenette with a hot plate, not a full stove.  

Many cities have seen a small rebirth of the SRO type as a way to address homelessness.

Boarding houses.  A variant of SROs was boarding houses, which included dinner for sure and maybe breakfast.

A good point: neighborhoods that agree to add denser housing, deserve to get infrastructure improvements in return

 So says Toronto Star columnist Shawn Micaleff, "If Toronto fails to deliver this one piece of infrastructure, it will reveal an ugly truth."

There should be a grand bargain: If our leaders are going to stuff so many people into the same places, they ought to be provided with fantastic infrastructure. Theoretically, anyway.

Liberty Village is often vilified by people in single-family homes as being a “slum in the making” but it’s one of Toronto’s hero neighbourhoods, helping the city live up to its self-congratulatory “You Belong Here” motto while it whispers, “stay out,” writes Shawn Micallef. Rene Johnston / Toronto Star

He's writing about the Liberty Village neighborhood, which unlike most of Toronto's neighborhoods has agreed to a number of dense housing developments ("Toronto’s grudge against apartments," Star), but has substandard access to transit, lacks parks, etc.

So warped are perceptions in Toronto that even progressive folks consider tiny condo apartments, the first rung of the property ladder that people claw their way into, as “luxury,” but homes in the million dollar range or more are somehow not. There’s also a perception that those homeowners “contribute” to the neighbourhood and, in this case, the 900 apartment dwellers somehow wouldn’t. ...

The stakes are high. Old Toronto missed out on building apartments when it could, now we’ve conspired to make apartment living a bad thing in much of the city. Don’t like tall buildings? Then fight for density to be spread across the city. Inclusive ratepayer and historic preservation groups that do this will be the new civic heroes. 

 “Everyone complains about tall towers downtown, and everyone wants mid-rise, but part of the problem is an inability to unlock additional small-scale intensification in existing neighbourhoods,” says Galbraith. “Affordable housing is always a hot-button issue, and combined with both the inability to create and resistance to infill, I think the answer is obvious: we should provide more smaller scale housing options everywhere in the city.”

The state of the residential real estate market

Suzanne was in Portland last week, and one of the places she stayed had a copy of Portland Monthly from last year, with an article about on "Portland Neighborhoods by the Numbers 2021: Nearly every part of town saw an increase in the median sales price last year."  

I really liked the map graphic they used, about price appreciation, which drilled down to neighborhoods rather than the more gross-grained zip code analysis that media tend to use.

I don't know what's up with the real estate market. 

I do think the pandemic generated some frenzied buying, pushing prices up a lot in most markets.  I probably thought that was a new normal, now I am not so sure.

At the time I thought it wasn't covid frenzy, but the result of reaching a kind of peak supply crisis ("U.S. Housing Market Needs 5.5 Million More Units, Says New Reports," Wall Street Journal, 2021) abetted by a massive increase in ownership of single family homes on the part of private equity ("Where Have All the Houses Gone: Private Equity, Single-Family Rentals, and America’s Neighborhoods," Brookings) further reducing supply in the owner market.

We still have the supply deficit and private equity participation.  But the froth is reduced, especially because of the rise in mortgage interest rates.

Most economists predict prices will fall some ("Moody's: Home prices to fall in these 210 housing markets—while these 204 markets will go higher," Fortune).  

But not that much ("Rents and home prices are still soaring, but at a slower pace," Washington Post), "The Most Competitive Rental Markets in 2022: Miami Is Red Hot, While Competition in the Northeast Intensifies," RentCafe).

We are seeing that.  

Again, abetted by mortgage interest increases, sales have slowed, and houses that have "defects" of various sorts (poor renovation, needs renovation, poor interior flow, location, etc.) aren't selling very quickly

It does get back to understanding the factors that support long term value, which I've written about in:

-- "The eight components of housing value," (2016)
-- "Revisiting factors influencing housing purchase," (2021)

Decline in attractiveness of center city location with shift to work from home.  But I do think the value of center city location might be diminished somewhat with the decline of the importance of central business districts in response to the work from home trend, which was significantly accelerated as a response to covid ("COVID-19 Pandemic Continues To Reshape Work in America," "As Remote Work Persists, Cities Struggle to Adapt," Pew Research Center).

If people don't have to commute to work as much, and commuting isn't as bad as it was in terms of traffic and the chance for catastrophe in terms of severe delays, maybe people will be less motivated to live in the city in part as a desire to reduce commuting time.

Amenities as a factor in housing choice.  Although a key factor remains, the value of access and proximity to "amenities," from nightlife establishments to museums.  People do seem to be less worried, or more resigned to getting covid--but if vaccinated likely surviving from "just a cold"--so attendance at group events, indoor events, and restaurants and bars and retail is rising.

-- "From more space to socially distance to a systematic program for pedestrian districts (Park City (Utah) Main Street Car Free on Sundays)," 2020 
-- "Extending the "Signature Streets" concept to "Signature Streets and Spaces"," 2020
-- "Planning for place/urban design/neighborhoods versus planning for transportation modes: new 17th Street NW bike lanes | Walkable community planning versus "pedestrian" planning," 2021

Cities may have to double down on strengthening quality of life factors in order to maintain their base of higher income residents and to be able to continue to attract new residents ("Coronavirus intensifies the city vs. suburbs debate in Philly," "These Philly suburbs started closing their streets on weekends during the pandemic, and they might never stop," Philadelphia Inquirer).

