Housing Demand Determines Neighborhood Quality

You might think your community is about something else, but really housing determines the image of your neighborhood or town. When you blend a modest amount of affordable housing into a pleasing mixed-income combination, everyone benefits.

Even if you're out in the boonies and you think that one down-at-the-heels mobile home doesn’t matter, you’re wrong.

If you're in a city, that goes double. Neighborhoods get a stereotype really 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.

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 boards (HOAs) need to be aware of these dynamics.

Below we give very brief overviews of the following topics:

-The spiral of housing 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 for shelter, both of which are applicable to the U.S. only.

Neighborhood Revitalization

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 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. Ask for an answer, and if you don't receive one, ask again and again. Some people like this task; it's akin to the appeal of gossip or meddling.

Watch out; it's easy to become a vigilante. But in borderline neighborhoods, you have to do it.

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.

With a mixed income approach to affordable housing, often you can hide the fact that you are housing 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.

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 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 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 uneven maintenance 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.

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.

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 tearing down houses to build giant homes.

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. As I write early in 2009, there's a foreclosure epidemic spreading across America. So that means that some residential properties are going to be suddenly empty, 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 starter page to stimulate your thinking on this topic.

Return from Housing to useful-community-development.org Home