Tag Archives: historic preservation

Link dump – all things ‘affordable housing’

DC Construction that comes up on a Flickr search for Inclusionary Zoning - CC image from Adam Fagen.

DC Construction that comes up on a Flickr search for Inclusionary Zoning – CC image from Adam Fagen.

I’ve got far too many tabs sitting open in my browser, awaiting some form of linkage in the blog (the dates of publication might show how long they’ve been sitting). But, I want to put some of these out there rather than hog my browser’s memory.

I’ve attempted to cluster them together topically – a whole host on affordable housing policies and market-rate development.

“Winning upzoning in the bay” – from PriceRoads.com. The paralysis of urban development is part of a procedural tragedy of the commons, a side-effect of the decision-making architecture that we’ve adopted over time.

I now believe that California is not especially resistant to change, but rather that we’re seeing the tragedy of the commons that results when unified housing market is divided into dozens of cities. In short: when each city constitutes a tiny fraction of the habitable part of the metro area, no city can individually change housing prices much by allowing more development, but it can control the crowding within its borders.

So, what’s a potential solution to this impasse? Just buy people off.

Maybe the best dollar-for-dollar policy initiative of our time was Race to the Top. For $5 billion, the Obama administration bribed hundreds of thousands of charter-school students into existence. Race to the Top gave a lot of firepower to charter school proponents, allowing them to accuse teachers of turning down money for students…reversing the normal debate in which charter schools are accused of sapping money from traditional public schools.

The best way to deregulate cities would be to bribe key constituencies in a way that gives easy fodder for debate. I propose the following: California should triple the solar tax credit for seniors in communities that substantially ease zoning regulations. Any deregulation policy has to neutralize the most ardent opponents of development: seniors and environmentalists. This one would not funnel money through bureaucrats and would show up in anyone’s pocketbook as soon as they asked for the solar panels.

“NIMBYism will lead to economic stagnation” – an Op-Ed in the SF Examiner

Instead of fostering policies that discourage job formation, real estate development and economic growth, policymakers should be encouraging greater densities, and greater heights for new housing, especially along BART and Muni lines. If we are to get more people to live and work in San Francisco, then we must reject NIMBYism as a selfish luxury we cannot afford. The City badly needs an expanding tax base to fund financial promises it has made to public employees and to pay for its essential municipal services. New developments add mightily to the public’s well-being through contributions to The City’s funds for affordable housing, parks, transportation and the like. All of this comes from economic growth and a sensible balance between what we are now and what we need to be moving forward.

“Report finds a city incentive is not producing enough affordable housing” – New York Times

The report… found that the optional program known as inclusionary zoning had generated about 2,700 permanently affordable units since 2005, or less than 2 percent of all apartments developed in the city during the same period.

Under the program, the city allows developers of market-rate housing to build more units than would normally be allowed when neighborhoods are rezoned for new development, as long as they make 20 percent of the new homes affordable.

But Bill de Blasio, the city’s public advocate, argues in his housing platform for “converting incentives to hard-and-fast rules,” saying that 50,000 additional affordable units could be built over 10 years with a mandatory program.

Mandatory IZ might not be the fix New York is looking for. DC has it, yet we’re still looking elsewhere for inspiration.

“In New York, the rent doesn’t have to be ‘too damn high’ “ – Reihan Salam in Reuters

A century later, neighborhoods like the one I grew up in seem frozen in amber. The faces are different, to be sure, and so are the languages spoken by the locals. Crime has gone down and property values have gone up, and New York City is as desirable as it’s ever been. Yet we’ve had nothing like the building boom of the 1910s and 1920s that transformed the face of the city. Millions of low- and middle-income New Yorkers thus find themselves squeezed by skyrocketing rents, and hundreds of thousands of others who want to make their home in New York can’t afford to do so.