Downtown Pella, Iowa.  WSJ photo.

And in some cases, companies especially in less well located places, are investing in amenities in order to be more competitive for workers, who might not otherwise consider them ("Facing Labor Shortages, Pella Reinvents the Company Town in Rural Iowa," Wall Street Journal). From the article:

Pella Corp. has offices and manufacturing plants in more than 30 cities across the U.S. and Canada. But one of the toughest jobs, say executives at this closely held maker of windows and doors, is convincing workers to locate here in its hometown, a rural city of about 10,000 residents 45 miles southeast of Des Moines.

The company and its controlling shareholders—members of the founding Kuyper family and its descendants—set out to change that. They have spent tens of millions of dollars in the past three years on housing, child-care centers, restaurants and an indoor entertainment center, among other things, to retain and attract new workers. More spending is on the way.

“We just didn’t have the amenities that people we were trying to recruit would expect,” says Chief Executive Tim Yaggi, noting that the manufacturer competes with major cities for talent....

The city of Pella’s population, however, has been little changed for decades, and some residents fear changes brought by Pella, the company, could wreck what makes the small city special.

But not meeting Pella Corp.’s needs makes it a flight risk, potentially eroding the local tax base, according to city leaders. The city’s annual budget is $47 million, a fraction of the company’s annual revenue of more than $1 billion. Pella Corp. is able and willing to fund community projects that otherwise might never come to fruition, company executives say.

The steps Pella, the company, is taking evoke memories of old company towns, where employers shaped nearly every facet of community life. It pays for the city’s annual fireworks production and its foundation donates to a range of local causes. ..

“The odds of someone staying in the job are much higher if they live in the community where they work,” says Mr. DeWaard.

Pella, the company, is also remaking the city to be more attractive for out-of-state recruits by covering construction and startup costs for some businesses. ...

Pella, the company, is steadfast with its development plans. It recently committed $6 million to help the city build a 90,000-square-foot recreation center, with three gyms, multiple pools and a rock-climbing wall. These efforts, executives say, will help woo talent.

And public safety.  We can't forget the importance of the value of public safety, for business owners and residents.  Businesses in cities like Seattle are closing because they say the physical environment around their businesses is unsafe ("Seattle business owner calls for action against crime crisis after two break-ins: 'You've got to have police'," Fox News).  

And people won't choose to live in cities if they fear for their safety ("3 in 10 District residents do not feel safe in their neighborhoods, Post poll finds," Washington Post).

Stepping up on response to local "disasters" that are small, but big to the victims

Emergency personnel on the scene of an apartment fire and possible explosion in the 2400 block of Lyttonsville Road in Silver Spring on March 3, 2022. (Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post)

There is a letter to the editor in the Washington Post ("What's next for tenants displaced by the Lyttonsville fire?") about the aftermath of a multi-building fire at an apartment complex in the Greater Silver Spring area of Montgomery County, Maryland, where two buildings were destroyed, and two still standing buildings have been condemned.

The letter makes the point that substantive resources and help aren't being provided to the tenants, who need a lot more than the ability to sign up for recreation classes--one of the offerings made available at a recent "community fair" aimed at helping the victims of the fire.

This piece, "Revisiting stories: the need to provide programs to step in and deal with multiunit properties as they age," focuses on building safety a bit more generally, not about providing assistance to tenants as a result of building failure.  That should be reconsidered.

FEMA is a behemoth, providing aid to disaster aid to victims of hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, wildfires, etc.  But it doesn't respond to localized disasters of a micro-scale.

But could it be a model for localities, organized perhaps at the state level, for a way to provide a coordinated response and substantive help in a case such as this, the Surfside condo collapse, condominium condemnations ("Residents of SE DC condo forced to move out due to unsafe conditions," WJLA-TV), etc.?

Resources to review for developing program models include those produced for large scale disaster management, victims of crime and terrorism, etc., for example:

-- "Helping Victims of Mass Violence & Terrorism: Planning, Response, Recovery, and Resources: Planning," US Department of Justice
-- "Disaster Relief: Help Now, Help Later, Help Better," University of Pennsylvania
-- "Immediate Relief/Individual Support," Disaster Philanthropy Playbook

In the post-9/11 world, most communities have created agencies for emergency management, separate from police, fire and other emergency services.  

This kind of function could be added to those agencies.  Although the advantage of organizing at the state scale is that in most communities such events are infrequent, meaning directing ongoing resources to such functions could be seen as "a waste," and people don't have the ability to develop substantive expertise.  Then again, at the state scale, concern and capacity could be pretty distant from local needs.  Definitely a conundrum on how to organize such programs.

Revisiting factors influencing housing purchase

The Washington Post has a couple articles, "Three-bedroom, two-bathroom house near Hyattsville, Md., lists for $368,999" and "8 important — and overlooked — questions to ask before buying a home Rather than focusing on decor, home buyers should learn about neighborhood development, noise levels and weather hazards," about housing purchase decision making, which led me to revisit two old blog entries, written in response to articles about housing price decline in the face of the 2008 recession, because I thought the Post articles failed to take into account "place-based values" associated with housing:

-- "The eight components of housing value," 2016 (updated from previous posts)
-- "Washington Post series on "Dashed Dreams: The Plight of the Black Middle Class", 2015

(WRT housing values in Prince George's County, I'm not going to deny racism in the structure of the housing market there.  For a good general discussion, see the book The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America.  It's damning.)

