Affordable housing – NIMBY
By: J. David Chapman/August 29, 2019
Does your city or community really want affordable housing? Frankly, I am not convinced. At an event last week Oklahoma state Sen. Adam Pugh stated that if Edmond is going to attract young families and entrepreneurs to live in their community the city must be more flexible with housing.
The senator went on to say that one of the challenges of living in Edmond is finding affordable housing. Housing affordability has become a major issue in the United States and around the world – with governments and communities grappling with ways to solve the problem as rents rise and wage growth remains stagnant. Developers say it is getting particularly challenging with rising labor costs, increasing material costs, and swelling land costs to keep housing affordable.
Without any kind of government subsidy, the most logical answer to affordability in most cities is to increase density. By doing so, developers can leverage their land costs by increasing the number of units per lot or acre. There are also some efficiencies gained in multifamily-style housing leading to lower costs for the developer and builder.
The problem is that cities and communities want affordable housing; they just don’t want it near their home and neighborhood. It is heard in every city council meeting in the U.S., “We don’t want this development – it will bring down our property values.” Nobody seems to want smaller homes near their home and they certainly don’t want multifamily near their neighborhood. Those most fearful of property value impact, crime increase, and surges in traffic with increased density developments even refer to these developments as stack and pack.
The flexibility needed to solve the affordability problem could be multiple living quarters on single lots. We refer to these as auxiliary dwelling units or granny flats. Most city ordinances don’t allow ADUs or granny flats. Changes will need to be made to allow for this flexibility in development.
We must make sure citizens in our communities understand the value of these increased density developments and the affect it can have on the affordability problem. This requires extensive meetings with the local communities, politicians and homeowners. Community engagement is the only hope to alleviate this newest NIMBY syndrome. So do you really want affordable housing in your community or near your neighborhood?
J. David Chapman is an associate professor of finance and real estate at the University of Central Oklahoma (jchapman7@uco.edu).