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The first and most obvious thing to do is to broaden area in which housing can be built. For example, Schleicher and Roderick Hills Jr. of New York University Law School observe that cities like New York use “non-cumulative zoning” to dedicate desirable locations to low-value industrial uses. They propose allowing developers to replace empty warehouses, barely-used shipping facilities, and heavily subsidized factories with housing. Historical preservation districts severely restrict new housing development in many of New York City’s most desirable residential neighborhoods, which has contributed to rising housing prices. Though hardly anyone proposes getting rid of historical preservation districts entirely, the Harvard economist Edward Glaeser has made a strong case for limiting their growth.

Is NYC “Landmarking Away” Its Future? – ArchDaily

A recent study by the Real Estate Board of New York (REBNY) concluded that by preserving 27.7% of buildings in Manhattan, “the city is landmarking away its economic future.” REBNY is challenging the Landmarks Preservation Commission, arguing it has too much power when it comes to planning decisions, and that by making business so difficult for developers it is stifling the growth of the city.

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Preservation, on the other hand, limits new supply and also creates a ‘cultural commodity’ of preserved buildings, both of which would increase the cost of living. How is it, then, that Francis Morrone cites new development as part of the problem, rather than the solution to rising costs?

Quite simply, the members of REBNY are building the wrong type of development: where developers do get the opportunity to build without restriction, they are too often building luxury apartments that are only an option for the super-rich. This may be good for their short-term profit margins, but it is bad for the long-term vitality of the city, as those who are not astoundingly wealthy are forced to leave – and the city becomes less diverse and less productive as a result.

Both sides overplay their hand a bit here. Landmarking alone isn’t what constrains New York real estate development (nor is it the case in other cities), and other constraints are also what push market-clearing prices so high (hence why all new apartments seem to be luxury ones). Affordability over time also involves filtering – yesterday’s luxury apartments have filtered down to more affordable price points. If you don’t build enough housing, you’ll see those older buildings filter up.

“In Defense Of The ‘Poor Door’: Why It’s Fine For A Luxury Condo Developer To Keep Its Low-Income Units Separate” – from Josh Barro at Business Insider, where he goes through a thought experiment about applying the same logic of IZ to that of SNAP benefits.

We require and incent developers who build market-rate housing to also sell or rent some units in the same developments at cut-rate prices. The idea is that affordable housing shouldn’t just be affordable and livable; it should be substantially similar in location and character to new luxury housing. If rich people are getting brand new apartments overlooking the Hudson River, so should some lucky winners of affordable housing lotteries.

Hence the outrage over the “poor door” at a planned luxury condo project that Extell will build on Manhattan’s Upper West Side: market-rate buyers will use one entrance, while tenants in the project’s affordable housing component will use another. Affordable apartments will also be on low floors and, unlike many of the market-rate units, they won’t face the Hudson River.

Getting mad about the “poor door” is absurd. The only real outrage is that Extell had to build affordable units at all.

New York’s housing advocates are right about one very important thing: upzonings are a windfall for landowners and the city should be asking for something in exchange for allowing more development. But what it should be asking for isn’t luxury apartments with river views to give out by lottery. It should be asking for cash.

Now, the reason for IZ isn’t solely about affordable housing, but about preserving and providing for mixed-income communities and for permanently affordable housing. All worthy goals, but the can come with a great deal of procedural headaches.

Height and zoning links

DC Zoning Map - CC image from Payton Chung

Every so often (just as we’re seeing right now), someone will suggest changing DC’s height limit and a flurry of articles/blog posts/tweets/etc will go up, arguing for or against.  This past week has been no exception.

Zoning and process: At the Atlantic, Josh Barro argues that the height limit isn’t the real villain:

But the real crisis of land use in Washington goes way beyond the height limit. It’s that the District’s planning and zoning apparatus is overall hostile to new development, usually allowing far less building that would be permitted by the Heights of Buildings Act of 1910. And while D.C.’s planning rules are restrictive, they are also arbitrary and unevenly enforced, making it a difficult market to enter.