To me, the first article, which discusses a competitively priced house in the West Lanham Hills neighborhood of Prince George's County, illustrates this exactly.  

The article says, "well, the house is cheaper than Hyattsville" and "it's close to Hyattsville."  But it isn't, it's 4 miles away.  And there is a reason that houses cost more in Hyattsville, it's closer to DC and it has a fair amount of amenities in close proximity.  From the article:

Home buyers frustrated by high prices in D.C. have turned to Hyattsville, Md., not far from the D.C. border in Prince George’s County, for many years in search of more-affordable homes. 

The city’s Arts District, shops, restaurants and proximity to public transportation make it a walkable alternative to D.C. 

But home prices in Hyattsville have made some sections of that community out of reach for buyers with a budget capped at $400,000. For example, the median sales price for a home in the Hyattsville Zip code 20781 was $533,000 in July, according to Bright MLS. Buyers seeking a more affordable alternative might want to try neighborhoods just outside of Hyattsville. 

 For example, the single-family home at 7735 Emerson Rd. in the 20784 Zip code in Prince George’s County near Hyattsville is priced at $368,999. The home is not in a homeowner association, which means HOA fees are not required. Annual property taxes are $3,327. One-bedroom, one-bathroom condo in Hyattsville, Md., lists for $120,000 

The house is in the West Lanham Hills neighborhood and is 1.7 miles from the New Carrollton Metro station. The Hyattsville Arts District is about four miles away, and Woodmore Towne Centre, which has shops and restaurants, is about five miles away.

But even though the Route 1 corridor sustained long term housing price declines compared to DC, at the same time communities like Hyattsville or College Park have a lot of nearby amenities that aren't present in much of Prince George's County, which is reflected in housing values and prices in those communities, which I tried to identify within the "8 components of housing values":

1. House Use Value 
2. House Exchange Value
3. McMansionization Exchange Value
4. Land Assembly Value
5. Neighborhood Place Value
6. Neighborhood Location Value
7. Neighborhood Mobility Value
8. Community Place Value.

Basically, the difference is between walkable and automobile centric communities ("Planning for place/urban design/neighborhoods versus planning for transportation modes: new 17th Street NW bike lanes | Walkable community planning versus "pedestrian" planning," 2021).

And the difference between buying a house and "buying a neighborhood" which presumes the existence of a community.

So while a house in West Lanham Hills is cheaper than Hyattsville's core, there is a reason for this, and long term while the value of Hyattsville housing is likely to increase, you can't say the same for West Lanham Hills.

I can't say I know the West Lanham Hills neighborhood at all, but this entry, "When the one over neighborhood is in the county next door, and housing prices have been in the tank: Mount Rainer, Maryland" (2016), lays out ways that such communities can aim to better leverage its location and proximity to develop more of the characteristics that attract people to walkable communities.

Also relevant are writings on "15-minute neighborhoods," walkable communities ("How Can I Find and Help Build a Walkable Community?," Walkable Communities) and commercial district revitalization ("The 20 Ingredients of an Outstanding Destination" by Roger Brooks International).

2.  The "8 important — and overlooked — questions" article does have some good questions.  They aren't necessarily as focused as my 8 components, but they are important aspects to consider:

1. Noise
2. Risks from flood or fires
3. Is this a safe neighborhood with good schools?
4. Will my view change?
5. How soon will my appliances and systems need replacement?
6. How much do utilities cost?
7. Is it an HOA, and what are the rules and regulations?
8. Can I rent my home to short- or long-term tenants?

All the houses on this block of Queens, New York were damaged in the flooding that resulted from record rains from Hurricane Ida.  Photo from "They Put Everything Into Their Homes. Not One Was Spared in the Flood."

I realize while I captured broader risks like public safety or say "airport noise" (citation in a comment on the article) in "House Use Value," "Neighborhood Place Value," and "Community Place Value", I didn't acknowledge what we might call "climate change risk" -- floods and fires, water supplies, city systems risk, specifically stormwater and sewage systems, lead in pipes ("A Black town’s water is more poisoned than Flint’s. In a white town nearby, it’s clean," Guardian, "How Can New York City Prepare for the Next Ida? Here’s a To-Do List," New York Times) and extreme rain (e.g., we had to add a second! sump pump to our basement last year, because our house was on the edge of an area where it rained 5 inches in one hour, and the blocks in our area have a "high" water table--a creek was undergrounded by the land still treats the area like a creek).

Obviously, climate change risk is starting to be captured in housing values for areas subject to sea level rise ("Residential Property Markets and Exposure to Rising Sea Level" National Bureau of Economic Research),  and in updated flood risk maps beyond the coasts ("New Data Reveals Hidden Flood Risk Across America," New York Times; "Canada will not pay for people to rebuild homes in flood zones," DigitalJournal).

The collapsed Champlain Towers South on June 25 in Surfside, Fla. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post)

Multiunit housing risk.  The original list is "biased" towards single family houses, neglecting concerns specific to apartments, condominiums, and cooperatives. 

With Post article point 7, HOAs, especially with condominiums is the quality of the board and building/complex management, age of the property, the maintenance fund and identified needs for expensive systemic improvements ("Revisiting stories: the need to provide programs to step in and deal with multiunit properties as they age").  These factors contributed to the failure of the Champlain Towers Condominium in Surfside, Florida which killed almost 100 people ("Surfside agonizes after condo collapse, with a memorial hanging in the balance," Baltimore Sun). 

