Affordable Housing
Welcome to EYA’s new townhouse development at St. Paul’s College in Brookland:
The 237 single-family units will be built on approximately half of the 20 acres, abutting the Trinity and Catholic campuses along 5th and 6th Streets NE. The townhouses will range in sizes from 14 to 18 feet wide and including between 1,400 and 2,100 s.f., selling between $450,000 and $550,000, with 28 units set aside as affordable housing.
Sounds nice. But my question with this sort of thing is always wouldn’t we do more to make housing affordable if instead of building 209 expensive townhouses plus 28 “affordable” ones we just allowed for taller buildings and had more units? It can’t be that construction costs here are running between $450,000 and $550,000—a big premium is being paid for the land and the permission to build. But where land is expensive, it ought to be used intensively. That makes economic sense, and it makes environmental sense.
33 Responses to “Affordable Housing”
Register
RSSLogin
Topic Cloud
ArchivesBlog RollAbout Matt YglesiasContact Me
Donate
November 5th, 2009 at 2:32 pm
And you could have both greater population density and more green space. The DC approach is multidimensionally stupid.
November 5th, 2009 at 2:47 pm
Depending on your point of view, you can thank either the dopes that built the Cairo or the dopes living nearby who overreacted and agitated for a law against 13 story skyscrapers.
November 5th, 2009 at 2:50 pm
Damn, you are naive. The more “affordable” units, the fewer people who will be willing to fork out the dollars for the others. Welcome to the real world.
November 5th, 2009 at 2:52 pm
From the link:
Basically, the landowners — the Paulist fathers — made the sale contingent upon a development plan that blended in to some extent with the existing architecture, along with however else you want to interpret “sensitive”.
I’d also guess that the 28 “affordable” units are there for some kind of tax credit, and the comments hint that “affordable” still means “six-figure income required”.
November 5th, 2009 at 2:53 pm
Bravo, Matt.
It’s an essential tension for progressives. To the extent that we support ‘community control’ and ‘contextual development,’ we’re also supporting the elimination or reduction of affordable housing, suburban sprawl, environmental degradation, and a host of other negative outcomes.
There’s a basic problem in the public debate – new development produces a small number of extremely highly-motivated opponents, who might even be transformed into activists and single-issue voters, and it produces a much greater number of theoretical supporters who aren’t all that invested in the outcome of any particular development. It’s a classic formula for producing outcomes contrary to the popular consensus. And it’s exacerbated by the fact that the short-term costs of density are highly visible (say, longer shadows) while the costs of lower-than-necessary density take longer to manifest themselves and are often far removed from the location of construction. (Build a few hundred townhouses in Brookland instead of apartment towers, and someone bulldozes a field in Virginia and adds hundreds more cars to the daily commute. But the connection between those two events is obscure.)
One way around this is to force the public to confront the indirect costs by making them much more visible. But the other way is to limit or eliminate local input into development decisions. Anti-democratic? Absolutely. But perhaps the most effective solution.
November 5th, 2009 at 2:59 pm
Who gets the 28 affordable units?
November 5th, 2009 at 3:00 pm
Oh, come on Matt, RTFA! This has nothing to do with the DC government, and everything to do with property’s owner, The Missionary Society of Saint Paul the Apostle, which doesn’t exactly consider land use policy to be its top priority.
EYA originally won out over a field of 12 to 15 other developers who responded to a solicitation of interest put forth on behalf of the Paulist order, which plans to retain ten acres that include the school and offices. Lester said his team bested its rivals because the property owners would be a more “sensitive” neighbor; the Paulists apparently prefer to look out on 237 townhouses, rather than commercial space or a residential property with more build out.
November 5th, 2009 at 3:01 pm
Oh, you need a six-figure to ‘afford’ them, but you’re not allowed to.
As someone with a just-under-three-digit household income, it’s very frustrating to fall between.
Also, who wants to buy a $600K unit in endless rows of identical $600K units with a maze to get in and park, no garden, no green roof, no solar, no wind, no water-use abatement, and no place for children to play?
It’s not an investment in the future, that’s for sure. Look, they’re turning 10 acres of forest into 9 acres of tar and concrete. Where will the stormwater go? Where do the children play? What private, quiet space do people have?
