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.

No more housing filtration? (at least in big cities)

Filtration is an old concept in urban planning (also called "ecological succession," "invasion-succession theory," or "concentric zone theory").

I thought from the University of Chicago sociologists in the 1920s, but it actually was first posited in the UK.  

It presumes that people with more money move outward from the core.  As they do so they are replaced by people who on a relative basis, have improved their circumstances compared to lower income deciles.

The Toronto Star reports ("Curse of the renter: In some neighbourhoods, not owning a home now costs more than owning one") that renters there are paying more for housing than housing owners in some parts of the city.  From the article:

Homeowners have long outspent renters in Toronto’s census metropolitan area; a decade ago, their average bills were $1,516 per month versus tenants’ $1,043. That trend is still visible in areas like Toronto’s Little Italy, or a large swath of southwest Brampton.

But over the last decade, the gap has been narrowing. Where owners in all areas spent 45.35 per cent more than tenants in 2011, it fell to 38.84 per cent in 2016, and to 30.28 per cent in 2021.

Statistics Canada has noted a countrywide trend, meanwhile, of renters’ bills climbing faster than homeowners. The average tenant in Canada last year paid 17.6 per cent more than they did in 2016. The average homeowner’s bills increased by 9.5 per cent over that period. 

Toronto is home to some more extreme examples, such as the area between Queen Street and Wright Avenue, from Lansdowne to Sorauren avenues. Here, though owners are still paying several hundred dollars more per month — $2,092 to renters’ $1,790 — renters’ bills are growing much faster. From 2016 to 2021, renters’ average bills went up 48.2 per cent, versus just five per cent for owners.

“It’s quite startling,” Majid said. Generally, the area in and around Parkdale has contended with gentrification, she said, and an increase in housing “financialization” as large companies have come in and purchased older rental apartment blocks as investments. In several cases, those companies have applied for above-guideline rent increases, Majid said, requesting Landlord and Tenant Board permission to charge higher rents for reasons such as major repairs.

If older tenants are pushed out by those costs, she said the rents could surge even higher.

The concept of filtration presumes that older properties remain lower cost.

In today's economy properties are being priced as if they are new, regardless of condition, age, etc.  Maybe it's just about the price per square foot, regardless of condition.

This results in part because an increasing share of the rental housing sector is owned and managed by large firms.

And because demand is greater than supply, especially for comparatively lower cost housing.

An urban planner quoted in the article suggests a greater role for the nonprofit social housing sector as a way to counter constant repricing upward.

-- "Rents are rising everywhere: with continued supply-demand mismatch, shouldn't renter protections be universal? ," 2022

The basic lesson of intensification that government officials and activists don't understand: intensification happens first in high value areas, not low value areas

Illustration from The House Book by Keith DuQuette, showing the intensification of land use as you move from suburban areas to the center city.

Where do I begin?  

This comes up because of the Chicago Sun-Times article, "City’s test of additional dwelling units finds most takers in gentrified wards."  From the article:

This involved allowing additional dwelling units, or ADUs, typically basement or attic apartments or coach houses. The program carries many restrictions, but planners wanted to see if adding a unit here and there would introduce lower rents in expensive neighborhoods, help families or small landlords make extra income and encourage multi-generational housing that’s typically rent-free. Some units are called “granny flats.”

The affordability argument assumes that because of the size and location of the units, rented units would command a lower price than the neighborhood standard.

The city’s Housing Department ran the data and found, at this early stage, the program is working in some ways but is challenged in others. It might just be adding expensive units in already expensive neighborhoods.

Also see "The nature of high value ("strong") residential real estate markets," 2017.

I always say that the first big lesson I have from involvement in DC urban revitalization was that you needed to have plans before they were needed, not after, because once the velocity of development has been unleashed, you can't catch up.

But the second would be that development happens in the high value areas first, because that that's where the most demand is, the most willingness to pay higher rents, and where the most profit is for the seller or landlord.

"Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded."
-- Yogi Berra 

I think I figured that out before I read Harvey Molotch's paper (later expanded into the book Urban Fortunes) "City as a Growth Machine: Toward a Political Economy of Place," where the abstract reads:

A city and, more generally, any locality, is conceived as the areal expression of the interests of some land-based elite. Such an elite is seen to profit through the increasing intensification of the land use of the area in which its members hold a common interest. An elite competes with other land-based elites in an effort to have growth-inducing resources invested within its own area as opposed to that of another. Governmental authority, at the local and nonlocal levels, is utilized to assist in achieving this growth at the expense of competing localities. Conditions of community life are largely a consequence of the social, economic, and political forces embodied in this growth machine.

But Molotch explains very well why what happens (intensification) happens.  Intensification makes more money for everybody, especially when it's built in the most desirable places.

New Urban Transect

Relatedly, I once had a conversation with the retail and private equity finance innovator Herbert Haft about creating a coffee shop, and he said that it costs about the same to build and operate a business regardless of where you are located, so you might as well open where you are more likely to make more money ("Herbert Haft, 84; Built and Lost a Business Empire," Los Angeles Times). 

Which is why at a recent community meeting on housing in Salt Lake City, where the city is aiming to open up the single family zoning category to duplexes, triplexes, and quads ("How communities can change the playbook to expand housing options," Salt Lake City), I challenged the statement by a planner, who said that if that happens, it will happen on the Westside first--which is home to more people of color and lower income households--because the properties cost less.

I said, "no.  It will happen in the high value areas first etc."  He was very surprised.

From the Smart Transportation Guidebook.

This jumps off a comment made on an entry about Minneapolis expanding its SFH zones to duplexes ("A short point about why eliminating single family zoning won't result in a rise in "affordable housing" (any time soon) ") where the person made the point that the push for expanding beyond SFH there was driven by people wanting to live in the more desirable areas of Minneapolis, and there "not being enough housing there."

Minneapolis has a false scarcity, in that housing advocates driving the push for density have fixated on densifying a few mature, desirable built out neighborhoods, while ignoring hundreds and hundreds of vacant lots on the other side of town. No one wants to appear to be behind the “G” word, but as this article points out the economics of the redevelopment of premium neighborhoods preclude helping to solve the affordable housing crunch.

It's a similar process to that of the original development of city centers (Downtowns).  Land value was high because of location.  To maximize the value of the property and location, buildings were built taller, and took up as much of the lot as possible.  That's why smaller communities have less intensely developed centers.

And why in some places, proximity to transit has little value premium, so creating transit oriented development is very difficult, time intensive, and requires subsidy ("From the files: transit planning in Baltimore," originally written 2010).

Or how in low income areas, revitalization/intensification is expensive and can take decades and requires scads of subsidy ("Weak markets are really really really hard to develop: Baltimore's Poppleton (... State Center; Park Heights; etc.) neighborhood," 2019, ("Blaming Walmart for Skyland's failure is misdirected," 2016,"For the first time, Skyland Town Center's revitalization might have a chance: creating a community focused retail destination," 2018).

1. The first lesson in urban revitalization is that strong markets are a lot easier in which to spur revitalization than weak markets.

2. It's all relative when it comes to strong and weak markets within communities.

3. Most developers only do development in weak markets once most of the development capacity in the strong markets has been absorbed.

ADUs aren't cheap to build, at least a couple hundred thousand dollars, especially if you have to put in utilities, in particular water and sewer.  That takes a long time to pay off.  So if you're going to make the choice to do it for profit, people with greater resources are going to be the first movers.

Note there is an ADU initiative in Guadalupe, a Hispanic neighborhood of Austin, Texas, focused on supporting extended family living ("As housing costs and economic segregation increase, Austin's granny flats proliferate," Architect's Newspaper).  But it's not so much about lower cost housing, except on a relative basis.

-- Alley Flat Initiative, Guadalupe Neighborhood Development Corporation

If a city like Chicago wants to add accessory dwelling units in lower income areas, especially as a lower cost housing option, they're going to have to provide serious subsidy and other forms of assistance.

-- "Strategies to Help Homeowners Finance Accessory Dwelling Units in Austin A report on findings from a student-led research project,"  CRP 386: Financing Real Estate Projects: Nonprofit and For Profit, University of Texas.

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).

Rents are rising everywhere: with continued supply-demand mismatch, shouldn't renter protections be universal?

The Washington Post has an interactive map where you can see the average rent increase for every county in the US ("Rents are rising everywhere. See how much prices are up in your area").

