There is an op ed, "Maryland must do more to preserve housing around the Purple Line," in the Washington Post by David Bowers of the Enterprise Community Partners--one of the nation's leading affordable housing constructors and advocates--about the need to preserve affordable housing in the swath of Montgomery and Prince George's Counties that will be served by the Purple Line light rail because new transit will lead to housing price appreciation.
From the article:
When construction on the Purple Line began in 2017, the Purple Line Corridor Coalition, a multi-sector group, estimated that 17,000 affordable homes in the line’s vicinity were at risk of being lost to market forces. Rent increases will lead to displacement; 47 percent of all renters in the area around the Purple Line are already rent-burdened, meaning they pay more than 30 percent of their monthly income in rent. They can’t afford to pay more.
The concerns about housing appreciation due to better transit access from new projects aren't new.
It's been an issue in the Langley Park community for more than 10 years ("In Langley Park, Purple Line brings promise, and fears, of change," 2011; "Along the Purple Line, worries that new transit will bring higher rents," 2021, Washington Post) and was raised in the Columbia Pike community of Arlington when they were considering streetcar service there ("Columbia Pike housing, transit questioned," 2012, Washington Post).
And those concerns are logical based on the experience in the region with Metrorail and how it has led to significant price appreciation, especially in core neighborhoods in Washington, DC and Arlington County, Virginia, even if it took a couple decades and longer to become visible.
One example is how the addition of the NoMA Red Line infill station in 2004 led to a significant increased in demand for housing north of H Street NE. Since then housing prices have increased by 6x to 10x.
Express newspaper, 2012.
For what it's worth, I first suggested that Montgomery and Prince George's Counties go in on a community development corporation to address this in a brief blog entry in 2009.Relatedly in 2012, "Time + improvements in transit infrastructure = increased housing values."
Then in response to two conferences organized by the Purple Line Coalition in 2014, I wrote two pieces about this ("Purple line planning in suburban Maryland as an opportunity to integrate place and people focused initiatives into delivery of new transit systems" and "Quick follow up to the Purple Line piece about creating a Transportation Renewal District and selling bonds to fund equitable development").
At the time, I talked about this with a member of the Montgomery County Planning Board, and he said it wasn't an issue of concern with the chair, because the chair couldn't see such a response being adopted, so why bother?
In 2017, I updated the post a wee bit and included it in the Purple Line series of articles about how to respond to and leverage the Purple Line as an addition to the Washington metropolitan transit network.
Now that the Purple Line is going to be delivered 4+ years late, Maryland gets a little more time, but not much. The places that are likely to be good locations for market rate housing are already being developed ("Suburban Maryland Purple Line light rail as an already successful economic development driver," 2020).
For example, in Chevy Chase, new development is underway to leverage its location to the coming Purple Line ("New apartments leasing in Chevy Chase Lake in Montgomery County," Washington Post). From the article:
Three residential developments are slated to be part of the Chevy Chase Lake development in Montgomery County, Md., designed to be a walkable mixed-use community with a town center and access to the Capital Crescent Trail. The development is adjacent to Connecticut Avenue and the planned Purple Line transit system, which will provide an east-west connection between Montgomery and Prince George’s counties.
My idea was that among its activities, the Bi-County CDC would help to fund, buy, operate and hold affordable housing in the corridor, including buying existing properties and adding more housing to them.
Note also I was intrigued how Seattle was considering this issue wrt the Martin Luther King Corridor and the forthcoming addition of light rail there ("MLK Way: More than a highway or a piece of the next grand plan, it's home," Seattle Times). I blogged about it in 2005.
And I was impressed by a proactive community development housing production initiative in Greater Phoenix in association with the light rail program there (""Light rail housing fund spurs 15 projects in metro Phoenix" and "Why you don't see more vacant lots along light-rail route," Arizona Republic).
How much time is necessary to respond to an obvious situation?
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I find the affordable housing "argument" frustrating, because the problem is obvious--not enough housing--and the solution is obvious--build more.
But it costs money and requires government action is counter to the neo liberal argument that the market will solve every problem and government is ineffectual.
After reading an article about a project in Long Beach, California, I looked up Mercy Housing, a multi-state CDC focused on AH production, and this is on their website:
Nationwide, there are only 31 affordable units for every 100 extremely low income renters. In no state can a full-time minimum wage worker afford a one-bedroom or a two-bedroom rental unit at Fair Market Rent. 2.5 million children are homeless each year in the U.S. These sobering numbers are only a few of the many illustrating our country’s dire need for affordable housing.