Housing decision making guide.  Ironically, both with our house in Manor Park DC, near Takoma Park, Maryland, and our house in Salt Lake City, in neither case did we do a full scale "evaluation of amenities" wrt the choice.  

With Manor Park, we knew that the Metrorail Station and Old Town Takoma were close by, the latter with a couple decent restaurants, a weekly farmers market, and a pharmacy, and a couple of grocery stores within about 1.25 miles, that it was bikeable, and only 5 miles from Downtown.  (Two years after we moved in a hardware store opened, a real plus.)  We didn't look at the specifics of bus service (fortunately, one of the lines was modified to have direct service to downtown during rush hours), and other elements.

In Salt Lake, we were very rushed to act as we were combining our household with that of my wife's aging parents, for medical reasons.  I didn't even look at the house, as I was busy fixing up our house in DC.  But key was the ability to accommodate four adults.

Suzanne knew about one specialty grocery store being close by, but didn't look at anything else, other than it was in Salt Lake, and not too far from Downtown (5 miles) and another major community district (2 miles).  Other than that, no real evaluation, not even the health needs of her parents (oops).

So, in recognition of this failure, the recent Post articles, and my previous writings, it's worth putting together a checklist to help people consider some of these place-based factors as opposed to "housing use value" characteristics, more systematically.  

Fortunately, the amenity proximity with the Salt Lake house turned out to be fabulous.  It's a bit farther out from Downtown than I would wish, and the hills are killers as it relates to biking, but frankly, the amenity package here is better than what we had in DC, and DC has more than 3x the population of SLC.

Here goes.

I think that I should go back and revise the "The eight components of housing value" entry to more carefully delineate risk factors within each element, as appropriate.

Revisiting stories: the need to provide programs to step in and deal with multiunit properties as they age

The Washington Post reports on the decline of the Marbury Plaza Apartments building in Southwest Washington ("Once a Black middle-class haven, a D.C. apartment complex falls into disrepair").  

Built in 1965, there are 672 units.  Elevators, air conditioning and other systems don't work, and the open air pool, still marketed as a featured amenity, hasn't been open for years.

Many years ago, responding to an article by John Muller about the state of housing in Anacostia, where he wrote about "abandominiums," I wrote a response about how housing assistance programs need to consider owner assistance and multiunit properties, because as they age, they decline, and if the tenant mix skews to low income, it's not likely the owner has a large reserve fund for repairs.

-- "Deeper thinking/programming on weak residential housing markets is required: DC example, Anacostia," 2012
-- "Revisiting the need for "Tower renewal" (multiunit) programs," 2017

While this is an especial problem for lower income properties, it's also an issue with higher income properties (and one of the reasons that cooperatives are focused on attracting particularly high net worth individuals).

DC does have a program, for example, which funds energy efficiency upgrades, but obviously, problems with these types of buildings indicate that a more active program is needed.

The article discusses Toronto's Tower Renewal program, which provides special assistance to multiunit buildings in the city, especially to those that are aging.  Toronto has over 1,000 buildings, eight stories or taller, built before 1985, housing over 500,000 people, about 1/6 of the city's population.

-- Tower Renewal Partnership
-- "Reassessing the Recent Past: Tower Neighborhood Renewal in Toronto," APT Bulletin: Journal of Preservation Technology, 2011
-- Tower Renewal and Retrofit Finance, Tower Renewal Partnership
-- "Tower Renewal program," Urban Springtime blog, 2015
-- Tower Renewal Opportunities Book, research compilation
-- Affordability and Resilience: The Challenge of Tower Renewal in Private Rental Apartment Buildings, ULI Advisory Services Panel

Although another distinctive element of the Toronto program is that it focuses not just on individual buildings, but also "tower" neighborhoods.   By contrast, the HUD program focuses on individual buildings.

I wrote follow up pieces

-- "Tower renewal: The Watergate and Southwest DC, and Toronto," 2011
-- "The long term potentially negative aspects of condominium buildings as a dominant housing form in cities," 2016

the latter made the point that condominiums as an ownership structure work when the owners are wealthy and the building is new, and not so well when the property is old and the owners have limited resources to pay for special assessments for building repairs.

This also comes up with a historically designated property in Mount Pleasant, where some of the owner-tenants are asking to be allowed to not maintain a distinctive architectural element, outdoor terraces, because of the expense.

-- "Revisiting stories: condominiums as a tricky land tenure form, as maintenance costs rise over time," 2021

The problem will only get worse.

In the UK, especially with the demand for special assessment payments to replace outdoor panels that have been found to be particularly flammable and dangerous, people are losing the value of their properties, can't sell units, etc. ("Cladding scandal: flat owners fear bills of up to £45,000 for safety failings," Guardian).

While HUD does have a program for aged building repairs and upgrades not every property is eligible and funds are limited, cities need to take a more forceful and proactive role in working with aging multiunit buildings, to ensure the maintenance of a high quality residential built environment.

Housing supply gap for owner occupied houses: 4 million, says Freddie Mac

Recent related entry:

-- "Understanding the DC housing market: demand for urban living, not the construction of new housing, is the driving force"

Again, there's nothing particularly unique about the US "housing crisis."  The problem comes down to not enough housing relative to demand, which is exacerbated by various factors including the fact that the most desirable places are already, for the most part, built out.

