scholarly journals Sand Castles Before the Tide? Affordable Housing in Expensive Cities

2018 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-80 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabriel Metcalf
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Housing Policy ◽  
Affordable Housing ◽  
The United States ◽  
Rent Control ◽  
Planning Decisions ◽  
Housing Costs ◽  
The Face ◽  
Land Use Policies ◽  
American Cities

This article focuses on cities with unprecedented economic success and a seemingly permanent crisis of affordable housing. In the expensive cities, policymakers expend great amounts of energy trying to bring down housing costs with subsidies for affordable housing and sometimes with rent control. But these efforts are undermined by planning decisions that make housing for most people vastly more expensive than it has to be by restricting the supply of new units even in the face of growing demand. I begin by describing current housing policy in the expensive metro areas of the United States. I then show how this combination of policies affecting housing, despite internal contradictions, makes sense from the perspective of the political coalitions that can form in a setting of fragmented local jurisdictions, local control over land use policies, and homeowner control over local government. Finally, I propose some more effective approaches to housing policy. My view is that the effects of the formal affordable housing policies of expensive cities are quite small in their impact when compared to the size of the problem—like sand castles before the tide. I will argue that we can do more, potentially much more, to create subsidized affordable housing in high-cost American cities. But more fundamentally, we will need to rethink the broader set of exclusionary land use policies that are the primary reason that housing in these cities has become so expensive. We cannot solve the problem unless we fix the housing market itself.

In The Face of Financialization: Cities and the Human Right to Adequate Housing

2021 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-130
Author(s):  
Kaara Martinez
Keyword(s):  
Affordable Housing ◽  
The United States ◽  
Human Right ◽  
Social Good ◽  
Cultural Rights ◽  
European Court ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Face ◽  
Full Sense ◽  
The Right

The right to housing is a human right with broad but frequently overlooked implications, particularly in the urban environment. This difficulty is heightened in the context of what is known as the “financialization of housing”. Financialization involves the interconnections between global financial markets and housing, and, at the extreme, has prompted a climate in which housing is conceived less as a social good and more as a commodity. The result of the financialization turn is cities with a severe lack of affordable housing, a reality that is now a global phenomenon. This naturally leads to economic exclusions and displacements from cities, but, on a deeper level, also entails major collective consequences for the social and cultural fabric. Financialization thus threatens the right to housing in cities, particularly when the right is examined and understood in its full sense. And yet, cities have a duty to ensure the right to housing even in the face of financialization. Drawing on the jurisprudence of the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights through its individual communications procedure, the European Court of Human Rights, and domestic cases from South Africa and the United States, this paper aims to elucidate this duty of cities in the realm of housing. A substantive rather than purely procedural shape of protection for the right to housing is pushed, which deliberates the connections between housing and the wider societal context, and the implicated concerns of resources, property, and urban community. In present times, our appreciation of home as a necessary nexus of safety, comfort, and productivity has come to the fore, as have our fears around economic insecurity, forcing us to confront and closely interrogate the right to housing.

Housing Policy Across the United States

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristin M. Szylvian
Keyword(s):  
Private Sector ◽  
Housing Policy ◽  
Affordable Housing ◽  
Ronald Reagan ◽  
The United States ◽  
Urban Housing ◽  
Living Environment ◽  
National Association ◽  
Middle Income ◽  
The Government

Federal housing policy has been primarily devoted to maintaining the economic stability and profitability of the private sector real estate, household finance, and home-building and supply industries since the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933–1945). Until the 1970s, federal policy encouraged speculative residential development in suburban areas and extended segregation by race and class. The National Association of Home Builders, the National Association of Realtors, and other allied organizations strenuously opposed federal programs seeking to assist low- and middle-income households and the homeless by forcing recalcitrant suburbs to permit the construction of open-access, affordable dwellings and encouraging the rehabilitation of urban housing. During the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan, a Republican from California, argued it was the government, not the private sector, that was responsible for the gross inequities in social and economic indicators between residents of city, inner ring, and outlying suburban communities. The civic, religious, consumer, labor, and other community-based organizations that tried to mitigate the adverse effects of the “Reagan Revolution” on the affordable housing market lacked a single coherent view or voice. Since that time, housing has become increasingly unaffordable in many metropolitan areas, and segregation by race, income, and ethnicity is on the rise once again. If the home mortgage crisis that began in 2007 is any indication, housing will continue to be a divisive political, economic, and social issue in the foreseeable future. The national housing goal of a “decent home in a suitable living environment for every American family” not only has yet to be realized, but many law makers now favor eliminating or further restricting federal commitment to its realization.