I hinted at this in my post on the limit as well, but Barro really highlights two distinct issues.  One is a matter of the content of the regulations – how much density is allowed, what kind of uses, etc.  Barro highlights some DC examples of rather low densities allowed by right in otherwise obvious areas for denser development.  The other is a matter of process. Barro notes that many developments don’t take advantage of by right zoning, but rather look to the Planned Unit Development process, which adds flexibility at the expense of certainty.

The proposed project is not out-of-character for its surroundings. But even though Wisconsin Avenue in the area is characterized by six- and eight-story apartment buildings, this parcel happened to be zoned for a “floor-area ratio” of 1.0. That mans only one square foot of building area per square foot of lot area.

So, the owners of the property filed a Planned Unit Development application that would have allowed a FAR of 2.0. This was hardly an earth-shattering level of density. Permitted FARs in D.C.’s main business district go as high as 12.0. Yet the neighbors fought the project tooth and nail, suing to block Zoning Commission decisions and even trying to get the old supermarket named a historic landmark. Don’t laugh. The “Park and Stop” strip mall on Connecticut Avenue in Cleveland Park, right next to a subway station, is a protected historic landmark, on the grounds that it is one of the oldest strip malls in the country.

In practice, these two constraints (content and process) work hand in hand. The unfortunate outcome is that good projects have to jump over more procedural hurdles, while inferior projects are often approved by right.   The by-right density on such a parcel should be higher than 1.0 (and probably higher than 2.0, too), but the process could also stand to be improved.  Process matters, as does the regulation content.

Zoning is killing America: No, I don’t think that overstates what Jonathan Rothwell argues in The New Republic. Taking a cue from discussions about Why Nations Fail, Rothwell posits a thesis about why regions fail, and the answer is zoning:

Specifically, they contrast “extractive institutions” that concentrate power and hamper development, such as slavery (at the extreme) and limited voting, civil, or property rights, with open institutions that diffuse power and opportunity, providing universal incentives to invest and innovate.

Urban scholars and policymakers have much to learn from such institutional analysis. While most political economists think of institutions operating at the national or even state level, there is one essential but overlooked institution operating at and within the metro scale: zoning.

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Previously, my work has found that zoning laws inflate metro-wide housing costs, limit housing supply, and exacerbate segregation by income and race. Other work faults these laws for their damaging effect on the environment, since they make public transportation infeasible and extend commuting times. With a few possible exceptions (see Michelle Alexander), it’s hard to think of an existing political institution in the United States that is more destructive of human and social capital.

Emphasis mine.

And it’s not just zoning: Will Doig at Salon writes about the practical impacts of historic preservation:

When Jacobs’ neighborhood was protected in 1969, it was no tony enclave. In fact, the justification for the urban-renewal project was that Greenwich Village was allegedly a slum. But now that the Village is wealthy, suddenly there are three expansions of its protective boundaries in six years. The timing invites cynical conclusions, bluntly summed up by urbanist Alon Levy on his blog last year: “Let us remember what historic districts are, in practice: They are districts where wealthy people own property that they want to prop up the price of.”

This isn’t to say that zoning or historic preservation are bad for cities – far from it.  However, the very nature of cities is dynamic.  It’s inherent to their economic purpose, as agglomerations of human and social capital.  Zoning, if it isn’t forced to evolve (via a zoning budget or other potential solutions), constrains the city.  Historic preservation also faces the challenge of dealing with dynamic, growing places, as that movement gained traction in an era of divestment in urban places.  To the extent that preservation is about more than just edifices, you have to confront these questions. (Aside: See Benjamin Schwarz discussing the economic moment behind the Village of Jane Jacobs’ era, and also this video on the techno culture of Berlin and how it evolved out of a fleeting and unique circumstance, hat tip to Aaron Renn)

Random factoids about height: Shilpi Paul at UrbanTurf highlights an inforgraphic that aims to quantify the price premium in New York for height.

Random factoids about density: BeyondDC pulls some travel mode statistics from COG’s travel survey at the neighborhood level, and the impact of density on travel behavior is quite obvious.