These statistics couldn't be more clear. There is great demand for affordable housing. But if you want more affordable housing, you have to build it and it won't be produced by the for profit real estate development community, at least not without subsidy.
Even then it was understood that housing for the lowest income segments would have to be subsidized. But the "bias" or preference of policy makers was in favor of private housing production and not providing subsidies.
Even though various legislation authorized affordable housing production, it was a very small part of New Deal housing measures. And after a time, active government involvement in affordable housing was forbidden, and severe restrictions on what could be produced and for how much were also imposed, making production of high quality affordable housing increasingly difficult.
Today's piece by Philadelphia Inquirer urban design columnist Inga Saffron, "The Philadelphia Inquirer: The city desperately needs more public housing. There’s a perfect site in West Philadelphia," is equally illuminating.
She points out that since the Clinton Administration, public housing policy has focused on reducing the number of low income housing units, adding market rate housing to AH developments, lessening a focus on providing housing for the lowest income segments, and limiting new production. From the article:
The real crisis in Philadelphia is poverty. Even as the city’s economy has rebounded over the last two decades, launching a building boom that has shined up blighted neighborhoods, its poverty rate has grown steadily worse. Almost a quarter of city residents struggle to pay for food and housing — 65,000 more than in 2000. No matter how many houses Philadelphia’s private developers build, those low-income residents will never be able to afford the rent. ...
Why doesn’t PHA just build more apartments? The short answer is that the federal government has drastically reduced funding to the nation’s housing authorities over the last three decades and imposed strict limits on new construction through the Faircloth Amendment. Things got so bad here that PHA closed its waiting list to new applications (except for seniors and the disabled) in 2013. The situation isn’t unique to Philadelphia: Today, there are 200,000 fewer public housing units available nationally than during the Clinton era.
So yes, as poverty and housing prices have increased, not just in Philadelphia, but nationally we have:
- reduced the number of low income housing units;
- restricted construction of new low income housing units; and
- reduced the amount of money available to public housing authorities.
And we wonder why there is an AH supply problem?, while conveniently blaming "greedy developers."
You reference a 2009 piece on this by you, but I don't see it in the links. Just an edit.
ReplyDeleteThe ECP "plan" is to preserve 17000 homes in that area / but at an income level of 70K.
That's an 80% MFI level for a household of 1, or 60% MFI realistically for a household of 4.
As the 2011 article suggests, people who are complaining are at around 20K a year in total income. And those people aren't likely to qualify in any case (income not documented well enough to get into the affordable housing)
Again, I'm not going to argue with you that public housing (free) has been dramatically wound done in the past 30 years. But we're not talking public housing, we are talking income limited housing.
And we've had plenty of that. The market incentives work at that level. Rent would be about 1500-1750 a month for a one bedroom, or more like 2500 for a 2 bedroom.
Zero appetite for expanding free housing.
What is needed if you want to preserve communities is rents inter 1000 level for 3 bedroom. Nobody is willing to pay that much in incentive -- understandably.
And no amount of supply is going to help on that front either.
I didn't link to the 2009 piece. I know it's there because I came across it when writing the stuff in 2014, but when Google "upgraded" Blogger they made changes that crippled the completeness of the search function and I haven't been able to find it.
ReplyDelete1. Anyway, first, as always, you point out an important distinction between public housing and affordable housing.
I would argue there needs to be both. You're right that those communities don't want to pay for PH. It should be part of the mix. I was floored to see that PGC has only 400 units of public housing...
2. What Bowers is talking about and what I am referring to is what is called in CDC/HUD circles as "housing preservation."
Sometimes historic preservationists get confused and think they mean preserving old, historic buildings. They don't mean that. They mean preserving housing portfolios permanently as affordable, rather than it converting to market rate housing when HUD contracts expire etc.
Basically, what we might call reverse filtration. Which is the flip side of another point you've made, when demand and supply is so out of whack, class B, C and D housing can be undermaintained severely and still be priced highly, especially when close to the center city.
I should have included this blog entry in the cites:
http://urbanplacesandspaces.blogspot.com/2021/08/strong-real-estate-markets-lack-of.html
It comes up in DC from time to time. Community Preservation and Development Corp. has some properties in the city, like the big development in Edgewood, which looms over that shopping center next to the footbridge for the RI Avenue Metrorail station.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/black-and-asian-residents-unite-to-savelow-income-building-on-edge-of-chinatown/2014/08/06/552accf0-189c-11e4-85b6-c1451e622637_story.html
3. Orange County has recently started buying complexes and converting them to workforce housing. By not charging property taxes, they reduce the rent by 11%.
https://www.ocregister.com/2021/08/12/first-workforce-housing-for-middle-income-renters-planned-in-orange/
That's a form of portfolio investment to maintain affordability. It does require subsidies.