scholarly journals Economics of Compensation in Development Rights Programs

1975 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 185-194
Author(s):  
Barry C. Field ◽  
Jon M. Conrad
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Urban Sprawl ◽  
Land Use Planning ◽  
Agricultural Land ◽  
The United States ◽  
Industrial Property ◽  
Planning And Control ◽  
The Face ◽  
And Control ◽  
Market Pressures

Interest in land-use planning and control in the United States has recently shifted to a variety of non-conventional tools in an attempt to attain results that have eluded older techniques such as traditional zoning. A major land-use objective has been to continue certain existing land uses in the face of market pressures to convert to more intensive uses. This has been the case, for example, with ecologically fragile areas such as wetlands, or environmentally valuable areas such as scenic land, which are also economically attractive for development into housing or industrial property. In recent years interest has also turned to preservation of agricultural land, particularly in areas near urban concentrations that are feeling the effects of urban sprawl.

Millennial ‘YIMBYs’ and boomer ‘NIMBYs’: Generational views on housing affordability in the United States

2020 ◽  
pp. 003802612091612
Author(s):  
Max Holleran
Keyword(s):  
Baby Boomers ◽  
Affordable Housing ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Rental Housing ◽  
The United States ◽  
Housing Affordability ◽  
Single Family ◽  
Market Rate ◽  
Job Opportunities ◽  
Housing Costs

This article examines housing activism in five American cities using interviews with millennial-age housing activists, seeking more apartment development, and baby boomers who are members of neighbourhood groups that oppose growth. Many of the groups supporting growth have banded together under the banner of the ‘Yes in My Backyard’ (YIMBY) movement which seeks fewer zoning laws and pushes for market-rate rental housing. In desirable cities with thriving job opportunities, housing costs are pricing out not only low-income renters but also the middle class. The millennial activists sampled blame baby boomers for the lack of affordable housing because of resistance to higher density construction in neighbourhoods with single-family homes (characterising these people as having a ‘Not in My Backyard’ [NIMBY] mindset). The research shows that boomers and millennials not only disagree over urban growth but also more fundamental questions of what makes a liveable city.

Transit Corridor Livability: Realizing the Potential of Transportation and Land Use Integration

2017 ◽  
Vol 2671 (1) ◽  
pp. 20-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce Appleyard ◽  
Christopher E. Ferrell ◽  
Matthew Taecker
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Land Use Planning ◽  
The United States ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Life Outcomes ◽  
Travel Health ◽  
Planning Decisions ◽  
Potential Benefits ◽  
Integration Strategies ◽  
Literature Theory

In recent years, strategies to promote transportation and land use integration have gained prominence in planning-related fields, believed to yield many potential benefits toward travel, health, welfare, and sustainability goals. Although livability has been identified as an important outcome of this approach as well, little guidance exists on what livability actually is, how to measure it, or how transportation and land use integration strategies can promote it. The findings of a multiyear study of the livability literature, theory, and practice are followed by an extensive quantitative and qualitative study of more than 350 transit corridors including thousands of stations throughout the United States. Although often dismissed as subjective, this research shows that livability can be understood in well-defined and measurable ways, which are validated through an innovative geospatial approach using detailed national data on travel, health, safety, and other quality-of-life outcomes. The findings in this paper show how more integrated and livable transit corridors can yield multiple benefits regarding travel, health, welfare, and sustainability. The findings show how livability goals and their measures can inform planning decisions to promote equitable access to opportunities locally and regionally and yield multiple benefits. Therefore, livability can be seen as an organizing principle for determining when and how to deploy integrated transportation and land use planning strategies. A practical handbook and a calculator for building livable transit corridors are introduced; both were designed to empower practitioners and members of the public to equitably achieve higher levels of livability at local and regional scales.

Urbanized Defense Communities: A Literature Review on the Policies, Politics, and Planning of Military Readiness and Local Land Use in the United States

2021 ◽  
pp. 088541222110127
Author(s):  
Christopher M. Clanahan
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Land Use ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Literature Review ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
The United States ◽  
Rapid Population Growth ◽  
Military Installations ◽  
Institutional Responses ◽  
Land Use Policies

Propelled in the United States during the twentieth century, land use compatibility issues between military installations and neighboring communities amplified due to rapid population growth, sprawling regional development, and limited intergovernmental planning. This literature review examines how the policies, politics, and planning practices aimed at combating land use incompatibilities in defense communities changed from the early twentieth century to today. Through the consolidation of established theories, this article reveals a reactive paradigm shift in institutional responses. The triaxial spectrum presented in this review offers a theoretical framework for future empirical studies of defense land use policies, politics, and planning practices.

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