November 5th, 2009 at 3:02 pm
Matthew, this is Brookland. There is plenty of “affordable” housing there, and a townhouse development is exactly the sort of density you approve of. This just happens to be a luxury development.
November 5th, 2009 at 3:12 pm
This is the anti-Cabrini Green approach. Concentrating poverty into towers does not create positive living environments. The idea is, instead of isolating all poor people into one area, allow them to be part of normal neighborhoods with a diversity of income. In theory, this could lead to better opportunities for adults and for their children.
November 5th, 2009 at 3:21 pm
A free market in rental housing leads to the only “affordable” housing being crumbling and isolated in ghettoes. What you’re proposing would make tomorrow’s inner-cities only slightly better than the Lower East Side circa 1910. Everyone benefits from spreading around affordable housing and ensuring that it’s of decent quality.
November 5th, 2009 at 3:23 pm
Don’t most “affordable” units go to friends/relations of the developers or the “community activists”?
November 5th, 2009 at 3:24 pm
I’d also guess that the 28 “affordable” units are there for some kind of tax credit
Or to make it attractive to the people from whom approvals are needed – such as for zoning variances – and to appease community opposition.
Also agree with the above comments that the decision appears to have been made for esthetic reasons.
November 5th, 2009 at 3:26 pm
pseudo in nc says:
“the comments hint that ‘affordable’ still means “six-figure income required.”
This seems to be the usual outcome. When I lived in Silver Spring, they were building a new high-rise unit. We went to visit. It was awesome. Only we couldn’t apply to live there. We made too much money. Just barely, but fair enough. Social experiments, and all that.
But ultimately, the sytem did not bring low-income people into the area. Instead, it privileged early-career upper-middle-class people as opposed to mid-career upper-middle-class people. In effect, a somewhat successful college graduate could suddenly afford to live with his slightly more successful friends. Which of course screwed a few of the slightly more succesful people who otherwise would have lived there.
I am not crying any rivers for the people impacted by this. But it hardly seems like truly progressive social policy, either.
November 5th, 2009 at 3:45 pm
Doesn’t anybody here know what the hell they’re talking about?
“Affordable” units are subsidized partly by public agencies (whether through tax credits or direct funding) and partly by (slight) increases in sales price for the other units. Since the subsidies amount to (I’m guessing) no more than 67% of the sales price of the other units, and since there’s about 9 regular units for every subsidized unit, the other units are increased in sales price by no more than 4-5% (with the rest coming from agencies). So the other units are increased in sales price by $15-20k (or less).
Subsidized units are generally held out for people at 60% and 80% of median community income, and the application runs through the public agencies. There’s usually credit checks, credit counseling, and a fair amount of background checks to get into the units (it doesn’t benefit anyone to get someone into a unit only to bail 6 months later, and, unlike the private lending industry, the developers and agencies know exactly where the mortgages are).
As for Matt’s confident “It can’t be that construction costs here are running between $450,000 and $550,000,” well, yes it can. If the quality of construction is high – and for half a million per unit, it had better be – you’re looking somewhere between $150 and $200/square foot, not including site development costs. So that 2100 SF unit costs at least $315k, and up to $400k, to build – regardless of whether it’s in a townhouse or one of Matt’s beloved highrises. Add in subsidies, construction financing (construction loans are usurious, because the collateral is basically a half-built building), and, oh yeah, profit, and suddenly there’s no “big premium [...] being paid for the land and the permission to build.”
I don’t know why it is that Matt looks at a skyscraper and thinks, “That must be as cheap or cheaper to build than a little townhouse,” but evidently he does.
November 5th, 2009 at 3:50 pm
No no!
Those 28 low income units are for Charlie Rangel ’cause nothing says “progressive” like more tax fraud.
November 5th, 2009 at 3:50 pm
Also, just for the record: I’ve been involved with affordable housing for most of this decade; I’ve never seen these alleged low-income yet middle-class people who supposedly get all the affordable housing units. Now this probably has something to do with the fact that I’ve been involved in projects actually located where poor people are, but still: don’t get all wound up, people. Odds are that the subsidies are mostly going to regular old poor people.
