Housing Affordability Requires a Community-Wide Approach

Workforce housing means dwelling units low enough in cost that the firefighters, social workers, and so forth who serve the community can live there.

Often higher-income or more exclusive communities must resort to a form of incentive or regulation known as inclusionary zoning, which provides bonus quantities of development in return for providing housing affordability for needed workers in a community.

When it comes to more low-income people, the tree-lined street communities get absolutely crazy. Common fears are that low-income people bring crime, boorishness, lack of upkeep, clunker cars, and their low-income friends to the neighborhood. And there's the very widespread notion that housing affordability makes a slum, and will look even worse after a few years.

Regardless of how we frame it, we fear that attention to housing affordability might have a negative effect on our own property values.

Housing Affordability Is Relative

What is affordable to one household definitely isn't possible for another.

First let's deal with terminology. Low-income housing is relatively easy to define because there are federal standards for eligibility. The Census Bureau defines the poverty line according to household size. So when we speak narrowly about low-income housing, that's easy to figure out, at least in the U.S.

Commendably, now we've begun to think more broadly in terms of housing affordability by comparing housing cost to the ability of the people who live in that town or city to pay. In mortgage practice, the percentage of income that the non-poor could allocate to housing had climbed up to 38% in some quarters before the current and recent debacle. Or among those who brought on this mess, the percentage rose to whatever a borrower thought he, she, or they could afford.

Jobs-Housing Mismatch

From a community perspective, though, it's possible to calculate whether there is a mismatch between the cost of housing and the wages paid by locally available jobs. Use Census Data, Bureau of Labor Statistics data, major employer survey information, and Realtor® and apartment advertising data to compare.

The tough part from a public policy perspective is planning an effective program after you know the answer to whether your town, small or medium-sized city, or your portion of the metropolitan area offers adequate housing affordability.

In the Unlikely Event of Too Much Housing Affordability

If there's a more than adequate supply of affordable housing, you have three options:

(1) increase your economic development activity based on the fact that you can accommodate an additional workforce without waiting for housing affordability issues to be remedied; or

(2) you may need some serious neighborhood marketing or neighborhood revitalization. This could be especially true if you've had a high rate of foreclosure, or anticipate another wave of foreclosure and are in need of neighborhood stabilization.

(3) maybe you as a community organization leader or as an elected official can encourage upgrading of some of the existing housing stock.

If people can afford more than they are paying, they probably would appreciate the opportunity for energy conservation improvements that would save them money in the long run but require a capital investment in the short run. Incentivizing such upgrades would be a wise public policy.

Perhaps other upgrades to keep housing in your area generally competitive with housing throughout the nation would be in order. Every city and town now needs an economic development strategy in case their principal employer(s) leave town. Part of your economic development strategy should be an attractive range of housing options. So even if your current population is satisfied with under-spending on housing, the people you're trying to attract to provide jobs in your community may not be.

So if you're in an area where there are no privacy fences, paved driveways, street trees, garages, rental housing, one-floor housing appealing to the older adults you'll eventually have, or houses large enough for young families and their mounds of toys and stuff, you should probably explore incentives to inspire builders to move in those directions. Or private owners to upgrade the items they've taken for granted, but which aren't going to fly if you have to import a whole new crop of workers and executives to keep your economy humming.

Not Enough Housing Affordability

But it's really the opposite problem that is more likely the case. You don't have enough housing affordability for the workforce you already have. Housing prices soared over the past 10-20 years, due to a certain amount of speculation but also to rapidly increasing square footages thought to be essential. Greed about particular amenities also contributed. Stainless steel appliances really don't work any better than the ones you buy at the discount store. Sometimes not as well, I can tell you.

But in some markets it was and is literally impossible to buy a modestly proportioned house that offers good design and good function but without extraneous goodies and an enormous private yard.

So what do you do if housing is a big issue for you? Here are the solutions.

1. Ask developers and real estate professionals.

When in doubt in matters of community development, ask. Simply ask why the housing supply in the price range you need for workforce housing affordability is missing. Remember to ask about both rental and for sale homes. Not everyone is cut out to be a homeowner, and that will continue to be true for a number of years as households try to work off the massive credit card binge of the last several years.

