Housing Demand Determines Neighborhood Quality

Even if you're out in a rural area and you think that one run-down mobile home doesn't matter, you're wrong.

If you're in a city, that goes double. Neighborhood reputation spreads quickly, and that usually comes from the neatness and quality of the homes (or the quantity of the bars). If the residential stock is all the same, people somehow get the idea you're boring. But if there is an eccentric mansion next to what the real estate industry calls a cottage, you don't present a coherent image.

So how do you steer the right course between boring and too varied to be memorable? And keep all the housing well maintained? Not to mention, you'll need the right number of houses, apartments, and condominiums in the right size for the households you can attract. That's your challenge, community organization, leader, or activist.

The only way to keep your neighborhood marketable is good old-fashioned persuasion. You persuade property owners, landlords, and developers that your neighborhood is worth their investment.

As developments mature, even homeowners association (HOA) boards need to be aware of these dynamics.

Below we give very brief overviews of the following topics:

-The spiral of property decline and its key role in destabilizing neighborhoods

-Neighborhood revitalization and restoration

-Home affordability

-Rural home maintenance and development

-Small cities and towns

-Current issues (tear downs and monster houses, foreclosure neighborhoods, new urbanism). See our other pages for an overview of government homeowner or renter assistance or a shorter description of the more rare government grants subsidizing owners or renters, both of which are applicable to the U.S. only.

Neighborhood Revitalization

The question to ask is why the market isn't taking care of this. Perhaps the regional factors are bringing stiff competition or a population exodus, perhaps you simply have too many homes of a certain type, and perhaps you have too high a proportion of low-income renters or homeowners.

Restoring communities--whether translating a good buildling back to its historic reference or simply repairing and upgrading--is hard work. However, neighborhood associations can really help. Check out our tips on stimulating home renovation. For awhile an information sharing exchange operated in one of our home cities. Periodic Saturday afternoon tip swapping sessions often ended in barbecue.

Then you need to look carefully to see if you can form a local historic district. That would help you prevent "remuddling" of the outside of the structures. By now, many of the potential historic districts have been discovered in larger cities, but small cities and towns may be overlooking the obvious. You want a historic district if the potential exists, because it will help preserve and even elevate property values. And it will help prevent future irreversible design changes.

As the restoration and revitalization is progressing, you'll need to take an aggressive stance toward anyone that doesn't add to the effort by keeping up their property. What constitutes "not keeping up their property" varies from place to place, of course. In some places, putting out a political sign is bad form. The neighborhood version of war might occur when someone puts an old car up on cement blocks and leaves it there. Or maybe not, depending on the culture.

Your solution could be as close as code enforcement, and you should check out that option.

But if code enforcement doesn't work, what you need is a neighborhood watchdog. Not a neighborhood watch for crime, but a watchdog person or committee to report on problem properties. Form a committee and write polite letters to the owners telling them just how they are violating the neighborhood's sense of propriety. Some people like this task; it's akin to the appeal of gossip or meddling.

A softer approach in a problem property neighborhood is to bring in the artists. We describe one of the fastest-growing trends in community development on our community cultural development page.

Affordable Housing

Where you have the right conditions (large public buildings, highway underpasses, warehouses, empty buildings, or waterfronts, for example), you may have a consistent homeless problem. You can't ignore this; you have to deal with it, for the sake of your neighborhood. People don't want to be pan-handled, and they don't want to see or interact with the homeless, who often are just ordinary folks who had a string of bad luck.

Where you have homelessness, you may have squatters in empty buildings. This is undesirable from a potential fire standpoint and can attract crime, so don't tolerate squatters. But do your share to help end homelessness.

If your neighborhood is faced with gentrification, meaning that newcomers are driving up the price of housing to the point of driving out existing residents, you may want to take swift and assertive action to preserve the social mix.

With a mixed income approach to affordability, often you can hide the fact that there are many low-income folks and avoid the stigma. Affordable housing doesn't have to mean bad design. Americans should research European solutions much more. A distinctly American solution may be what we call the "big house" solution, where we build three or four apartments into what appears on the exterior to be a large single-family dwelling.