And that's really what I was writing about.
But I'd add adding PH too. SROs, etc., broadening the mix of what's offered.
I never did write a blog entry about Long Branch. I intended to, but when I did site visits (and attended a workshop for MoCo Planning led by David Barth) it was when we were starting to do what we needed to do to move, and I never wrote it up.
One of my things was their plan to build a new facility that would include CASA of Maryland wasn't bold enough (it should have been more like this, https://urbanplacesandspaces.blogspot.com/2021/11/the-other-george-miller-idea-creating.html) and it should be paired with a county funded anchor mixed use project there to set a reference standard for quality and to show how to do mixed tenure housing at transit stations.)
http://www.montgomeryplanning.org/community/longbranch/documents/Long%20Branch%20Sector%20Plan%20-%20Approved%20and%20Adopted%20-%20WEB.pdf
The library was just rebuilt, but not with "social urbanism" principles. It's a huge opportunity lost.
https://www2.montgomerycountymd.gov/mcgportalapps/Press_Detail.aspx?Item_ID=32617
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=== continued =4. at a conference a number of years ago, I asked a principal of WC Smith about how much subsidy made a difference in rents for new construction. For a new apartment building one block from Anacostia, a quality building, maybe 5 stories, rent was 1/3 less--but still more than $1,000 month, and probably there weren't any three bedrooms.
ReplyDelete5. The other important point you make is about accommodating the undocumented/people who work in the underground economy.
As you know this became a big issue with Covid fiscal stimulus programs. These people weren't eligible and they really needed it.
Some states and I think DC tweaked their programs to expand eligibility to these communities.
... but even the very poor have a hard time participating. That came through in the Post article about Peoria.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/interactive/2021/covid-economy-illinois/
Link rot is a real problem. I do find it very valuable myself to go through and read the old articles, as it gives a much better context.
ReplyDeleteThe Nicholas Lehman one -- from 1992 -- is very instructive.
"https://www.nytimes.com/1994/01/09/magazine/the-myth-of-community-development.html"
Myth of Community Development
the Purple line corridor housing action plan -- I am sure it is on the links here somewhere
https://purplelinecorridor.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/HAP-Full-Report-06-Dec-2019.pdf
Has a lot of these comments already built in. I don't see a SRO component but agree it may not be so needed there.
Also makes the CSG requests to no up zone Langley park until you get PG county housing money more sensible. I think what CSG would like is to up zone the commercial areas and keep low rise apartments. I say both need to go.
The OC workforce initiative is very interesting. Exactly what is needed.
In the follow up piece I thought about listing the Lemann article separately, but it's within one of the added links.
ReplyDeleteLike with OC when I wrote about SRO in 2017, in Takoma Langley and Silver Spring, I'd say there is likely demand for SRO, it's just not surveyed, people didn't think about it. But existing conditions are comparable, plus the PL corridor is much closer to the central city than Santa Ana or Fullerton or Costa Mesa are to LA.
It'd be nice to keep the low rise sure, but I think the most instructive and analogous example in the area is the impact of the NoMa infill station.
If you draw a circle, the half west of the railroad is all intensified. On the east side, intensified above M Street until 4th Street NE, then above Florida Avenue to 6th.
Below H Street has intensified for different reasons, while the rowhouse neighborhood below M Street remains intact, plus the bits above M and below Florida from 4th Street to not quite 7th.
I regret the loss of the old wholesale food district, but once NoMa station was announced it was preordained. The planner side of me sees it as a justifiable loss because of the positive addition to housing supply.
But there is a loss of businesses and employment. The city could probably have offered another spot off NY Avenue, but it definitely would have had a congestion problem, and they just aren't particularly oriented to the needs of "industry."
Same with the Purple Line. It won't have the same level of intensity because it's not heavy rail and it's not in the core unlike NoMa. But it will happen. And from a best use standpoint, the garden apartments should go. Why else do you spend billions on building the transit infrastructure?
But I don't know the area well enough east of the UMD campus. First MoCo, then Langley will be the places that change earliest.
But I'd say the point isn't about restrictions on upzoning, but in creating protections for affordability and mechanisms for realization of a program to implement it.