And that the preference for single family housing is increasingly difficult to satisfy in the core of metropolitan areas, especially center cities, which have been pretty much built out for decades:

• leading to calls for intensification and equally voluble opposition to such 
• adding accessory dwelling units to single family houses ("DC and accessory dwelling units")
• and other forms of "missing middle housing"
• eliminating single family housing districts altogether by allowing duplexes and triplexes ("Massachusetts Triple Deckers as "Missing Middle Housing" -- triplexes", and
• building multiunit housing in areas that had mostly been single family.

The Wall Street Journal reported ("U.S. Housing Market Is Nearly 4 Million Homes Short of Buyer Demand") on a study ("One of the Most Important Challenges our Industry will Face: The Significant Shortage of Starter Homes") by the mortgage financing entity Freddie Mac estimating the gap in housing supply, which they discuss in two reports:

-- The Housing Supply Shortage: State of the States
-- The Major Challenge of Inadequate U.S. Housing Supply

From the second report: 

... we discussed two main reasons for the lower levels of housing production (relative to population): increase in development costs and shortage of skilled labor. 

 Home building costs encompass the cost of land and regulatory costs. Since 2010, the cost of land has averaged about 23 percent of total home building expenses.1 But in some markets like San Jose, Santa Ana, Oakland, and Los Angeles, land can cost upward of 70 percent of the cost of building a home. Laws and regulations such as local zoning restrictions on lot sizes and building height and open space designations also increase the cost of building a home, in turn reducing the supply of new homes. Regulatory costs increased 29 percent between 2011 and 2016, the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) estimates.

The problem of "development costs" is somewhat subtle.  First has to do with the predominate preference.  People want single family houses, ideally centrally located.

Second, in the core of a region, those locations are already built out, usually in ways that didn't use land in efficient ways, at least in terms of having to house a population 1.5 times larger than when most of those places were developed.

Since there isn't much land available, except in commercial areas, and so when it is developed, it is developed primarily as multiunit, and outside of the core of major metropolitan areas, there is still reticence to live in such a housing type.

This produces sprawl, because to buy a single family house, for the most part it is only on the edges of a metropolitan area where the land costs are low enough to build such housing.

Depending on the market, like here in Salt Lake, there is a variant, of jamming in rowhouse type houses in on odd bits of land, often perpendicular to the street, in a way to maximize the number of units that can be produced ("Gentle Infill: Boomtowns Are Making Room for Skinny Homes, Granny Flats, and Other Affordable Housing," Lincoln Land Institute, Infill Design Toolkit, City of Portland).

Active initiative in Edina, Minnesota to preserve affordable single family houses | But why not build triple deckers?

KARE-TV reports ("Edina launches pilot program to save affordable homes from teardown") that Edina, a high demand suburb of Minneapolis, has instituted a program aimed at reducing teardowns, which replace smaller, older, more affordable houses, with what some call "McMansions," which are much larger, more expensive houses, often ersatz when compared to the size and architectural style of houses when the neighborhood was first built.

According to this article, Edina and a neighborhood in Minneapolis are the two hottest markets for teardowns in Greater Minneapolis (in the past in the DC area, Arlington and Chevy Chase in Montgomery County have been particularly hot markets for teardowns).

From the KARE-TV article:

Citywide since 2008, nearly 1,000 Edina homes have been demolished – roughly eight percent of the city’s single-family homes. The average value of Edina's teardowns: $421,420 The average value of the homes built in their place: $1,165,786. That’s an increase of increase of 177%. “It's something just so out of whack,” Ruth says.

There is an opportunity cost involved in two ways, either positive or negative, depending on your perspective.  First, teardowns up-price the housing in a community, reducing affordability.  On the other hand, when a local government is reliant on property tax for the bulk of its operating revenue, this process increases the property tax revenue stream.

In either case, teardowns are a form of "reproduction of space" that leads to significant community changes.

-- Edina Neighbors for Affordable Housing

Edina launched as a pilot a "Housing Preservation Program" focused not on historic preservation per se, but on the preservation of housing affordability (that's what "housing preservation" means in the public and social housing field too, not historic preservation).

Working with the West Hennepin Affordable Housing Land Trust, Edina will use funds generated from developer proffers and community development block grants to buy the houses.

From the article:

The city mailed more than 1,000 post cards asking the question, “Do you want to sell your home but not for a teardown?” The city ... make[s] funds available to buy a limited number of houses for their appraised values to assure those homes remain intact and with families needing more affordable options. “This is not a moratorium at all on teardowns,” Stephanie Hawkinson, Edina’s affordable housing development manager, says. “We are not mandating that anyone sells their home to us. We're just providing them with a choice.”

It will be interesting to see how this works, how much funding they have, and whether or not sellers are willing to sell to the city initiative, instead of extracting a somewhat higher price from the for profit real estate development market. 

Multiple units as an another alternative?  One of the forces "generating" teardowns is large lot size.  The lots appear to be large and can accommodate multiple families just as easily as a large house. Another way to increase housing access would be to allow "multiple unit" housing types on these lots.

I would say duplexes are "too small" given the rise in demand for housing given the constant increase in population.  So build triplexes and larger units ("Massachusetts Triple Deckers as "Missing Middle Housing" -- triplexes").

