What Makes A More Livable Community?

The Mortgage Corner

pccfarmlandtrust.org

There is a budding national movement to build more affordable housing with the growing housing shortage (and homeless) problem. It is just one more facet of the so-called Livable Cities movement begun in the 1980s that searched for ways to make cities safer for children as well as adults in a friendlier environment less dependent on the automobile.

The YIMBY movement is taking hold in cities all over America, from California to Massachusetts. It stands for ‘Yes in My Backyard’, a movement to build denser residential units near city centers and transportation hubs, as opposed to the NIMBY, ‘Not in My Back Yard’ syndrome affecting many upscale housing communities that have managed to keep such housing out of their backyards.

NIMBYism is really a local community incarnation of the outlawed redlining by banks that once would not loan or invest in ‘certain’ lower-income neighborhoods, but must do so today to keep their charters. NIMBYism prevails in predominately single-family based communities that have found ways to discourage the creation of high zoning densities near their housing tracts that would enable the building of more affordable housing for ‘those’ people.

“Look around, and YIMBYs are a growing presence,” said a 2017 Atlantic Monthly article as the movement took hold. “There’s a YIMBY group in Somerville, Massachusetts, and one in Los Angeles; there’s a San Francisco YIMBY party and a YIMBY group in Portland. YIMBYtown, a national conference, will take place in Oakland this month; Helsinki is hosting Yimbycon in August (2107).

The situation is most dire today in California. Its homeless population has risen to more than 150,000 in 2018, up 17 percent just from 2017, and the median home price is now $561,000, according to Zillow, with many workers priced out of living in the coastal communities that hold the best jobs.

Hence the one and two-hour commute times for those that work in Silicon Valley, but live in the Livermore.and Castro Valleys or further eastward, at least 40 miles and a two-hour drive during commuting hours, in part because alternate transportation modes such as the Bay Area’s BART light rail have yet to connect to Santa Clara County where most of Silicon Valley is located.

SB50, California’s attempt to override local zoning laws to enable smarter urban planning concepts failed for a second time, which makes it even more urgent to find a solution to California’s perennial housing shortage. It was a valiant effort that sank when some minority and homeless advocates opposed it, of all people.

Their concern was that it would gentrify in some way the areas around transportation hubs by destroying older, existing neighborhoods. It’s really hard to understand that reasoning, as 

“Developers, landlords, Facebook, construction unions, the state Chamber of Commerce, Realtors, environmental groups and even the AARP wanted to see the bill pass,” said Cal Matters, a legislative blog that announced its demise:

“Nonetheless Senate Bill 50, a measure that would have forced cities to allow more mid-rise apartment buildings around public transit and next to some single-family homes, failed to get enough votes in the California Legislature to survive in 2020 before time ran out,” it continued.

Younger social activists are behind much of the push for YIMBY housing and new zoning laws that create more affordable housing. Sonja Trauss, a former High School mathematics teacher, co-founded YIMBYlaw.org in 2018, a San Francisco lobbying effort whose mission is to make housing in California more accessible and affordable.

“Our method is to enforce state housing laws like the Housing Accountability Act. We send letters to cities considering zoning or general plan compliant housing developments informing them of their duties under state law, and sue them when they don’t comply,” said Ms. Trauss.

She said her efforts grew out of the frustration in getting approvals for entry-level, affordable housing, because rent control supporters could not unite with those that wanted more housing, resulting in fragmented efforts to build more affordable residences.

An earlier, rural version of YIMBYism sprang up in Washington State called pccfarmlandtrust.org is a nonprofit land trust working to protect and steward threatened farmland in Washington, and purveyors of organic produce from sustainable farming. “We work to keep land in production by making it accessible to future generations of farmers.” is part of its mission statement.

So the drive to provide more housing for a growing population is taking many forms, and signals the demise of suburban sprawl, as we know it. The missing piece in this effort seems to be transportation networks, which need to be improved to connect where we live to where we must work to support such housing.

Harlan Green © 2020

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen

Can We Provide Housing For Everyone?

ANSWERING THE KENNEDYS’ CALL

thelundreport.org

I said in an earlier column “that part of the solution to the housing and homeless crisis has to be the responsibility of governments.” But the Silicon Valley giants Google, Apple, and Washington State’s Microsoft are finding it necessary to also boost housing supply, for no other reason than to make it affordable for their employees being priced out of their own markets.