If you've done your homework otherwise, and you have a housing inventory telling you approximately how many of each housing type is available in the community, ask the professionals and yourselves if there is an absolute housing shortage, or if there is only a shortage of affordable units, considering the incomes households are able to earn in your community.

2. Act boldly.

If you have both a shortage of affordable units and a shortage of total units, then your solution in some ways is simpler. If you're a part of a municipal government or a neighborhood association that regularly tries to influence the municipal government, just take a firm stand and require that new housing built be in the affordable price range.

Use whatever combination of pressure, regulations, requirements, and discretionary approvals you have at your disposal. It's likely that you'll hear from the development and real estate crowd that, well, there's simply more profit potential at less risk in higher priced homes. If you work on a commission, would you prefer to have 3% on a $600,000 home, or 3% of a $175,000 sale price? Hmm, almost the same amount of work, which one should I do?

If you're a developer--not the guy or gal that wields the hammer but the paperwork guy--the developer, it might be not much more work to develop 100 houses at $175,000 each as 100 houses at $600,000 each.

So we know why the real estate industry keeps overlooking housing affordability, although hopefully now the corrupt mortgage industry that kept financing houses people can't really afford is all but disappearing.

So get on your moral high ground and preach a little about the need for housing affordability. If you have enough discretionary authority, require it.

Low-Income Housing

There's another problem, of course, and that's people who are at or near minimum wage, or not working at all for one reason or another. Or people who've experienced a procession of bad luck events and can't afford much at all. The genuinely low income.

Federal programs supposedly take care of that problem by providing either (a) housing vouchers that can be used to rent private housing, (b) Section 8 housing in either the "scattered site" or housing complex form, or (c) public housing per se, where a housing authority has developed and manages an entire multi-family site.

In many towns, cities, and rural areas, though, the supply of this government housing assistance is too low.

Sometimes that occurs because not enough landlords are willing to enroll in the Section 8 program. They may feel that the calculated "fair market rent" that the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) allows for their metropolitan area is too low. Or they just think that the inspection process is too tough, and they'll never make any money. Or they philosophically don't want to deal with the government-assisted housing payment or with poor people.

A worse motivation is that property owners think their neighbors will be outraged if they suspect that they have rented out their house as a low-income subsidized rental property.

Neighborhood and community leaders, I have two thoughts for you:

1. You really need to model and teach that a small amount of low-income housing can be acceptable in your community, and here I mean an immediate community. My experience completely supports the notion that you need to limit the amount of low-income units in a particular community. But for upper middle class communities, you can accept a few low-income households in widely scattered areas with absolutely no adverse consequences. This is particularly true if you have an engaged landlord or property manager who will occasionally check the property. It's your social responsibility, that's all.

2. Besides missing out on the neighborly thing to do, if moderate and high income communities refuse to accept any low-income housing, the natural consequence is that low-income housing will be huddled together.

Experience suggests that this is wrong, wrong, wrong, and it just perpetuates poverty and a diminished inner city. That doughnut hole in the middle of your town or city is happening because you won't do your fair share. And as a result of the hole, your metro area is not as efficient as it could be, and it repels people who otherwise might invest in your city.

Inclusionary Zoning and Exclusionary Zoning

One way to attempt to handle the jobs-housing affordability mismatch is through inclusionary zoning. Or it's probably more accurate to say you should do away with your exclusionary zoning. Let's explain.

Inclusionary zoning is a term meaning that the zoning regulations encourage, rather than discourage, the construction of affordable housing, whatever that relative term might mean in your locale. Exclusionary zoning is the opposite, and consists of requirements for large lots, large setbacks, and various amenities such as two or three paved off-street parking places, trees of a certain size and quantity, landscaping requirements, and even large home sizes.

So for an inclusionary zoning approach to improve housing affordability, consider whether the lot sizes for each of your residential zoning classifications can be reduced without great harm. Many people enjoy not having much of an expanse of lawn to care for. Maybe you can zone for more villas, townhomes, patio homes, and condominiums, as well as write a zoning district classification and assign a zoning district or two or three for mixed-use development.

You can actually provide some desired amenities while pushing your zoning and/or subdivision regulations in the inclusionary direction. For example, consider whether your minimum required street width can't be lowered. The complete streets movement is popular, because it calms traffic, puts neighbors closer to each other, reduces future public costs of repaving, and so forth. But it also reduces the initial cost of development.

