September 15, 2016

Is this actually the Province's affordable-housing strategy?

From the Wall Street Journal:
sprawl
 

Building sprawling suburbs is better at making cities affordable than building tall towers, according to research released Wednesday.
Environmentalists, urban planners and economists are pushing cities such as New York and San Francisco to build more housing to help combat rapidly rising rents and home prices that are crowding out the middle class. But trying to build upward in order to keep cities accessible to average families may be a losing battle, according to findings to be released Wednesday by BuildZoom, a website for contractors.
Even cities that were able to increase the pace of housing construction without sprawling, such as Portland and Seattle, were unable to keep pace with demand nearly as well as their counterparts that spread outward. Portland saw inflation-adjusted home values increase 78% from 1980 to 2010 and Seattle saw home prices jump 119%, according to BuildZoom. Meanwhile, Las Vegas saw real home values increase just 4.7% and Atlanta saw a mere 14% jump.
There are a variety of reasons why building up has proven less effective at keeping housing costs down. For one, tall buildings are more expensive to build than single-family homes, so the apartments and condos in them tend to be pricier.
If American cities were willing to level single-family homes and build apartment towers, they could likely keep up with demand without sprawl, but that is unlikely given the political power given to local community groups and the radical changes that would mean to virtually any American city outside of Manhattan.
“The big takeaway is that if expensive cities like New York and San Francisco want to do something about affordability they have to do so at a scale that is unprecedented in this country,” said Issi Romem, chief economist at BuildZoom. “Realistically the odds of that happening are slim to none.”
Indeed, housing production in the U.S. remains overwhelmingly concentrated in suburban, not urban areas. More than 88% of new homes in the 2000s were built in undeveloped or suburban areas, according to BuildZoom.
To be sure, there are many reasons to continue building up even if it is unlikely to offer a solution to rising housing costs. For cities like San Francisco that are bounded by hills and waters, there may be little other choice. For those like Atlanta and Houston that have sprawled for decades, commute times and pollution offer incentives to curb outward growth. The cost of driving long distances also partly offsets the benefits of cheaper housing from sprawl.
The findings ultimately seem to offer two unappealing scenarios: a future in which cities continue to eat into the neighboring countryside and commute times and pollution rises, or one in which home prices in some cities will become out of reach for more people.
“What you’ll get there is an exacerbation of the problems we already have in expensive cities. The distinction between homeowners and renters will become less and less a stage of life and more and more if your parents can help you. That’s not a future that seems very welcoming to me,” Mr. Romem said.

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Comments

  1. Not surprising article when you consider that it focuses on a “Chief Economist” who works for BuildZoom which connects homeowners with building trades, which means mainly single-detached housing and mainly in the suburbs. Go to the comments section of the WSJ article to see some interesting counter-commentary.

  2. A better starting point for this discussion is on the trade offs amoung household budget, quality of life, and civic servicing costs (roads, sewers, etc)
    1) The commuter: you save on housing but spend more on transportation. You’re servicing that is taxes, are higher cost per household. Your quality of life is impacted by your commute and the land form to support your “affordable” housing.
    2) The urban dweller: you save on commute and spend more on housting. Per household servicing costs are (although you pay more to subsidize the commuter and pay for downloaded social programs. Your quality of life is comparatively better.
    The conversation in the article is framed to push back against the urban dweller renaissance to benefit the traditional developer. This the old tune of regulations getting in the way of profit.
    There is a short term memory loss of the cost of building SF houses. What about the health costs for the commuter and healthcare? What about the environmental costs? Carbon emissions?
    And when an election approaches, we need to build ribbon cutting props for these commuters.