So from that standpoint, I'd link the two. It's the whole point of being able to justify a TIF district and selling bonds.
The follow up piece also links to the piece where the NPR story references an academic study about substandard low income housing in Takoma Langley and the impact on tenants.
I know desperation makes such housing acceptable but we shouldn't be satisfied with that.
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Kansas City Star: End of an affordable era in Volker: Midtown KC apartments sold, surprising tenants.
https://www.kansascity.com/news/local/article256275097.html
It's kinda impressive how the elected officials aren't really responding.
ReplyDeleteWrt the KC story... once H Street became on the map because of the revitalization study which was released in 2003 and the recognition if Williams and post Barry DC, Marcus & Millichap went through and surveyed absolutely every property that was commercial, had all the data on ownership and contact.
ReplyDeleteEvery property, even rear entry carriage houses, etc.
So then the corridor became part of the national market, but of course regionally. And deals started happening.
(CoStar/LoopNet does this now.)
There should be the same kind of data compilation in the PL corridor, for my Bi County CDC, with the obvious focus on both affordability preservation as well as identifying properties that are appropriate for a kind of surgical intensification.
... I mentioned NoMa. Another example is PG Plaza. The area started intensifying long before the green line was actually built because a main property knew the GL would eventually come (built some office buildings rented to federal agencies needing to be close to National Agriculture Library etc.) plus the mall.
The rest of the development didn't come til the GL did. But still many years later.
The station opened in 1993. You saw a shopping center, some garden apartments close to the station, and an apartment building marketed to college students before 2008. But not much before.
The crash slowed things down, but a few years later, more apartments have been built west of PG Plaza, an old printing plant was bought for conversion to housing etc.
But hell, that's an almost 30 year process.
The urban form in the area sucks, there are zero connections between properties other than by East West Highway, and the level of intensity underperformed compared to opportunity, but it's probably a better example of what change is likely to look like in PGC.
(There's two civic assets in the area, the library which could be made grand, even the equivalent of a central library for the system, and Northwestern High School.)
One word: GRIM.
It's not going to get "high quality" "modern" buildings like the one in Chevy Chase, on 1st Street in NoMa, or Monroe & Market in Brookland, without plans, subsidy, design controls, etc.
PGC should create the transportation renewal district regardless, again for TIF and bonding capacity.
Without significant forward steps, I think the disconnected relatively low intensity, center-less form of PG Plaza is their PL destiny.
The quality of the apartments at the Petworth Metrorail station by Donatelli
ReplyDeletehttps://www.flickr.com/photos/rllayman/3443709051/
and the building on the next block with the Safeway on the ground floor by Lowe (principals were involved with the City Vista building including a Safeway at 5th and K Streets NW)
https://www.flickr.com/photos/mvjantzen/39411078320
They are helped by having some "large" 1920s or 1930s brown brick apartment buildings in the vicinity which set a standard.
or in Columbia Heights are far beyond what is likely achievable in PGC without a lot of extraordinary focus.
I've been to the Riverdale Park development, but I can't remember much of it. The Whole Foods was impressive.
Looking it up "Riverdale Station" it's decent enough, but could have more density.
2. I MAY BE WRONG ABOUT THE CAPACITY FOR DESIGN QUALITY IN PGC. The plan they chose for the Riverdale Park PL station TOD isn't bad.
https://www.bizjournals.com/washington/news/2021/05/11/beacon-heights-purple-line-property-developers.html
(To access, open an incognito window, enter the URL, hit return, and then very quickly hit the escape key.)
Pew Research Center: Affordable housing is a major local problem, more Americans now say.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/01/18/a-growing-share-of-americans-say-affordable-housing-is-a-major-problem-where-they-live/
reminds me fo the classic onion story:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.theonion.com/nations-poorest-1-now-controls-two-thirds-of-u-s-soda-1819569841
Again going back to the Price to income ratios, housing is American is very cheap by international standards.
But like gas prices, everyone wants it cheaper.
AF is such a terrible issue, because the amount of theatrical dancing on building houses for poor people is incredible.
As I said, nobody wants it. Fairfax has something like 1000 public housing unit. I don't know about MoCo, they rely on the AHU to provide it.
The biggest thing one could do to make it more popular is put a term limit on it. You get 5 years of free or reduced housing, but that's it.
You certainly see in very high cost areas (SF, Boston, NYC and DC) housing prices limiting some family formation, although lets be honest its not housing but child care that is the real driver here.