Review development-related fees to see if the government actually requires that much revenue to process an application. My experience is that usually application processing is a money-loser, but if your government has been tempted into raising money through higher fees, you're raising the cost of housing a bit. Also see if you can reduce administrative delay in approval times, because delay means a builder paying more carrying charges on the land.

Another really useful approach to providing some discreet affordable housing and even low-income housing is the alley house, carriage house, granny flat, mother-in-law quarters, accessory housing, garage apartment, or whatever term for an accessory dwelling unit you may be familiar with. If you have a community full of elegant two-story homes widely spaced, with large rear yards and alleys, can't you provide that people can build carriage houses along the alleys? Provide strict standards for them, and architectural review so that the carriage house is in some sympathy with the main house, but you can do that. I know you can.

If you zoned to allow new carriage houses, that would be an example of inclusionary zoning. But also you reduce lot sizes, setbacks, and even height limitations if and where appropriate.

Incentives for Providing Affordable Housing

Usually the inclusionary zoning changes aren't sufficient if you have much of an affordable housing gap. Probably you will need to give developers attractive incentives to build what you want and need. These systems can be incredibly complex or very simple. Your main problem with incentive zoning, as it is called, is that neighbors often will oppose the increase in density that usually serves as the "incentive" for developers to do something you want. In this case, you want housing affordability.

You may need to have your planners, staff, or planning consultant give a presentation showing attractive high-density development. High-density development is also another very relative term. But ask an authority to push the envelope for your residents, and show extremely attractive housing at a higher density than they're used to.

And then play fair, municipality, and scatter the affordable housing throughout the new development. Certainly don't concentrate it on the edges, or the neighbors really won't trust you next time, but also don't concentrate it anywhere.

Architecture is the answer for many housing affordability problems. Our mass production of housing is one of the reasons it seems to many real estate and development professionals that housing affordability means an ugly product. If you look at European models, it's possible to mass-produce something that isn't ugly and has potential for the individual expressions that make a house a home.

Elsewhere we talk about the "big house" concept, where what appears to be one large house actually can be three or four apartments. Either doors are strategically and logically placed on each side of the building, or there is one central entrance hall, with private entrances to each unit from that hallway.

Or more practical for some of you, the "big house" could look just like the rest of the 4,000 square footers on the block, but really consist of two 2,000 square foot condo units. Yes, it takes an architect and a little imagination. But most architects like challenges. Then your job as the community or neighborhood leader will be to go jawbone the banker so that this housing type can be financed. It's a public good, and your community needs housing affordability. You're not bringing in a bunch of welfare-dependent folks; you're allowing your policemen, firefighters, teachers, and retail clerks to live in your community.

If you have a significant sized infill site, also consider zoning it for a new urbanist development, which makes a mix of incomes not only possible but attractive.

Mixed-Income Housing Is Essential to Society

The last point is to be more explicit about why society needs mixed-income housing.

In Hills v. Gautreaux (425 U.S. 284), the U.S. Supreme Court in 1976 handed down a consent decree requiring certain Chicago public housing residents to be relocated into areas outside of concentrations of poverty. As a result 7,500 African American families on welfare were dispersed throughout the Chicago region into suburban or urban locations, providing they had no serious criminal record and that they had maintained their public housing units to a reasonable level. The administrators were careful to send only a few families to each suburb.

Social science researchers later discovered dramatically improved outcomes for the families that had been relocated to the suburbs. Children did far better in school and were more likely to graduate, and parents became more prosperous as well. Even though initially the families dispersed from urban public housing had difficulty adapting if they went to suburbs, the long-term results were very positive. The results inspired a national Moving To Opportunity program, which simply hasn't been pursued aggressively enough.

Your community can handle a few low-income residents now, can't it? An information clearinghouse is the National Low Income Housing Coalition. You're strong; you can do it.

Certainly you can address housing affordability enough that people who work in your city can afford to live there. If you are more wealthy than your workforce, you can definitely afford an architect to prepare some concepts and renderings that will push developers in the right direction. There are many exciting, colorful, and beautiful prototypes in Europe and the rest of the world that don't cost a fortune. I think we can provide housing affordability, compared to wages, in every community in America.

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