San Francisco’s median home price has reached $1.5m, for instance, In January, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the San Francisco Foundation, Facebook, Genentech, and others announced a new $500 million fund to build or preserve more than 8,000 homes in five Bay Area counties over the next five to 10 years, reported the San Jose Mercury News.

And Microsoft has committed $500 million to build affordable housing and tackle homelessness in the Seattle area, while Wells Fargo recently said it would spend $1 billion for affordable housing as part of a broader national philanthropic push.

But Google, said in a blog post cited by the Mercury News it would spend $750 million to build housing on its own land. Aimed at freeing up space for 15,000 homes, the  process could take up to 10 years. Google would work with cities to rezone land that is mostly designated now for office or commercial uses. In 2018, 3,000 homes were built in the South Bay, Google noted.

Regarding the homeless crisis, a recent Project Syndicate article by UC Berkeley economist Laura Tyson, and Lenny Mendonca, Chairman of New America, highlighted just how much government support will be needed to take some of the half million homeless off the streets, a number that has grown sharply just since 2017 as housing rents and prices have soared with the economic recovery.

According to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), there were roughly 554,000 homeless people living somewhere in the United States on a given night last year. “A total of 193,000 of those people were "unsheltered," meaning that they were living on the streets and had no access to emergency shelters, transitional housing, or Safe Havens. Despite a booming stock market and strong economic growth, a large swathe of America is still struggling to make ends meet.”

Affordability is the real problem. “Of 3,007 counties in the US, a worker earning the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour can afford a one-bedroom rental in only 12,” said Project Syndicate. “In San Francisco, where the median house price is over $1.5 million, a single mother earning the minimum wage would have to work 120 hours per week to meet her basic needs. And even outside of high-cost regions, nearly two-thirds of US households lack the savings to cover a $500 shock such as a car repair or health-care expense. For these families, one bad turn can result in homelessness.”

The most common-sense solution would be to build more homes for all socio-economic strata, but surveys have shown that a majority of the home owning public thinks in NIMBY (Not-in-My-Backyard) terms; which means the most affordable housing is being built on least-desirable land usually far from population centers.

StrongTowns.org is one such advocate and clearing house for the building of affordable housing under its Mission Statement: “For the United States to be a prosperous country, it must have strong cities, towns and neighborhoods. Enduring prosperity for our communities cannot be artificially created from the outside but must be built from within, incrementally over time.”

For instance, California would need to build around 180,000 more new housing units each year – about 100,000 more than are currently being built – just to keep up with population growth. Since 2010, eight times as many jobs as housing units have been added in San Francisco, where the average cost of building “affordable apartments” has jumped to $425,000. King County, Washington, which includes Seattle, estimates that it would need 14,000 more units to house its homeless population.

Not providing lodgings and services for the homeless can be even more expensive. There are many studies that show how costly it can be to leave the homeless on America’s streets; as much a two times the cost of providing shelter when healthcare and other public costs are incurred.

Many local and state governments have developed what have been called ‘Housing First’ programs to help subsidize the 30 percent of homeless with mental illnesses in particular. Chronically homeless people are regular visitors to emergency rooms, and each visit results in a hefty bill. They also frequently use mental health and addiction treatment services and tend to rack up arrests, leading to costly jail terms.

“Housing First is a homeless assistance approach that prioritizes providing permanent housing to people experiencing homelessness, thus ending their homelessness and serving as a platform from which they can pursue personal goals and improve their quality of life,” said its program statement. “This approach is guided by the belief that people need basic necessities like food and a place to live before attending to anything less critical, such as getting a job, budgeting properly, or attending to substance use issues.”

Philip Mangano, the former homelessness policy czar under President George W. Bush was an early government official that had the foresight to expand housing-first programs -- with federal dollars behind them -- into cities around the country.

Using data from the 65 cities -- of all different sizes and demographics -- the cost of keeping people on the street added up to between $35,000 and $150,000 per person per year, said Mangano.

One lack that has yet to become part of this conversation is the dearth of alternative transportation modes that service the Bay Area. Even BART, the SF Bay Area’s sole rapid transit system, has yet to encircle the Bay that would connect it to Silicon Valley, which means congested freeways for years to come, and more than 2 hour commutes to Silicon valley jobs for those that live in the more affordable housing markets outside the Bay Area.

We must find a way to care for the homeless and those rendered hopeless by the Great Recession, loss of good-paying jobs and record income inequality that has now lasted decades. Or, the richest country on earth risks becoming the poorest provider of care for our citizens, and our democracy.

Harlan Green © 2019

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGree