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Basically free money if you allow apartments in suburbia. Course builders aren’t really interested in low income housing these days so this is going nowhere.
Basically free money if you allow apartments in suburbia. Course builders aren’t really interested in low income housing these days so this is going nowhere.
A large suburban lot near me was finally sold to a developer after the old lady who owned it died. The city needed some low income/homeless units so it fell under certain guidelines. The city gave the developer $1m to do this three building complex where about 10 units would fall into that category. Neighborhood people including other rental complexes were not happy about giving any developer a million for really doing nothing. I saw this first hand at a city council meeting over it. Fast forward a year, building starts, but guess what, only one of the three buildings was built. This was a year prior to COVID. They probably collected the million, began building and ran out of money. The lawn took over a year to get put down. Good job city, well done!!
The subsidized units are part of the luxury apartment complexes. It may be as much as 20 percent of the apartments. The federal funding goes to cities and counties to fund these programs. I've seen a McMansion development where several of the homes were actually multiple rental units with separate entrances.
Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
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Such laws do not guarantee more multi-family housing, the simply allow it in areas currently zoned only for single family residences. No one is going to tear down a million dollar 20-30 year old 3,000 sf house on a 12,000 sf lot on a residential street and replace it with 20 condos or apartments. If they did, the condos or apartments would certainly not be affordable. Where this happens is older cities such as Seattle, where already 100+ year old houses that are falling apart on 4,000 sf lots are still going for nearly a million, but would cost another $500k to fix up, so they demolish and put in a 4-plex with no yards, and sell the townhomes for $600k each. With recent Covid related laws decimating landlords, no one is going to be building apartments.
Multiple developers competing for the yearly tax credit affordable housing deals in my city every year. Developers are very interested.
This is a bit different in that it seeks to increase land available for multi unit housing. I know one of the most valuable subdivisions in my city is the one with grandfathered garage apartments(built before they were banned). Lots of 3 bedroom houses there with 400-600 sq.ft. apartments in the back. Rent for the apartments is such that it pays half the mortgage, taxes, and insurance for owners that rent them out.
"No one is going to tear down a million dollar 20-30 year old 3,000 sf house on a 12,000 sf lot on a residential street and replace it with 20 condos or apartments."
You need to look around the Galleria area in West Houston. That is literally what has been happening there for 20 years. It goes house to 12 townhouses. Buy the house for a million, tear it down, build 12 townhouses sell townhouses for 500k each. Houston doesn't have zoning so it's legal and they changed minimum lot size 20 years ago when Greater Houston Partnership estimated the environmental destruction and flood risk(and associated infrastructure costs) of continuing to grow at their density level.
When a 2X4 costs over $8 and wages are going up steeply, there is not going to be any affordable housing built unless the government picks up all the costs.
Houses and apartments are expensive because they are expensive to build. Materials are expensive, the labor to build them is expensive, the land to put them on is expensive, the permits and ground prep and utility hook-ups are expensive.
Those affordable housing advocates are the type that thinks everyone who wants one should be able to have a Lamborghini and not pay over $2500 for a brand new one. Can't happen because you can't build one for that money. It's the same with houses. If it costs over $200,000 to build a smallish tract house, nobody can build it and rent it out for $150 a month, all utilities included. It doesn't matter how much you believe that everyone deserves to live in a nice middle class house, that house can not be built for what the low income people can pay in rent.
I saw a presentation a while back that spoke of the benefit of loosening zoning restrictions on Accessory Dwellings - formerly known as Mother in law apts. That opening up zoning to allow more ADUs in some of the high priced neighborhoods in places like Seattle and Tacoma could greatly increase people's ability to afford to live there, and the available rental market.
Of course many exist that aren't permitted and aren't legally rentable to non family members, and many are rented anyway, but more would certainly be built if they could be legally rented.
That's a far cry from building a whole new apartment building in a neighborhood of single family dwellings, but could open up some more affordable housing in some areas.
Basically free money if you allow apartments in suburbia. Course builders aren’t really interested in low income housing these days so this is going nowhere.
I don't see that that will be popular. I know I don't like it. I live in a house that I assume is zoned single residence.
There is a difference between a neighborhood of homeowners vs one of renters, generally. There is more crime in areas of apartments vs homes, for one thing. More litter, too. Noise. Trouble between neighbors. Renters come and go. They have no stake in the neighborhood. Homeowners are planted for a period of time, so tend to maintain their properties, get to know the neighbors &/or get along w/them (no loud late night parties that disturb the neighbors & such).
I lived in apartments for years. I've owned several homes. It's a very different environment, owning vs renting.
It seems like he's aiming at some specific areas that are super expensive, with NO rent areas, so anyone who works there has to live far away and travel to work. I think Seattle is that way. Not sure. I do think the govt of Seattle should have designated rent areas long ago. What might happen now is that if they rezone for apartments now, after the pricey homes are there, property values would immediately plummet. The owners would sell and move out. More and more of the area would turn into a huge rent area...renting apartments and homes. Those homeowners would have lost a lot of money, which doesn't seem right. But then they'd move to an area safe from rezoning. And those politicians who re-zoned may lose re-election, since the % of homeowners who vote vs renters is much higher, I'd guess.
"The Biden proposal would set up a $5 billion fund for local governments to compete for grants to pay for new schools, roads or bridges if they agreed to loosen zoning rules."
This might work for areas where it's expensive because it's near the local social scenes and near work, and where the schools are bad, but people don't care because it's predominantly young career professionals living in the area. It's good if there will be more apartments in those hot buzzing areas where land is expensive and schools are bad, because i would imagine as soon as we're back to somewhat normal, young people would want to congregate at cool places again, and it's good for people who want to live close to where things are happening to get a better opportunity to do so. I'm not sure if that'll devalue an area because I doubt apartments or condos in expensive areas are cheap.
I can't imagine this would work in the suburbs where good school has been drawing people to it already. They got plenty of tax money from homeowners. They probably won't be incentivized to get federal money for schools that are already top rated. I don't think this will change suburbs very much.
Also off topic, the article has a really strange and ominous photo for no reason.
I think it all depends. In some areas like San Francisco you have the one extreme; where the rules have turned what would have been an expensive RE market into an absurdly expensive RE market (in combination with the Geography of being on a Peninsula.)
In other areas I wonder if it would matter a whole lot. Some of that depends regionally on how the city/towns/counties handle everything and how the schools are administered.
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