Minneapolis has changed its "single family zoning" so that duplexes and triplexes are "matter of right" as well ("How Minneapolis Freed Itself From the Stranglehold of Single-Family Homes," POLITICO).  

My criticism is that relying on individual property owners to take the initiative means that it will take decades to see much effect ("A short point about why eliminating single family zoning won't result in a rise in "affordable housing" (any time soon)").

This Boston double triple decker, now four separate units, rather than six, is for sale for $1.4 million.

By contrast, creating an active housing conversion/building program comparable to the Edina program would be a way to generate a greater number of units more quickly.

Although in the short run, it won't yield housing that is newly affordable without subsidy, because it is built at current costs for land, labor, and materials. 

Massachusetts Triple Deckers as "Missing Middle Housing" -- triplexes

A triple decker is a three unit, three story residential building.  They are pretty common in Massachusetts communities such as Boston, its suburbs, and outstate cities like Worcester.  There are regional differences in the name, in Worcester they're called "three deckers" 

According to "Q & A: The Triple-Decker: New England Icon," today's zoning codes have made such types illegal, with too much density compared to current allowable ("MASSACHUSETTSThe Rise, Fall and Rebirth of the Triple Decker," New England Historical Society, "What Happened to the Three Decker?," MIT Masters thesis).

So long before recent times, affordable housing types (including SROs and rooming houses) such as the triple decker were outlawed.

Two triple-deckers that were recently renovated with energy efficiency in mind on Stanton Street in Worcester. (Robin Lubbock/WBUR)

This triple decker in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston is being renovated for a future season of the "This Old House" television show on PBS.

In 2012, comparable to Chicago's support program for bungalows, and Toronto's Tower Renewal Program for high rise residential buildings, Boston created a small financial support program for triple deckers ("City moves to preserve iconic three-deckers," Boston Globe).

A triple decker is as if a DC rowhouse was built as three separate apartments, one to a floor.  The Boston version has three reasonably commodious units.  They can be converted into condos, or managed as three apartments.  Some "triplexes" in Worcester have been divided into as many as 18 units.  (I seem to recall a form in Cleveland that is the equivalent of two side by side triples as one apartment building.)

Sometimes the owner lives in one unit and rents out the others, making rental income to pay off the mortgage.  This is common for Montreal's five unit plexes (below) also--the owner lives in the larger unit on the ground floor, and rents out four units, two on each floor, above.

Massachusetts is running a competition to come up with ideas for weatherization and other improvements ("A Triple-Decker For The 21st Century: Airtight And Solar-Powered," WBUR-FM/NPR), "Triple-deckers can rise again for the 21st century," Boston Globe).

40% of greenhouse gas emissions come from existing buildings, so energy weatherization is an important element of GHG reduction planning.

A new-fangled take on old New England housing, the UMass Amherst submission that won "most innovative design" in the state's recent triple-decker design challenge. (Courtesy UMass Amherst)

The firm featured in the NPR story started renovated buildings in Worcester when the cost to buy a building was much cheaper.  Now that housing prices have escalated the firm says subsidies would be required to do the kind of full scale energy retrofits.

Also, in today's set of building code requirements, the houses are treated as commercial buildings, and therefore have more stringent requirements, including disability accommodations and fire suppression, making them more difficult and expensive to construct.

Urban land use intensification: Alexandria garden apartment complex

This kind of two-story, 4 unit apartment  building is pretty typical across DC.  In the run up to the 2008 housing crash, many such buildings were converted into owner occupied condos.

I have written frequently about the fact that DC was mostly built out when the population was relatively small.  So that means the buildings are small.  In most residential areas, a three-story building is "tall" because most buildings top out at two stories.

By contrast, in cities built at the same time, but with much greater demand for housing, 4-6 story buildings (tenements, apartments, large rowhouses) are pretty common.

Because "old housing" is cheaper than new housing, this contributes to DC's relative lack of "affordable housing" given present demand, the fact that new housing is built at today's prices for land, labor, and materials, and because even with additions to the housing supply, demand is still greater, so prices don't drop.

Apartments on Fort Totten Drive, Washington, DC.

But DC has a lot of fallow opportunity in adding height to all those two- and three-story buildings, adding accessory dwelling units and basement apartments where they can be accommodated, etc.

Although I would argue that attention needs to be paid especially to those areas served by high capacity and frequent transit, so that this housing draws new residents not dependent on the automobile.

(In car-dependent places, intensifying land use creates problems because at a certain point, on-site parking has to be accommodated in a structure, either above or below ground, and that's expensive.  Dedicated surface space to parking is wasteful too.)

But this isn't really happening, other than the conversion of low density commercial space to higher density mixed use, mostly devoted to housing.

The Washington Business Journal reports ("Garden-style apartment complex in Old Town Alexandria slated for massive redevelopment") on the Heritage Old Town garden apartments in Alexandria and how the complex of 242 apartments is going to be redeveloped into a denser project of 824 units.

That's new housing for 600 more households, and upwards of 1200 more people.

My only problem with it is the new design is pretty standard and unattractive.  It makes me think of the Eric Clapton song, "Why does love have to be so sad?" retitled as "why does design have to be so bad?"

Building affordable housing across DC: it's more than a question of equity, it's about how

The Post has an article ("Bowser continues push to get D.C. residents on board with plan to build low-cost housing in all neighborhoods") about a recent public meeting on the city's proposal to build more affordable housing across DC, more importantly--in every ward, including higher income areas of the city where such housing hasn't traditionally been constructed, in particular Ward 3.