Four apartments in a building could consist of one large unit with luxurious finishes, and three smaller apartments using much more modest materials. In fact, maybe the large unit is owner-occupied. It's hard to find a developer who wants to experiment or do anything the least bit different. You may need a nonprofit developer when you want to buck current trends.

Another promising approach is allowing accessory dwelling units, such as garage apartments, to be developed.

Often people begin the exploration of co-housing with the idea that the shared facilities, which vary with each development, will somehow cut the cost per unit and result in better affordability. Occasionally it turns out that way, but usually not. There are other good motivations for living in intentional community and making your own extended family though.

Rural Housing

Try to get federal community development dollars to help with exterior repairs.

If a rural community needs more than a few new units at a time, take a look at cluster subdivisions, also known in some contexts as conservation subdivisions. The housing can be clustered relatively close together with a much larger common ground at the outside edge of the development next to agricultural land or open space.

Our rural housing page contains many more ideas about adding to supply and affordability in rural areas, plus handling the over-supply problem also.

Small Cities and Towns

-Neighborhood revitalization needs or historic district potential in isolated parts of the community

-Affordability issues

-Rural-like fierce independence in whether property owner cleanliness standards, as well as reluctance to talk with property owners about offending buildings

-A demand for sane quantities of new abodes, if you're among the lucky ones.

-Need for infill homes on scattered lots or even in certain whole neighborhoods

Pick and choose from the other links on this page that will help in particular neighborhoods, and browse other parts of the site as well. But the small town character page is especially for you.

Some Current Related Topics

Another big issue right now happens when you live in a nice middle class neighborhood. It's been settled for 20, 30, or 50 years and almost everyone keeps up their property. You're close to an attractive destination, maybe a newly attractive destination.

Then suddenly one day you notice someone is tearing down a perfectly good house. Upon asking them what in the world they are doing, you are informed coolly that they are going to build an "update". Lo and behold, when the new one starts being framed out, you notice it is a two-story in your one-story neighborhood, and you see that they are building out as far into the side yard or rear yard as your town allows. In short, the monster looks really, really big compared to yours. And I bet you a lot of jelly beans that it will have the big three-car garage protruding out further toward the street than the front door.

If this sounds familiar, read more about tear downs.

2. Foreclosure Impacts

Let's say instead that you live in a newer neighborhood where people have been buying real estate that is a little beyond their means. There's a foreclosure epidemic in America. So that means that some residential properties are going to be become abandoned homes, and if there are enough of them in the same vicinity, you're going to have to endure too much vacancy while the market absorbs all the newcomers.

Sadly, your neighborhood suffers even though you paid your mortgage faithfully. Neighborhood stabilization with high foreclosure rates calls for some creativity. You're going to have to band together--fast--to mow lawns and try anything else possible to make the repossessed look occupied and cute. If you have mostly one bank taking back these properties, you might be able to negotiate directly with them for appropriate curtains, mowing, shrub maintenance, and so forth, but we aren’t optimistic.

It's up to you to confuse thieves about which homes are occupied and prospective buyers about how many actually are vacant. You'll think of something. Probably you'll have to involve your local government, which might have received some federal grant money to address foreclosure-related problems. Just don't omit this step. It's not a problem that will solve itself.

3. New Urbanist Development

A very encouraging pro-community movement has been sweeping across America. It's called new urbanism, or the developments are said to be new urbanist. The proponents of this movement, which can take on messianic tones, have a credo that they believe will cause new developments to be designed in a way that promotes sense of community, traditional American vernacular architecture, and walkability and transit use with a de-emphasis on cars.

This cause is all very righteous, and we support it wholeheartedly. Just don't let someone who is overheated about the matter sell you on a new urbanist development where (a) no new development is needed at all because the old urbanism is going begging for buyers, and (b) where basic environmental conditions for building are inappropriate. In other words, new urbanism isn't a good excuse for sprawl.

4. Green Home Construction

Due to interest in green building materials and considerations, we added the above page to stimulate your thinking on this topic.

5. Naturally Occurring Retirement Communities

A NORC is a community where long-time owners or renters have aged so that in their separate and separately owned residences, there is a high incidence of elderly people. The NORC concept is important because it may lead to emphasis on aging in place housing stock modifications and universal design, as well as a different palette of municipal services.

Useful Community Development Home