Tag Archives: land use

NINYBY

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human-592734_1920

A propos of yesterday’s post on the great paradox of housing policy — people say that they want restrictive land use policies which limit the construction of new housing at the same time that they say that they want more affordable housing in their communities — I present Exhibit 1: Votes by Community Boards Running Strongly Against de Blasio Affordable Housing Proposals. This document provides evidence that people are strongly opposed to affordable housing in their own communities while bemoaning the lack of affordable housing in nearby communities. This state of affairs is so extreme that it deserves its own acronym, Not in New Yorkers Backyards, or NINYBY.

This document was produced by New York Law School’s CityLand periodical and it discusses a

comprehensive chart tracking every vote taken by community boards citywide on the ZQA and MIH text amendments. On September 21, 2015, the City Planning Commission referred for public review the Zoning for Quality and Affordability (ZQA) and Mandatory Inclusionary Housing (MIH) citywide text amendments. Since the public review process has begun, community boards across the city have met to discuss and vote on each of the two proposals. All 59 New York City Community Boards have until November 30th to vote on two citywide text amendments.

CityLand has created a comprehensive citywide chart that is tracking every community board action taken on ZQA and MIH.

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Thus far, an overwhelming number of community boards have voted against both of these proposals, with MIH doing marginally better than ZQA. Within the boards themselves, the votes have been lopsided, with several recording unanimous votes against. Most Boards have backed up the votes with statements expressing their reasons for opposition. Some Boards that approved the measures included stipulations to the Yes votes.

New York City is never going to even begin to address its affordable housing issue if it does not implement policies like these proposed by the de Blasio Administration. Those who oppose these policies should at least admit that much is true.

Promoting Opportunity with Development

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"ArlingtonTODimage3" by This image was altered by Thesmothete with additional graphical elements to indicate the location of transit stations and the extent of development around them. - Derivative of :Image:ArlingtonRb aerial.jpg. Licensed under Public Domain via Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ArlingtonTODimage3.jpg#/media/File:ArlingtonTODimage3.jpg

Enterprise Community Partners have posted Promoting Opportunity Through Equitable Transit-Oriented Development (eTOD): Barriers to Success and Best Practices for Implementation. It opens,

Development patterns directly relate to a community’s strength. Individual families, the local economy, municipal governments and the environment all benefit when well-located housing, jobs and other necessary resources are connected by efficient transportation and infrastructure networks. Equitable transit-oriented development (eTOD) is an important approach to facilitating these connections. This paper defines eTOD as compact, often mixed-use development with multi-modal access to jobs, neighborhood-serving stores and other amenities that also serves the needs of low- and moderate-income people. The preservation and creation of dedicated affordable housing is a primary approach to eTOD, which can ensure that high-opportunity neighborhoods are open to people from all walks of life. eTOD supports the achievement of multiple cross-sector goals, including regional economic growth, enhanced mobility and access, efficient municipal and transportation network operations, improved public health, and decreased cost of living.

Yet it is sometimes difficult for planning agencies, local governments, transit agencies, housing organizations, private developers, and other institutions that influence development to act in concert to overcome barriers to eTOD. Each stakeholder has a unique mission with disparate goals and compliance burdens and must comply with complex and sometimes contradictory rules and regulations. However, improving coordination between these sectors can shift a potentially adversarial relationship into a symbiotic partnership. As the public resources that support transportation and infrastructure networks and housing affordability remain threatened, such efficient coordination is an especially important goal. (5, references omitted)

eTOD has a lot going for it: it’s environmentally responsible, it’s socially responsible, it can promote nice development. It is a shame that it is so hard to pull off. It would be great if HUD could take the lead in promoting eTOD, perhaps in tandem with its recent fair housing initiatives.

Severe Crowding in NYC

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"NLN Scott Stringer" by Thomas Good

NYC Comptroller Scott Stringer

New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer has issued a report, Hidden Households, that shows that more than one in twelve NYC homes are crowded. The report opens,

New York City is in the midst of a protracted housing emergency. The City’s net estimated rental vacancy rate is the official statistic used to gauge a housing emergency, but there are other important variables that shed light on the state of our housing environment. Chief among these is crowding. Crowding is an established predictor of homelessness and a critical indicator of negative health, safety and economic household risk factors. The City’s “hidden households”, which contain nearly 1.5 million New Yorkers, are the topic of this report.

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Among the most notable crowding trends detailed in the report, we find that New York City’s overall crowding rate, which includes rental and ownership housing units, rose to 8.8 percent in 2013, compared to 7.6 percent in 2005 – a proportional increase of 15.8 percent. The City’s crowding rate is more than two and a half times the national crowding rate of 3.3 percent. The proportion of crowded dwelling units increased in all of the City’s boroughs except Staten Island during this time period with increases of 28.1 percent in Brooklyn, 12.5 percent in Queens and 12.3 percent in the Bronx.

