Three vignettes from the history of US housing

Housing after WW II : Early 50's

 . . . in the post-war era, when William Levitt pioneered the large-scale housing developments that ushered in the modern American suburb, an era of white flight was born that led rapidly to the racial strife and riots of the next decade.

"By 1957 not a single one of Levittown's fifty-five thousand residents was black. On August 13 of that year, Bill and Daisy Myers tried to break the color line in Levittown. By midnight, a crowd of over two hundred stone-throwing Levittowners had driven the Myerses back to their old house. The Myerses continued to be subjected to a variety of racial harassments through the fall, until arrests and indictments finally cooled things down." More.

Housing market collapses 1930's

By 1933 the mortgage market was effectively dead, and with it the housing industry. 

"Without mortgages, the housing industry collapsed. Housing invest­ment fell from $68 billion in 1929 to $17.6 billion in 1932. By 1934, the construction industry, as a whole, was one-tenth the size it had been in the late 1920s. Wage earners from a third of the families on relief were employed in construction. Indirectly, the collapse of the housing indus­try hit other sectors of the economy as well. Construction also had tre­mendous linkages to other sectors of the economy to a much greater ex­tent than most industries. Ten percent of American factories manufactured building materials for construction. Twenty percent of freight cars car­ried those materials across the country. Unskilled labor carried mate­rial. Skilled labor put it together. Metal and wood of all shapes and types were needed for almost any project. Muscle and machine were needed alike. Clearly, restoring the economy turned on restoring the construction industry. What was less certain was how to bring about new construc­tion. New Deal policymakers focused on the housing industry in their efforts to restart the economy because it had fallen so hard and so fast. ...  Excerpt from Debtor Nation, via Delancey Place.

Birth of White Suburbia Post WW II

To help bolster mortgage lending during the Great Depression, the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) was created, and the FHA in turn created the twenty year mortgage. But no one had made a mortgage loan for anywhere close to as long as twenty years before, and lenders were worried that the houses would not hold their value over twenty years. So the FHA created standards and guidelines to help insure that they did. But in so doing, it clearly showed a bias against urban areas, inaugurating an almost eighty year period in which the trends in housing was toward suburbs -- and away from urban areas. This trend has only recently reversed: 

"The purpose of the FHA was to create demand for building materials and for labor. To get money moving again in the economy, the FHA guidelines helped buyers and lenders alike differentiate between a good house and a bad house. Too many home buyers had been burned by shoddy construc­tion in the 1920s. Enacting national standards allowed investors to loan money at a distance, and allowed mortgages to be resold. Housing qual­ity was the foundation upon which the entire FHA system resided. 

"In determining 'good' housing, however, FHA guidelines went well beyond the proper ratio of nails to wood in addressing what had long been contentious politically and racially. ... The FHA Underwriting Manual instructed lenders on which properties could be insured. ... Through its many pages of charts, tables, and descriptions, the manual instructed banks on where to lend and on whom to lend money to. While the man­ual promised objectivity, the social assumptions of the FHA planners shaped the planning criteria as much as macroeconomic considerations. ...
"These standards were not only for how they were physically constructed, but also where they were located, which few ex­tant homes could meet. ... The ideal house lot possessed 'sunshine, ventilation, scenic outlook, pri­vacy, and safety.' 'Effective landscaping and gardening' also added to its worth. 

Needless to say, downtown districts, especially in the East, rarely possessed all these qualities and 'depart[ure] from the conditions [caused] ratings [to] become progressively lower.' Homogeneity of surrounding housing stock -- houses that all looked alike -- was believed to indicate stable housing prices. To get the maximum score on the mortgage evalu­ation, the manual mandated that a house be a part of a 'sparsely devel­oped new neighborhood . . . completed over the span of a very few years.' Without this homogeneity, 'an undesirable age mixture of structures will result.' Between the types of lots and the need for simi­lar building age, the suburban subdivision easily received a designation as a 'better mortgage-lending area.' Urban neighborhoods found it nearly impossible to receive such a designation. ... 

"Multiuse districts with 'commercial, industrial, or manufacturing enterprise,' threatened resi­dential value. A declining population threatened a surplus of sales, which would decrease value. Most alarming was the mixture of classes or races in a neighborhood or the potential therefore. The 'adverse influences' category of the mortgage application, which was 20 percent of its total rating, was mostly concerned with the danger of class and racial mixing. Ideal neighborhood schools ought not to have 'a goodly number of the pupils represent a far lower level of society or an incompatible racial ele­ment.' A good neighborhood also included 'prevention of the infiltra­tion of business and industrial uses, lower-class occupancy, and inharmo­nious racial groups.' ... 