November 5th, 2009 at 3:55 pm
But my question with this sort of thing is always wouldn’t we do more to make housing affordable if instead of building 209 expensive townhouses plus 28 “affordable” ones we just allowed for taller buildings and had more units?
I think it goes beyond that.
I would argue that, if, say, a certain state were serious about affordable housing, that state would set its house construction and density regulations at the state level. Full Stop.
In other words, if, according to the rules, your four acre parcel qualifies for, say, a sixty townhouse unit development, you’d be allowed to build it. Your neighbors would have no say, other than to the extent that they voted for state officials who shared their priorities with respect to density, set-back requirements, height limits, general architectural standards and regulations, etc.
Again, this wouldn’t mean no zoning or regulations with respect to housing. It would just mean they’re standardized at the state level, and so you eliminate the blatant nimbysim of local control of housing — when the lamest of excuses — oh no! helas! helas! allowing this apartment building would increase traffic! — is used to constrain supply (and decrease affordability).
Also, it wouldn’t mean the end of local control of commercial development — that I would leave to local government.
And finally, it wouldn’t mean that the standard, state-level regulations treat all parcels of land equally. You could, for instance, base your regulation on population densities of census tracts or zip codes. In other words, areas of minimum development, or significant agricultural import, or just plain sparsely population districts, would be allowed to remain so for future generations. Instead, new housing would be channeled into already densely populated areas, or brownfield sites, or what have you.
Anyway, if I were king for a day that’s the way we would do it (and undoubtedly I’m showing my Northeastern biases here; I’m sure in some parts of the country it’s pretty easy to build housing; but in these parts folks with a massive financial interest in supply constrictions — ie., current homeowners — pretty much have an ironclad veto — via the instrument of town meeting — on new housing supply).
November 5th, 2009 at 3:58 pm
The idea is, instead of isolating all poor people into one area, allow them to be part of normal neighborhoods with a diversity of income.
There ways of doing that with mixed developments of local-authority rental and owner-occupied homes, but admittedly, that’s easier in locales where the going rate for homes isn’t as buoyed up by the idiosyncratic job market seen in the District. Chicken and egg.
But this is not a great example to hang a high-density hat on: the sellers aren’t moving out, and made the sale of their acreage contingent on a development plan they liked.
November 5th, 2009 at 4:03 pm
“I don’t know why it is that Matt looks at a skyscraper and thinks, “That must be as cheap or cheaper to build than a little townhouse,” but evidently he does.”
Maybe Matt is thinking, “A skyscraper containing a hundred apartments would cost less PER UNIT to build than a dozen townhouses occupying the same land footprint.”
I could be wrong. Matt doesn’t always express his thoughts clearly.
November 5th, 2009 at 4:05 pm
“but still: don’t get all wound up, people. Odds are that the subsidies are mostly going to regular old poor people.”
Don’t get confused JRoth, they don’t actually care. Logical constructions like the ones you’re refuting are created for by people so they can oppose subsidized projects without feeling bad about it. “Well, I’d be for it, but it’s going to benefit the wrong type of people so THAT’S why I’m against it.” I’m sure there are incidents of upwardly mobile middle class types benefiting in some places, but your conclusion above is right.
November 5th, 2009 at 4:10 pm
In my experience, it appears that over time, zoning rules change to conform to exactly the sort of units that are already there. This means that whenever a developer arrives, a zoning variance is required for whatever he wants to do. There are no situations where a parcel of land is zoned to allow for anything other than what is already there and/or in the immediate area. If that ever does happen, then the zoning is quitely changed (and there is no one to object, because why would anyone in the neighborhood object to changing the zoning to ensure that the only buildings that are allowed are the sort that already exist?).
An exception: in Arizona, a community of monks bought some empty land to build a monastery. They were indignantly told by the local government that this was unacceptable because the area was zoned for only certain kinds of development. Though once the officials opened the books, it turned out that there was an old allowance in the zoning in that area specifically to permit monasteries, perhaps as an allowance to the Catholic priest-missionaries who had been around from the Spanish mission era.