The media are replete with reports on housing rent increases ("Lack of new construction and corporate landlords contributing to skyrocketing rent," CBS "60 Minutes," "Rent jumped 17% since last year, hitting a new record," CNN, "Rents skyrocket near MBTA stops, new report finds," Boston Globe, "Rents Are Roaring Back in New York City," New York Times), including one instance of a rent increase from year to year of over 100% (" 'Coral Gables Woman Hit With 106% Rent Increase After Property Sold To New Landlord: ‘I Couldn’t Believe It'," ).

Apparently, New Orleanians pay upwards of 60% of household income on rent, and average rent increases are 20%+ ("As rents soar in New Orleans area, friction between tenants, landlords increases," New Orleans Times-Picayune), while some communities face high rates of eviction ("Maryvale is home to rising rents — and many of Phoenix's top evicting apartment complexes," Arizona Republic).

The Post has an article, "Stop blaming millennials for the housing crisis."  Who ever said that millennials are the cause of housing price appreciation? While others believe they will be permanently priced out of owning a house ("Renters are growing pessimistic they will ever own a home as prices keep rising," CNN).

Forbes argues that the supply problem is partly a function of a rise of single person households, which they surmise will drop as people take on roommates to reduce housing cost ("Rising Home Prices And Apartment Rents Will End Soon: The Mystery Of The Missing Roommate").

With the supply-demand mismatch not likely to be slackened anytime soon, all places need some form of renter protections.

For example, Connecticut has created "fair rent commissions" ("As rents rise, Connecticut legislators vote to mandate fair rent commissions in some towns," Hartford Courant).  From the article:

At a time of rising rents, Connecticut legislators voted late Wednesday night to mandate fair rent commissions for all communities with more than 25,000 residents. Currently, the commissions are voluntary, and 24 municipalities statewide already have them, legislators said. The total under the bill would be expanded to 45 communities. 

Democrats said the mandatory commissions are needed now to help renters around the state at a time when many rents are increasing as the coronavirus pandemic continues. 

The commissions would have the power to investigate complaints about rents, convene public hearings, issue subpoenas to force people to appear, and eventually force landlords to lower rents under certain circumstances. The commissions can be created in each municipality through action by the local city council or board of selectmen by July 1, 2023.

Tampa is proposing a 60-day notice for rent increases, but not a cap ("Tampa City Council proposes 60-day notice requirement for rental increases," NewsChannel8).

But more should be done.  I argue in part that controls in rent are justified because limits on housing production create the stage for extranormal rents.

From the previous entry "City Rising PBS SoCal series on gentrification":

1.  Most legacy cities were built out by the 1930s, but since then the nation's population has increased  by 1.5x.  (And communities built out after WWII tend to be built much less densely compared to earlier periods, further restricting housing supply.)

2.  Residents typically fight new development.   Even when new supply is added, typically it's high priced because it's built at today's prices for land, labor, and materials.  And because even with new additions to supply, demand is still unmet, prices for housing don't go down.

3.  So prices rise.

4.  More people want to live in the city, which further drives demand.  And ultimately, people with more money are always able to outbid people with less money.  This raises prices and in later stages of change, pushes displacement.  (Usually in earlier stages of neighborhood change, buildings taken by new residents tended to be vacant, so displacement wasn't an issue.)

5.  Since supply is constrained, it's reasonable to put in rent controls and tenant protections.  When demand is greater than supply, desperate people can be taken advantage of by unscrupulous property owners.

6.  But in return for rent controls, residents must agree to new construction of housing--market rate, accessory dwelling units, infill apartments, etc.

7.  To preserve affordability, governments need to be proactive in terms of purchasing properties, fostering land trusts, cooperatives, and other land tenure forms which prioritize maintaining affordability rather than price escalation.

8.  Ideally, priority for reuse of government-owned land should be 100% affordability, while balancing revitalization and other goals.

9.  Regardless, master planning should include specific planning for "social housing" and allocate lots within the master plan to social housing providers.  (Helsinki does this.  Vienna does a form of this.)

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).

Community planning, capitalism, and housing/real estate development

 October is National Community Planning Month.

==========

Population growth increases housing demand.  Single family housing zoning makes it difficult to meet that demand.  ArchDaily has an article, "When the American Dream Became the Urban Planning Nightmare," about how most cities are zoned for single family housing, which uses land grossly and how this contributes to significant price appreciation because of the mismatch between housing demand and supply in the face of significant population increases since the time when most cities were built.