They're positioning the initiative in terms of housing equity, by referencing past practices of mortgage redlining, which made underwriting of mortgages in mixed race or African-American neighborhoods virtually impossible.

D.C. residents arrive for a discussion on affordable housing at the Howard Theatre in Washington. (Astrid Riecken for The Washington Post)

It's a complicated issue. I regret I wasn't able to attend the meeting, in order to look at the various materials they presented at the meeting. Fortunately they are also online.

-- Undesign the Redline
-- city press release

But while it's great to position this in terms of equity, I am much more interested in whether or not they can build anything.

It's not that it's impossible to right the wrongs of segregation and structurally racist policies "from the past."  But to build housing at scale in a community where land is mostly "used up" albeit less intensively than today's development practices warrant is almost impossible because the process of adding significant amounts of housing to places that are already developed is practically and politically difficult.

It requires a sea change in thinking about what kind of housing can be realized, and in a city where most of the land is already developed, wrenching decisions must be made.

They aren't making more land: multiunit versus single family.  Basically for cost reasons it has to be: multi-unit ("apartment buildings" either as rental or owner-occupied).  But most of the residential districts in the city are zoned for single family housing.  Most of the housing in these areas is single family, mostly detached but sometimes in various runs of rowhouses, but as few as two attached units.

In a situation of limited land resources, traditional single family houses, even in the urban context where lots tend to be small, and lots/houses are squeezed together, and/or attached, a traditional single family house is no longer an option if you want to add units at scale.

-- "Let's Quit Fetishizing the Single-Family Home," New York Times
-- "Millennials want a single-family house, even if it means a long commute," Housing Wire

Duplex/triplex legalization elsewhere.  There has been a lot of press on how Minneapolis and other communities are legalizing the conversion of single family housing districts to districts where lots can be converted into duplexes and triplexes.

This is great for allowing very large rowhouses to be broken up into more units than would typically be allowed by zoning.

But it won't do much for traditional single family detached houses, which are not easily subdivided the way that rowhouses can be.

As a result, this won't result in the creation of a lot of new housing units, unless neighborhood are in super high demand.  And even with conversions, the cost of each unit won't be particularly "affordable" because relatively speaking, the cost of land is pretty minimal as a total cost of unit in terms of labor, materials, assemblage and holding, etc.

There isn't vacant land except in rare situations.  Most of the city's property for housing has already been developed, even if in some areas the lots are relatively large comparatively speaking, and could accommodate greater density.

Most of the new multifamily unit housing has been built in commercial districts, by reusing land more intensively.

Where new single family housing has been constructed is on interstitial institutional land that has been deaccessioned.  Mostly it has been in the outer city, for example on the site of the old Methodist Home on New Hampshire Avenue almost in Montgomery County, or on the sites of closed Catholic institutions in Greater Brookland.  Mostly the housing developed is zero lot rowhouses, but sometimes it may include detached houses as well.

Plus it's market rate housing so by definition it isn't "affordable" and usually in response to residential opposition it ends up being less dense than it could be ("More Than 80 Townhouses Planned Near St. Joseph's Seminary," Washington City Paper).

Single family houses can be a underutilization of land.  Ironically, earlier in the week I had cause to review testimony I submitted in 2006 on an earlier proposal to develop rowhouses on the Takoma Metrorail site.  I said that it should be multiunit housing and about 8 years later, they agreed (although nothing's been built).

As it is, the Fort Totten Station building with a Walmart on the ground floor, a few blocks from the Metrorail station, should be a couple floors taller.

This is the case still today.  For example within a few blocks of the Fort Totten Metrorail Station, across the street from the multiunit mixed use building on Riggs Road that includes a Walmart on the ground floor, they'll be constructing mostly rowhouses ("Restaurants, Retail and 185 Townhouses Proposed for Fort Totten," Urban Turf).

Larger lots capable of redevelopment aren't usually easily transit accessible.  Besides the fact that most potentially available land is already developed, a lot of the land that might be available for more intensification is not well situated in terms of transit and community amenities.  Most often it's on the outskirts of the city.

That means that most buyers will also choose to own one or more cars, thereby adding to area traffic congestion and increasing their cost of living.

Transit efficient locations mean that a household can get around without owning the typical two cars that most households (in the US, not in the DC) own.  Using the rough estimate that maintaining a car costs about $8,000/year, that supports almost $200,000 of monthly payments on a mortgage.  Two cars equal to about $400,000.

Ward 3...  The article states that the biggest target for new housing is Ward 3, the city's most exclusive ward with neighborhoods like Georgetown, AU Park, and Hillandale, and other spread out areas, where car use is particularly high relative to the rest of the city.

Besides redeveloping commercial land along Wisconsin Avenue it means redeveloping existing lots as apartment buildings (or courtyard housing, see Ross Chapin's Pocket Neighborhoods).

Not to mention that acquiring property capable of such redevelopment isn't easy, especially if you want to do this in a way that doesn't encourage car dependence--so you want to focus on locations within one half mile of transit.

Moving from homogeneous housing districts to mixed forms.  It can be done, but it wouldn't be easy politically because it requires people to accept a change from single family zoning to mixed residential zoning. That's how housing was developed in the core of the city in the late 1800s, but people seem to have forgotten this.

