After the Coronavirus, Cities Should Embrace Density - The New York Times

There are two things we know: The U.S. economy will recover. And the recovery will start in and be strongest in the same cities that were thriving before the pandemic. Economies in places like Seattle, San Francisco, New York and Boston are driven by the innovation, technology and biotech sectors, which are proving to be remarkably resilient to the impacts of Covid-19. Some of the dominant companies in these regions — think Amazon and Google — are even humming along through it all and consolidating market share.

The question is, can this next recovery stimulate an economy that creates opportunity for those with the lowest incomes and enables wealth building for all? Or will it, like the one we’ve had coming out of the Great Recession, serve only to concentrate gains in the hands of a few? At least part of the answer depends on whether we build enough housing to give an affordable toehold to those who want access to the opportunities these places offer. The key to doing so is to make cities denser, by loosening restrictive zoning that effectively blocks less-affluent American families from improving their lots in life.

Ending restrictive zoning doesn’t have to lead to the construction of towering apartment buildings.Credit...Karsten Moran for The New York Times

Before the pandemic, these same great cities and regions were already facing a crisis of crushing housing-cost burdens brought about by decades of underbuilding. The lack of affordable and available housing options even as jobs boomed coming out of the last recession meant that higher-income entrants to the market outbid everyone else for the limited options, exacerbating longstanding inequality. In the San Francisco Bay Area, only one new home was built for every 4.3 jobs created from 2011 to 2017. This underbuilding created untenable and unjust rent burdens on service and essential workers, some of whom were compelled to relocate to less productive regions just to survive. Further, high housing costs impeded lower-income workers from migrating in to take advantage of job opportunities.

The last time the country faced a huge need for new homes was in the immediate post-World War II era. The federal government kept housing affordable and facilitated opportunity by spurring the construction of a large number of homes through programs administered by the Veterans Administration and the Federal Housing Administration. The problem with that strategy, as Ta-Nehisi Coates and Richard Rothstein have written, is that this era of single-family and suburban development was shaped by discriminatory policies including government redlining, racial zoning and restrictive covenants. These policies led to segregated communities with unequal access to opportunity.

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Racial inequality isn’t the only cost of this prior building boom. Sprawling single-family-home subdivisions are contributing to an environmental and human disaster, requiring people to commute by car, sometimes two hours each way, while spewing carbon emissions. And the dominance of single-family development has only increased in recent decades. Single-family homes accounted for nearly 80 percent of the housing added in the nation’s largest metro areas since 1990.

The further threat is that the pandemic becomes a rallying cry to maintain our sprawling fortress neighborhoods designed to foster exclusion rather than inclusion. We have an obligation to ignore the short-term reactionary impulse to blame density for the spread of the coronavirus and instead use this opportunity to rethink the policies that impede the construction of new housing, at more price levels, in the places where housing is most needed.

This will not be easy. I know from having spent my entire career on the front lines of this “density” battle. As a young city planner, I wrote one of the first inclusionary zoning ordinances in the exclusionary city of Santa Barbara, Calif.; I almost got run out of town for proposing a “density bonus” program that would make it financially feasible for developers to provide a portion of their units for people with low incomes. In my subsequent career as a nonprofit housing developer working in prosperous coastal California communities, I spent far too many nights in City Council meetings working to get apartment buildings for lower-income older people and families approved. Underlying the “density” battle was almost always a battle over who has access to the opportunities of a place and who doesn’t, cloaked in arguments about neighborhood character and traffic impacts.

Yet this pandemic is reminding us that we need communities where teachers, child- and elder-care workers, nurses, doctors, janitors, construction workers, baristas, tech executives and engineers all share in the prosperity and the comfort of an affordable home.

Certainly, the first focus should be on emergency funding to help families pay their bills and stay afloat. But we also need to plan now for the recovery, to ensure that it is broadly shared.

An important step is simply to permit more housing in more locations. We should put an end to zoning policies that restrict building to single-family homes and stop mandating that lots meet large minimum-size requirements, leading to sprawling, sparsely populated neighborhoods. Ending such restrictive zoning doesn’t have to lead to the construction of towering apartment buildings. Rather, we should encourage cities to permit more homes on existing single-family lots, allow apartments in retail districts and near transit, and dedicate excess or underused public property like surface parking lots in downtowns to new housing. All of this can be done without materially changing the look, feel and experience of a place.

The second important step is to reduce the cost and uncertainty of getting a housing project built. It often takes years to get permission to build. Local government processes often allow multiple “bites at the apple” of public comment and hearings for a plan. Sometimes, even when there is a vote to approve a project, a neighbor or special interest can sue to stop the approval, resulting in further significant delay. These delays add cost and risk, driving up the price of new homes and sometimes stopping projects in their tracks entirely.

Some cities are already making positive moves. Portland, Ore., and Vancouver, British Columbia, led the way on allowing small cottages in the yards of single-family homes. California has followed suit, adding homes by letting homeowners build accessory dwelling units. Oregon and Minneapolis have new rules permitting multiple smaller homes on lots with an existing single-family home. Los Angeles developed a Transit Oriented Corridor plan that reduced parking requirements, leading to over 20,000 new apartments, 21 percent of them affordable housing. New York City has “as of right” zoning that allows developments to proceed with minimal review except when changes to zoning are necessary. State and local governments should continue to press forward with such practices, and the federal government should tie resources such as infrastructure funding to these types of actions. (To be clear, public subsidies will still be needed to solve homelessness and house the most vulnerable among us.)

These types of actions, which can be taken now, will lay the groundwork for a broad and shared prosperity. When denser housing is allowed, workers can live closer to their jobs, help save the planet by driving less and pay less in rent or mortgage payments because a bigger housing supply will lead to lower costs. Research shows that children tend to be more successful in neighborhoods with access to high-quality schools. In restricting building, more-affluent Americans are shutting lower-income families off from economic opportunity.

Now is an especially good time to reduce restrictions and allow for denser housing. Construction is hit hard during recessions, and opening up more building opportunities would be a stimulus for the industry, and it doesn’t require any extra funding. This would get workers back to work, provide safe and affordable living for those hard hit by this pandemic and get property taxes and other revenue flowing back to local governments for the services communities need. It would be a win for everyone.

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After the Coronavirus, Cities Should Embrace Density - The New York Times
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