In 1930, the US population was 123,000,000.

Today, the US population is about 328,000,000.

Attempts to upzone housing.  The New Yorker also has an article about planning, "The Plight of the Urban Planner," suggesting that the planning profession has an opportunity to "right itself" if it can be successful in addressing and correcting "the housing.problem."

I wish it were so easy.

In developed places, so long as single family housing remains the dominant type, not much can change.  In such places, multiunit housing is being added, but usually only in areas currently zoned commercial and/or in transit stations catchment areas.

But most often, the housing that is being built is not dense enough relative to today's and future demand.  

This 3 story apartment building in Salt Lake has retail on most of the first floor.  It's in a district of single family housing, but in the neighborhood commercial district and is served by transit and is close to downtown.

Relative to housing demand and the need to support the commercial district and transit, the building should be five stories, and more residents would support all these objectives.

But if 1-2 parking spaces needs to be provided for each unit, because few people travel on foot, by bike, or transit, it quickly becomes uneconomic to build more densely as the provision of parking becomes increasingly expensive if it has to be constructed underground.

So housing demand remains greater than supply, and prices continue to rise.

More population reduces automobile dependence, supports transit, walkable neighborhoods, and locally serving commercial districts.  And lack of enough concentrated population (we don't have to call it density) is the primary reason it's difficult to build walkable communities and/or walkable neighborhood serving retail districts as well as successful transit. Without population density not dependent on the car, transit, walkability, and retail can't reach critical mass.

OTOH, since most households don't have a lot of wealth, real estate appreciation is one of the only ways to build the household wealth portfolio, so many residents are fine with constrictions on housing supply.

Even if they argue in favor of affordable and/or access to lower priced housing, so long as it is built somewhere else.

Housing policy as an illustration of economic illiteracy.  I joke that politics is about doing everything possible to ward off the recognition of how economics works--constrained supply raises prices.  Or not charging enough or at all for something (e.g., parking, pollutant discharges, etc.) increases its consumption.

Elected officials understand how more housing provides greater revenues to cities, and at least over many decades, contributes to housing price stabilization.  

But it is the rare politician that is willing to explain this to residents fighting change, not because they are "against housing" but because they want to "preserve neighborhood character."

Is this the fault of planners?  It's not fair to blame planners for this.  Planners are caught in what in social psychology is called boundary spanning, having to satisfy different interests (developers, public finance, elected officials, residents) usually with conflicting goals and objectives.

1300 Block of Rhode Island Avenue, Washington, DC.

Mixed housing types.  Before 1940, it wasn't uncommon for neighborhoods to be a mix of housing types, with small and medium apartment buildings alongside a range of sizes of single family housing, including carriage or alley housing, duplexes, and courtyard housing.

It seems that changing the zoning to allow for a greater diversity of housing types would be a simple change.  That's what Minneapolis has done, and Seattle has done this in some areas too.  And the State of Oregon.

Incremental change won't change much.  But change incrementally will take decades to have much impact, and by increasing the value of the land today, because of the increase in development rights, won't miraculously lead to less expensive housing. 

Basically, you can add supply, but so long as demand is greater than supply, new additions won't reduce housing costs, especially because today's housing is built at today's cost of land, materials, labor, and financing.

215 Boylston Avenue East, Seattle. 17 studios were built on this 2,700 s.f. lot.

In Seattle what's happening is different, the demolition of single family houses and the insertion of smaller apartment/condominum buildings, usually with modern architectural styles at odds with the architectural designs that were dominant when the neighborhood was first built.  

It's a much more significant change, a rezoning from single family housing to multiunit housing.

Building more intensely by transit.  The New Yorker article starts by discussing a different policy, the attempt in California to make it easier to build more densely in areas served by transit.  The initiative failed, as a coalition came together of landed residents who fought wanting to keep neighborhoods unchanged and "anti-gentrifiers" who saw the initiative as "rewarding avaricious developers" rather than resulting in the production of more housing.

Real estate developers: it's their fault, right?  It goes on to discuss a range of books about planning and the role of real estate development in shaping cities and driving what urban planning does.