"Considered from the point of view of a mortgage lender, the FHA be­lieved the city was not a good investment, making suburban lending risk­ free and thus, urban lending, bad business. Very explicitly, the 'central downtown core' was 'considered ineligible.' " 

Excerpt from Debtor Nation, via Delancey Place.

Nelson on the forces behind our housing choices

Arthur C. Nelson teaches planners. His work, it is said, offers a comprehensive view of how the American Dream is changing and why.

This brief set of slides outlines his thesis that the American people will grow rapidly between now and 2050. Nelson estimates the nation will reach 500 million by that year. As the population grows, it will seek more attached housing, and more apartments. More seniors, fewer children, more demand for transportation that will get people to urban centers. Less demand for suburbs.

Here's a brief summary of his thesis that age and demographics will change how people choose housing:

We also know that the propensity of people to buy homes increases as they age, and then it begins to tail off. People will buy homes to build families, then that propensity falls off until about they’re in their late sixties and early seventies, when more people begin selling off their homes instead of buying homes. That is one of the messages I have in my report. This age group between 35 and 60 is the most likely age group to buy homes. They have the means (money), they have the motive (space for the family), and they have the opportunity with new subdivisions and housing opportunities.

. . . changing demographics in combination with changes in home mortgage finance will reduce the rate of homeownership in California by up to 5 percent from 2010 levels and perhaps by as much as 10 percent over the long term. A 5 percent reduction represents a market condition where three-quarters of the demand for new housing in the state’s largest metropolitan planning organization (MPO) areas will be for rental housing. This demand should lead to an increase in existing residential units being used to house multiple or intergenerational households as well as to a variety of hybrid or new housing formats, such as accessory dwelling units or new nontraditional multifamily housing options.

Andre Mele: The Trouble with the 2050 Amendments

News flash: residential sprawl subdivisions lose money. They take more than they give. In community after community across the nation, since World War Two, infrastructure for sprawl has been subsidized by taxpayers lulled into believing that the temporary jobs and insufficient tax revenues will create an economic boon. The Sarasota 2050 chapter of the County’s Comprehensive Plan was designed to remedy that. It was supposed to create healthy development incentives while keeping profit-seeking developers from reaching into taxpayers’ pockets, and to preserve both agricultural and wild habitat in keeping with the State Constitution and the County Charter. But 2050 is being systematically dismantled by a series of developer-sponsored amendments. Taxpayers, guard your wallets!

Sarasota County has been creating land-use plans for over thirty years that envision a fully rural character east of the Urban Services Boundary (roughly contiguous with I-75), and encourage smart development within the urban corridor. 2050 is an optional alternative development model in Sarasota County’s Comprehensive Plan, and it steers rural (green-fields) development toward walkable and bikeable 2-4-story population centers with parks and greenways, in trade for more undeveloped land, and reduced sprawl.

By the terms of Sarasota 2050, all new development is required to be “fiscally-neutral.” But the landowner / developers have concluded that fiscal neutrality, in which all infrastructure and community services are paid for by the development project, must be eliminated. Citing unwieldiness and unpredictability, making little or no effort to find a work-around, the developers have fallen back on the time-honored tradition of back-room deals that force surrounding communities to share the bill.

On October 22, after a pro forma public hearing with zero prospect of making substantive changes to the amendments, Sarasota County’s Commissioners will be voting on whether to subsidize profiteering developers and big landowners looking for a payday at taxpayer expense. The subsidies won’t just be in the form of dollars. They will include our willingness to tolerate dramatic increases in traffic, significant loss of important wildlife habitat, impaired water quality in the County’s streams and bays, and to say a final good-bye to the remarkable rural character of eastern Sarasota County. Farm fields, ranch pastures, greenbelts, greenways, wetlands and wildlife corridors will be lost, and the patchy, fragmented habitat that remains will rapidly degrade.

Let one thing be clear: there is absolutely no demand for all this proposed housing. There are at least 50,000 sites available for development and redevelopment west of I-75 – inside the Urban Services Boundary. The most recent and credible population projections call for 16,000 new units in the county over the next decade: tapping just one-third of the capacity that already exists inside the Urban Services Boundary.