November 5th, 2009 at 4:18 pm
meanwhile, in a desperate bid to reinflate the housing bubble, Congress is busy extending the $8k housing credit – thus helping to prevent: house prices falling, which would provide more affordable housing all by itself.
However, they can’t take credit for that
November 5th, 2009 at 4:27 pm
google – randall arendt conservation subdivision design
I call it sprawl by design – inefficient in every regard, but pleasant upon the eye.
November 5th, 2009 at 5:50 pm
Congress is busy extending the $8k housing credit – thus helping to prevent: house prices falling, which would provide more affordable housing all by itself.
You’re complaining about the cultic status of home ownership, perpetuated by the tax code and a political system that turns developers and realtors into powerful donors, lobbyists and U.S. senators?
Wow.
November 5th, 2009 at 5:53 pm
Mr. Yglesias, the would be Stalinist, just doesn’t get it. Most people in the USA don’t wants to live in high rise apartments/condominiums. Town houses are a sensible compromise between high rises and detached single family houses.
November 5th, 2009 at 8:20 pm
SLC believes that allowing market forces to set housing patterns (which is what Matt argues for) is Stalinist, while having local authorities set zoning rules that prohibit land-owners and developers from profiting by building what the market wants is capitalist.
November 5th, 2009 at 10:51 pm
Damn, you are naive. The more “affordable” units, the fewer people who will be willing to fork out the dollars for the others. Welcome to the real world.
That is somewhat correct. The true problem with affordable housing, of course, is that it distorts the market. Not to nearly the same extent as rent control (which is, by the way, in every single college elementary economics textbook, as a demonstration of public-policy folly), or even of the same kind, but nonetheless by assigning a certain number of units to a certain sub-bracket of the market, it restricts the liquidity and fluidity of the market, by shifting the supply curve for the general open market in a negative direction, resulting in a higher equilibrium price and a lower number of total units transacted.
November 5th, 2009 at 10:55 pm
Now it could be argued that the way affordable housing actually works, as opposed to in theory, is that more housing units are approved to be built as a condition of affordable housing being offered, so in that sense whatever are deemed affordable housing are in fact extra to the equilibrium absent affordable housing, and thus actually increases overall supply.
But of course that raises the question, why not simply increase supply in general, as that would shift the aggregate supply curve right and both lower the equilibrium price and increase quantity supplied? Because in this case the extra housing units are not functioning to their full possibility in reducing housing prices, and increasing housing supply, in general.
November 6th, 2009 at 2:02 am
I don’t know how it is in DC but I am familiar with the economics here in California. Once above some height (varies by state, but here in eq country it’s 5 stories over a two-story parking podium) building code will require steel and concrete instead of cheaper “stick built” construction, and that means more exacting engineering. You’ll have to incorporate a lot of life-safety stuff like sprinklers and fancier elevators and firewalled staircases. It can indeed be too expensive to build a taller building, on a per-unit basis, unless you can build a very much taller one. Where I live, developers often claim it is infeasible to construct unless they can go to 20 or more stories. At that height, you build deeper foundations, drive pilings, make large excavations, and the whole project will require a heck of a lot more money just to get started. A few got built around here during the condo bubble, financed by national companies like (ahem) Lehman Bros. Some became rentals, but only because they didn’t sell and whoever owns them has to take what they can get.
November 6th, 2009 at 4:48 am
thanks for the comment, Chic
i was actually thinking about that earlier — I either need a different layout that allows for larger pics, OR to figure out how to set it so you can click for the larger photos. I’ll work it out! 
November 6th, 2009 at 8:32 am
Re Bloix
The great majority of the market wants single family detached houses or town houses. That’s one of the reasons that people want to move to the suburbs where such dwelling units are in substantial supply. Even if zoning laws were all repealed, developers are not going to rush to build thousands of high rise apartments/condominiums which will end up being mostly empty.
November 7th, 2009 at 1:15 am
zrgmom is correct. I’m taking a look at a project that’s two residential buildings across the street from each other, one a 6-story building covering several acres and the other a 44-story building on a relatively small lot. I asked the developer directly why they didn’t just build everything at 10 stories, and they said that it just wasn’t economically feasible to build something framed in steel at that low of a height. The 6-story building will be wood-framed, and they can’t build higher than that without going to steel.