While the author mentions the classic books Death and Life of Great American Cities and The Power Broker, rather than mention Urban Fortunes: Towards a Political Economy of Place, which outlines what the authors call the Growth Machine and how city political and economic elites are united on a pro-[real estate] intensification agenda because city revenues are dependent on property taxes, it cites the more recent Capital City by Sam Stein.  From the article:

But Stein’s special aim is not just to show how real estate controls everything, which, if you were halfway paying attention during the financial crisis—rooted as it was in the predations of housing markets—you already know. His principal point is that the power of the real-estate state flows from the dynamic between development and the profession of city planning. Planners are usually thought of as bureaucrats, though sometimes they take on the aspect of legend: Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann, who tamed rebellious Paris into wide avenues that couldn’t be barricaded; imperious Robert Moses, who pummelled New York with expressways. Stein’s planners are at once lesser and greater than these. Though they may look like mousy cubicle denizens—determining the right sort of window treatment for a historic house, or calculating the Area Median Income for a smattering of affordable units in a luxury building—they’re more influential than they appear. Planners, he writes, “are tasked with the contradictory goals of inflating real estate values while safeguarding residents’ best interests.” The position is an inherently uncomfortable one. But planning holds out the promise that the future is, at least in part, knowable. Explicit in Stein’s narrative is the idea that a different, more democratic kind of planning might lead us to more democratic kinds of cities.

I haven't yet read that book, but I doubt it is as dispassionate about this dialectic around local public finance and how it exists within capitalism.  

The original Growth Machine journal article, which was expanded into the book, is here:

-- "City as a Growth Machine: Toward a Political Economy of Place," American Journal of Sociology, 1976

Public finance and property tax revenues.  Municipal finance is dependent on a successful real estate market (and as blogreader EE says, "developers are like sharks, who if they stop moving, die; Developers have to keep building, just like sharks keep swimming").

-- "The real lesson from Flint, Michigan is about municipal finance," 2016

In the US form of capitalism, the "state" plays a minimal role in housing production.  Sure planning is important.  But in the US form of capitalism, the state is not the primary constructor of housing it is dependent on the private sector.  Although the state aids the production of lower cost housing through inputs such as free or low cost land, density bonuses, and financing.

In a profit focused system, real estate developers will build housing for more expensive segments of the market, because it is more profitable. That shouldn't be surprising.

Vienna and Singapore and Helsinki.  By contrast, in Vienna, while the city is no longer the primary constructor of housing as it was 100 years ago, it still plans and directs the construction of housing, guided by the principle of housing as a social right, rather than as a mechanism for building household wealth.  (Typically, property taxes are quite low in Europe and not the primary source of local government revenue.)

-- "Learning from Vienna and Vienna's Social Housing Model," 2013

-- ""How Vienna Cracked the Case of Housing Affordability"," The Tyee

Note that Singapore's housing model has some elements from Vienna, but also allows owner-tenants to benefit from housing price appreciation.

-- "Why Singapore Has One of the Highest Home Ownership Rates," Bloomberg

Helsinki and other cities aren't active constructors of housing, but when they do planning, from the outset they divvy up redevelopment sites as a mix of for profit and social housing tenure forms, where certain sites are given to social housing organizations to develop as 100% affordable housing.

The US form of affordable housing production.  By contrast, the focus of "affordable housing" policy in the US is a small proportion of units--usually 10% or less--being included within for profit housing developments. (This is called inclusionary zoning.) This mixes income levels within a development a bit, but doesn't produce significant numbers of low cost units.

It's not an unholy alliance so much as the reality if you don't have community development mechanisms (organizations, financing, land) dedicated to achieving non-market related goals.

Note that there is a separate social housing sector, but it tends to operate in weaker real estate markets.  In high value markets, federal, state and local housing policy defaults to the market, and provides some inducements for the production of a modicum of units through inclusionary zoning.

Planners didn't create capitalism.  But they have to deal with how it is effected in the United States. But yes, lots of policy elements--segregation of housing choice options and financing, allowable density, homogeneous zoning, the dominance of single family housing zones, alongside significant growth in the US population, capital markets, a land use policy centered around automobility--contribute to the state we're in today.

Planners can offer policy responses, but at the end of the day, the decisions are made by others.

-- "Planning the Capitalist City," pages 18-24, Richard Foglesong