    1. Where’ the debate about using some of the marginal ALR for more housing ? Where’s the debate to create more land for more housing ? Where’s the debate about upzoning and add’l density along arterial roads like Hastings. Where are the subways as buses don’t cut it to get folks out of the car ? Where is the debate for the new bridges to the north shore with trains on them and more lanes for cars (tolled, of course) ? All this is missing in the 2040 Transportation plan: https://pricetags.wordpress.com/2016/03/12/2040-transportation-plan-update-required

    2. Very weak arguments. You’re assuming urban dwellers never drive and thus have no car-related expenses which I’m sure is not true for the vast majority. Are you factoring in public transportation costs? You also assume that urban dwellers always work close to where they live and people who live in the suburbs have to commute to work. Where are the stats backing these claims up?
      I’m not surprised the author of this piece is being attacked here. Anything that challenges the myth that urban life is a utopia and the suburbs are pure evil has to be destroyed. Sorry, but in this case what the author has written is common sense and he backs it up with examples. I’m sure you’ll pull out some extreme examples of people commuting 75 or 100 miles to work but those are outlier cases.
      Most people consider a number of factors when they decide where to live. This blog post provides some interesting numbers–it’s not hard to see why people prefer the suburbs. And don’t come back with the standard “they wouldn’t if they had choices.” They do, but most people don’t want to live in a small overpriced concrete box.
      http://www.axiometrics.com/blog/city-vs.-suburbs-the-cost-difference

      1. I think we need to clarify some assumptions.
        When you say “suburbs” are you thinking of a lifestyle or a location?
        There have been great efforts over the last two decades to make these areas complete communities. An urban dweller can live in many of the neighbourhoods whether as large as Surrey, or as small as Port Moody.
        The commuter lifestyle is building the house on greenfield. There are plenty of “suburban” locations to live in without building on prime agricultural land. The subtext of the article: get rid of your regulations so we can make profit. That’s it. No utopian conspiracy.
        So hang on to the city vs suburbs narrative, but understand that what it means to live in the suburbs has evolved and that narrative only empowers poor planning decisions.

        1. I’m talking mainly lifestyle but location comes into the equation because people have to be able to afford a place to live.
          I don’t agree with your narrow definition of commuter lifestyle. Why does it have to involve building on greenfield? A person could live smack downtown and still commute for various reasons.
          You’re also jumping to conclusions about the article that are not there. The author is saying the way things are now we have two unappealing choices and one of them is not conducive to affordable housing. Nothing was said about throwing away regulations so we can make a profit. What you’re advocating is a continuation of the disastrous planning that has got so many cities in North America into the state we’re in now.

  3. Most tradespeople need a vehicle. If they also have a family they have tons of stuff, which includes sports gear, maybe even a couple of bikes. This stuff needs a place to be stored. If one is wealthy then a house in the city can work. Maybe even a really big condo. For most ordinary people this means moving out to where homes are less expensive.
    As the cost of homes in many cities has increased substantially over the past 20-30 years then naturally the less well off are seeking homes in the ‘burbs.
    Efficient transit to the suburbs leads to more city workers also moving out of town. This was the pattern when Paris, London, New York, etc., developed extensive metro rail links in the 20th century.
    These are choices. As that great Canadian Gino Vannelli, sang, People Gotta Move.

  4. One cost not accounted for in the original article, but touched upon in the WSJ comments and above in Graeme’s point #1, is the annual cost of delivering public services to low density communities.
    In Calgary the Planning Dept. roughly calculated the cost to deliver public underground utilities, roads, emergency services, educational services etc. longer distances for fewer people was about $10,000 a year more per exurb household than what they pay in taxes. Inner city residents and businesses pay more on average than the value of the public services they consume and in effect subsidize the suburbs to the tune of $100,000 every decade per outlying household.
    Mayor Nenshi has cited these facts in his campaigns and columns only to be bitterly opposed by councillors in peripheral wards (who have received funding / donations by tract housing developers and contractors) who try to block legislation to find equilibrium. It doesn’t help that the city is surrounded by abundant, cheap, flat farmland that is too easy to convert to crops of vinyl siding studded with garage door architecture, square kilometres at a time.

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