New development in the east will not only destroy the rural character of the region, it will siphon investment dollars away from the existing urban coast, leaving blight untouched and redevelopment opportunities wasted. It is a lose-lose proposition. Urban development built to current standards, however, would be much kinder to the bays and other coastal waters than the existing mashup of decaying, runoff-inducing impermeable surface. The miles urban residents walk, bike, and ride aboard public transportation benefit everyone, reducing traffic and lowering Sarasota County’s carbon footprint.

If the County Commissioners vote for these amendments, they will be on the wrong side of history, and will be voting for a de facto tax increase for their constituents. They will be responsible for the degradation or destruction of habitat that is home to endangered and threatened species such as the Bald Eagle, Wood Stork and Florida Panther, leaving the county open to potential litigation from environmental groups, and possible EPA injunctions. They will also be degrading a threatened species called Old Florida.

If you would like your voice to be heard, the Commissioners’ email addresses are here.

Attend the October 22 hearing, at 1:30 in the Commission Chamber, 1660 Ringling Blvd, and sign in to speak. For more information, go to sarasotavision2050.blogspot.com.

Andy Mele is the SunCoast Waterkeeper, an affiliate of the Waterkeeper Alliance, with 220 bay, river and sound Keepers worldwide. Visit www.suncoastwaterkeeper.org or www.waterkeeper.org.

More letters of opposition can be found here and here.

Changing Demands in Form-Based Codes

Reposted from SRQ

"You talk to millennials or to aging boomers and what they are looking for in places is the ability to get to activities they want to go to in the shortest time possible, whether that is parks, museums or coffee houses," he said. "They want to be close to things, and time has become much more important."

Development

BY JACOB OGLES   |   SRQ DAILY FRESHLY SQUEEZED CONTENT EVERY MORNING   |   WEDNESDAY OCT 1, 2014

Whether helping pull together celebrated redevelopment efforts in Orlando or contributing to a major revitalization of Nashville, Rick Bernhardt has been in the background helping make sure legal aspects of key projects come together. During a visit to Sarasota as a guest of the Downtown Sarasota Alliance, he stressed good planning can make sure developments aren't stalled, largely by getting the entire community on board with the same vision.

"We had situations in Nashville of 30 years of conflict with neighbors and developers and nothing ever got built," Bernhardt, executive director of the Metropolitan Nashville-Davidson County Planning Department  told SRQ in advance of a Tuesday night event at The Francis. "But the system was set up to bring a proposal to neighborhoods and have them respond. We never opened up the process to say what was important to neighborhoods and what they actually would want. The system was set up to be contentious."

Bernhardt more recently has won accolades for work turning that pattern around, notably through the adoption of more than 30 form-based codes aimed at establishing a shared vision for growth and bringing it to fruition. The codes were developed through a process that involved the community, and that has led to developers being able to move on projects with less opposition.

Of course, form-based codes are not new to Sarasota, and Bernhardt had some role in bringing them here as well. He was one of the consultants working with Duany Plater-Zyberk and Company more than a decade ago on the Downtown Sarasota Master Plan. It has been between eight and ten years since Bernhardt was last in Sarasota, but at first blush he likes what he sees. "It looks like a lot of the plan has been implemented," he said. "The streets look nice and the scale is good."

Tensions between neighborhoods and developers, though, have not disappeared. The conflict remains central to the city politic, and also has been the greatest source of discord in an update to the Sarasota County 2050 Plan.

Even when a community vision is put forth, Bernhardt said, it needs routine updates. Modern demands for more dense urban cores are a perfect demonstration of why, he said. 

"If you look at the plans in the early 2000s, even up to 2005, things were very different from today," he said. "Nobody actively anticipated the change in millennials—the change in household size, household make-up and demand for an urban community." While people a decade ago still tended not to buy homes until they started families, a shift in mindset has younger buyers getting units now. Combined with the retiree population that lives an active lifestyle for longer, Bernhardt noted, the highest demand in the housing market is not for one-person homes.

Beyond housing, there is also a change in demand for centralized amenities, which means dense, mixed-use development. "You talk to millennials or to aging boomers and what they are looking for in places is the ability to get to activities they want to go to in the shortest time possible, whether that is parks, museums or coffee houses," he said. "They want to be close to things, and time has become much more important."