Crap design.  Plus there is the issue of new construction design being compatible with existing housing.  The city doesn't have mandatory design review in areas that haven't been designated historic, and most of the infill and replacement housing that gets constructed is execrable.

DENVER, CO - MARCH 18: A single family home, on Lawrence St. between 25th and 26th Street, is sandwiched between two newly built multi family developments, March 18, 2015. Issues surrounding dense housing development are being fought in many neighborhoods throughout the Denver area. (Photo by RJ Sangosti/The Denver Post)

Granted it's SFH replacements that aren't quite McMansionized (see the McMansion Hell
blog) but built bigger in place of smaller houses, but each of the three instances of this on my block are pretty bad.

It's possible to do it right, but without any design requirements or consultation required whatsoever, the likelihood of such a process producing quality design in new construction is remote.

Courtyard housing image from Fine Homebuilding, "Designed for Community."

Courtyard housing as an intensification device.  As an aside, on my block and similar blocks in Greater Takoma/Manor Park, the north and south sides of the  block have long lots--our house is 1/6 of an acre, and you could easily take two lots and construct courtyard housing or apartments.  (Salt Lake has a bunch of exanples.  But think the apartments for the Melrose Place tv show too.)

You could definitely fit 4-5 units on each side.  But we are 0.8 miles from the Metrorail station (but three blocks from a bus line) and likely most of the households would want a car.  There's no way to build 8-10 units in this space if each is required to provide parking.  Adding garage or underground parking would boost the costs astronomically.

It wouldn't be too expensive to do this relatively speaking.  Buying the property would be maybe $1.2 million per lot.  Then there would be costs of demolishing the current houses (or moving them) + other infrastructure requirements including boosting the capacity of area utilities.  Constructing each "carriage house" without providing parking would cost no more than $300,000/unit.

That's at two floors of 400 s.f. each, which is the limit for ADUs.  Maybe they'd change the rules and allow three stories, which would add another $150,000 but increase the appeal.  You could have a ground floor apartment for each, plus the upstairs unit, providing 20 units total on 1/3 acre.

Writings on ADUs, but extending the concept from one unit to infill construction, should be referenced for ideas, along with the aforementioned Pocket Neighborhoods book, which is beautifully written and illustrated.

Auburn House Courtyard Apartments, Brookline, Massachusetts.

Courtyard apartments.  Then there is the option of adding small apartment buildings, either as courtyards, or not. 

This would be a type focused on infill redevelopment in traditional single family neighborhoods. 

Think the building type typified by the apartment complex in the "Melrose Place" tv show, which was set in Los Angeles, or the movie "Singles," set in Seattle.

Coryell Apartments, Seattle. 

That'd cost more but would add more units compared to courtyard single family housing.  Not necessarily for ownership. 

Smaller units would yield even more units.  But then you have the car problem too.

And you'd want to require a mix of larger units, to accommodate families.

Regular apartment buildings.  I see courtyard apartments as a type more for infill locations within existing R1 and R2 single family detached neighborhoods. 

There's also the regular apartment building, ideally aimed strategically, within 1/2 mile of Metrorail stations, where "forbidding" car ownership is more practical.


These smaller apartment buildings immediately abut the Columbia Heights commercial district on 14th Street NW, which when they were built, was much less intensively developed, where two story buildings were the norm.

The Gables apartment building on Blair Road "in front of" the Takoma Metrorail station.  The reason this building is "prettier" than a typical newly constructed apartment building is that it was originally intended to be condominiums.

The opportunity costs of not building taller.  A big issue though is density.  Today the nation's population is more than twice what it was in the 1930s, by which time most of the city had been built out.

Most of the new buildings constructed today, such as at Fort Totten Metro (four stories right on the station grounds) or near to the Takoma Metrorail Station (a three story building constructed behind the CVS, a couple blocks from the station) are in my opinion not big enough.

Adding a couple more floors would add units, and over time and with volume would create a brake on price appreciation.

While existing residents typically agitate for such buildings to come with lots of parking, studies of actual behavior find that such buildings generate 50-75% fewer car trips compared to traditional single family housing in the same neighborhood.

Identifying intensification opportunities.  In addition, there are many apartment buildings that were developed in the past, when the city's population was much smaller, that have the opportunity to be rebuilt or otherwise made bigger.  This could add a lot of units.

3 story apartments on Randolph Street NW in Petworth, about two blocks from the Georgia Avenue Metrorail station. 

Conclusion.  While I think the initiative is admirable from a moral standpoint, by not focusing on the most practical and basic questions of how and what to build, I can't see the initiative accomplishing very much, especially as it is being launched on the tail end of the likely last term for Mayor Bowser--three years could be enough time, but the practical issues:

• buying land for redevelopment at market prices
• getting residential buy in on new infill development of multiunit buildings
• doing decent design (which frankly won't be a priority of this administration anyway)
• huge huge huge subsidies required to make the housing "affordable"

are daunting even in the best of circumstances.

I'd say too the issue isn't getting people to feel like it's their business to right the wrongs of inequality, it's equally if not more important to focus on showing examples of already existing denser housing and how it makes neighborhoods better, by extending the range of available housing, and doesn't overtax the road infrastructure when it is proximate to transit stations and lines.

DC has plenty of examples, but they need to be codified, explained, and promoted.

Still, getting property owners to agree to selling their house/lot so it can be redeveloped will be very difficult, as will getting area residents immediately impacted to be agreeable to the changes.