In less dense areas (and I’m judging density solely on my own impressions from other research), walking plummets as a work commute mode.  In almost all areas, the commute trip is biased towards modes better at covering longer distances (cars, transit) and less to walking and biking.

Briefly noted

7000Series

Some items of note today:

Streetcar smackdown watch

Over the last few days, the Washington Post featured a number of streetcar pieces.  First, Lisa Rein laid out the basis for the debate on overhead wires.  The Post’s editorial board then chastised all the players to find a realistic and reasonable solution.

Today’s print edition features two pieces delving deeper into how streetcars fit into the mold of historic preservation, urbanism, and urban untidiness.  The first comes from Adam Irish, a member of the DC Preservation League and a volunteer at the DC Historic Preservation Office.  Irish starts by marking the difference between those who seek to preserve urbanism and those that seek to preserve DC’s monumentality above all else:

This kerfuffle is about more than just ugly wires, however. It gets to the heart of an old and familiar conflict over how Washingtonians and Americans at large envision the city. In its coverage, The Post has referred to opponents of wires as “preservationists,” but I think “D.C. monumentalists” better describes their stance. For the monumentalist, Washington, D.C., the city comes second to Washington, D.C., the sanitized and photogenic capital.

The monumentalist vision of Washington has choked nearly all urban life from the Mall and its environs. It has fashioned large sections of our city into pleasing vistas for tourists but has given the rest of us lifeless wastelands (if you’ve ever stepped foot outside at L’Enfant Plaza, you know what I’m talking about).

Urban life and urban form isn’t always pretty.  In fact, the sometimes-messy complexity is part of what makes cities such interesting places to live in.  Spiro Kostof described it as “energized crowding,” a kind of messiness that’s inherent to creativity and day to day life.  This isn’t to discredit the formalism of Washington’s City Beautiful aesthetic – merely asserting that such monumentalism shouldn’t trump all other facets of urbanism.

Philip Kennicott expands on those themes in his piece, also running in Sunday’s print edition:

If you listen to preservationists, the most ardent of whom oppose any overhead wires in the city, you might think Washington was loaded with great vistas. And it is, but not the awe-inspiring views they’re thinking about, which turn out to be fairly few and often not that impressive. Even down our wide avenues, sightlines tend to terminate in small monuments that are best seen up close.

The great views down the streets of Washington are just coming into their full glory as the leaves of spring return. These aren’t wide-open vistas with monumental buildings in the far distance; they are tunnel-like views of shaded streets, overarched by majestic elms, oaks and maples. These shady tubes of green, which are rare in newer and suburban neighborhoods, are the truly distinctive beauty of Washington. The only reasonable concern about running overhead wires should be the protection of trees that create these glorious canopies.

Nobody in this debate would argue that overhead wires look good, but too often the debate is framed in either/or terms – either the wires are ugly or they are not.  Kennicott addresses this false dichotomy as well:

Arguments against overhead wires rest on two essential assumptions: that the city is filled with streets that have historically significant and aesthetically impressive views; and that wires and poles would be ugly intrusions on these grand vistas. The former is questionable, the latter a matter of opinion.

The point about wires obstructing views that don’t always exist is a good one.  As noted, DC’s canopy of street trees is a legacy worth protecting, yet these same trees (on, say, East Capitol street) make for a wonderful streetscape – but at the cost of forgoing views of the Capitol Dome beyond a few blocks.

East Capitol dome view

Google street view of Capitol Dome (it's in there somewhere) from East Capitol Street, near 4th Street.

This isn’t to say that wires wouldn’t obstruct this view – but the key point is that the streetcar plan does not propose to obstruct these types of views with wires at all.  Kennicott hammers on this point, noting that the current plans do not include major obstructions, both by avoiding major view corridors and considering the fact that wire ‘obstruction’ is relatively minor.  Like the trees that line many of these grand avenues, the positive benefits of the streetcars vastly outweigh the negative costs.

The takeaway message from all of these articles should be that a reasonable compromise – a hybrid of wires and battery power to protect key viewsheds – is both realistic and palatable to most Washingtonians.