Severe crowding, defined as housing units with more than 1.5 persons per room, also increased substantially, surging by 44.8 percent from 2005 to 2013, with increases seen in every borough. Most notably, the proportion of studio apartments with three or more occupants rose by over 365 percent from 2005 to 2013. All told, 3.33 percent of all dwelling units in NYC were classified as severely crowded in 2013, compared to a national severe crowding rate of 0.99 percent. (2)

The report only focuses on the problem of crowding, but it would be helpful to mention one of the main solutions to crowding — building more housing. To the extent that the NYC Comptroller can push down construction costs in NYC and support increased density in appropriate neighborhoods, he would help reduce crowding in the long run.  Lots of people want to be in NYC. We need lots of apartments to house them.

Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing

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OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAAnthony22 at English Wikipedia [GFDL (https://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit issued a ruling in Westchester v. HUD, No. 15-2294 (Sept. 25, 2015) the longstanding case regarding whether Westchester County has “adequately analyzed — in its applications for HUD funds — impediments to fair housing within the County’s jurisdictions.” (3) The Second Circuit affirmed the District Court’s judgment in favor of HUD, which means that HUD’s withholding of funds under the Community Planning and Development (CPD) Formula Grant Programs stands.

HUD withheld those funds because it found that the County had failed to “assess the impediments to fair housing choice caused by local zoning ordinances or to identify actions the County would take to overcome these impediments.” (6) HUD further found, as a result that the County would not “affirmatively further fair housing” as required by the Fair Housing Act. (6)

The case resolved a narrow, legalistic question:

May HUD require a jurisdiction that applies for CPD funding to analyze whether local zoning laws will impede the jurisdiction’s mandate to “affirmatively further fair housing”? Because HUD may impose such a requirement on jurisdictions that apply for CPD funds, and because the decision to withhold Westchester County’s CPD funds in this case was not arbitrary or capricious, we conclude that HUD’s action complied with federal law. (50)

While the case was decided on narrow grounds, the Court does notes that

The broader dispute between the County and HUD implicates many “big‐picture” questions. Beyond prohibiting direct discrimination based on race or other protected categories, what must a jurisdiction do to “affirmatively further fair housing”? What is the difference, if any, between furthering “fair” housing and furthering “affordable” housing? How much control may HUD exert over local policies, which, in its view, impede the creation of “fair” or “affordable” housing? And if conflicts of this sort between HUD and local governments are to be avoided, is the simplest solution to avoid applying for federal funds in the first place? (32)

These are all very good questions and it is unfortunate that this case does not help to answer any of them. The level of segregation in the United States by race has been a tragedy for many, many decades and we are no closer to figuring out how to deal with it after all these years.

Wednesday’s Academic Roundup

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Monday’s Adjudication Roundup

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The Dense State of NYC’s Housing

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NYU_Campus

NYU’s Furman Center released its State of New York City’s Housing and Neighborhoods in 2014. I found its discussion of urban density to be the most notable aspect of this nexcellent and data-rich annual report. The discussion on density concludes,

The renewed attractiveness of New York City since the 1970s means population will likely keep increasing, and so will population and housing density. In 2010, few other U.S. cities had any neighborhoods that matched the density experienced by the typical New Yorker. Yet, by recent historical standards, today’s density levels are not extreme. In recent years, the typical New Yorker lived in a lower-density neighborhood than the typical New Yorker in 1970, as population growth in the city since 1980 was focused in moderate-density neighborhoods. Further, while great disparities in education and crime across neighborhoods exist, these differences are not generally associated with density levels.

High density cities like New York are playing an increasingly important role in the economy as drivers of productivity and innovation. This means the accessibility of the city to new residents is important both for New Yorkers and the nation. We have demonstrated that significant numbers of new residents can be accommodated without elevating density to levels above what the city has historically experienced, and that high-density neighborhoods do not perform lower on key quality of life indicators. City officials will need to ensure that neighborhoods have sufficient infrastructure to accommodate their new residents. (20)

This last point is key: density is not a problem so long as the appropriate infrastructure is built to support it. And while current residents are concerned about the impact of local increases in density, the city as a whole benefits from the increased economic activity and cultural creativity that comes along with heightened density. The De Blasio Administration knows this. Other local elected officials should sign on to increased density along with thoughtful zoning and infrastructure policies.

As a final note, I would compare the transparent acknowledgement of the report’s financial sponsors in the front matter with the much less transparent acknowledgment found in Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies State of the Nation’s Housing 2015 report that I blogged about yesterday.